Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films (Criterion R0)

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Criterion Collection (Aluevapaa, käy Suomessa)

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Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films

In 1999, Polish director Andrzej Wajda received an Honorary Academy Award for his body of work: more than thirty-five feature films, beginning with A Generation in 1955. Wajda’s next film, Kanal, the first ever made about the Warsaw Uprising, won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and launched Wajda on the path to international renown, a status secured with the release of his masterpiece, Ashes and Diamonds, in 1958. These three groundbreaking films helped usher in the Polish School movement and have often been regarded as a trilogy. But each boldly stands on its own—a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the struggle for personal and national freedom. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this director-approved edition, with new transfers of all three films and extensive interviews with the filmmaker and his colleagues.
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FILM INFO

Spine #282
FILMS IN THIS SET

 A Generation
A Generation 1955
Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for others’ lives. A coming-of-age story of survival and shattering loss, A Generation delivers a brutal portrait of the human cost of war.

 Kanal
Kanal 1957
“Watch them closely, for these are the last hours of their lives,” announces a narrator, foretelling the tragedy that unfolds as a war-ravaged company of Home Army resistance fighters tries to escape the Nazi onslaught through the sewers of Warsaw. Determined to survive, the men and women slog through the hellish labyrinth, piercing the darkness with the strength of their individual spirits. Based on true events, Kanal was the first film ever made about the Warsaw Uprising and brought director Andrzej Wajda to the attention of international audiences, earning the Special Jury Prize in Cannes in 1957.

 Ashes and Diamonds
Ashes and Diamonds 1958
A milestone of Polish cinema, this electrifying international sensation by Andrzej Wajda—the final film in his celebrated war trilogy—entwines the story of one man’s moral crisis with the fate of a nation. In a small Polish town on the final day of World War II, Maciek (the coolly charismatic Zbigniew Cybulski), a fighter in the underground anti-Communist resistance movement, has orders to assassinate an incoming commissar. But when he meets and falls for a young barmaid (Ewa Krzy?ewska), he begins to question his commitment to a cause that requires him to risk his life. Ashes and Diamonds’ lustrous monochrome cinematography—wreathed in shadows, smoke, and fog—and spectacularly choreographed set pieces lend a breathtaking visual dynamism to this urgent, incendiary vision of a country at a crossroads in its struggle for self-determination.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

New, restored high-definition digital transfers
Audio commentary by film scholar Annette Insdorf on Ashes and Diamonds
More than ninety minutes of exclusive new interviews with Andrzej Wajda and colleagues, discussing the director’s career and the making of these films
Vintage newsreel on the making of Ashes and Diamonds
Ceramics from Ilza (Ceramika Ilzecka), Wajda’s 1951 film school short
Jan Nowak-Jezioranski: Courier from Warsaw, an interview by Wajda of a Warsaw Uprising insider
Rare behind-the-scenes production photos, publicity stills, and posters
A gallery of Wajda’s original drawings and paintings
New and improved English subtitle translations
PLUS: New essays by film scholars and critics Ewa Mazierska, John Simon, and Paul Coates