Zygmunt Zintel

Winter Twilight by Stanislaw Lenartowicz is one of the films that presaged the emergence of the Polish Film School as a recognised and independent trend. Shot in 1956, it had its premiere on 1 February 1957, three months before the screening of Kanal/They Loved Life by Andrzej Wajda at Cannes. If we were to analyse the film using the most frequently applied criterion for distinguishing works of the school – provoking audience awareness by raising topics concerned with recent history – Lenartowicz’s debut would hardly pass this benchmark. However, if we consider the Polish School to be a complex artistic formation of diverse films created by directors debuting on the verge of a cultural breakthrough – the October 1956 phenomena that was characterised by expressive direction and widespread divergence from the established poetics of social realism – Winter Twilight should be recognised as one of it most important precursory works.Read More »

In 1950, at night, a passenger train kills a man on the tracks. He is Orzechowski, an engineer since 1914. An inquiry immediately follows. Testimony takes the form of flashbacks. Tuszka, the station master, believes Orzechowski was a saboteur; at least one on the inquiry panel agrees. Zapora, the young engineer on the train that hit Orzechowski, gives more complicated testimony about the dead man – stiff-necked, proud, imperious, critical of Zapora and other younger workers. The signalman at the crossing where Orzechowski died also testifies. Can the panel arrive at the truth in a world where workers unite, inferior coal is a badge of honor, and the old order is suspect?Read More »