Light Out of Poland: Wajda's Man of Marble and Man of Iron

LIGHT OUT OF POLAND: WAJDA'S MAN OF MARBLE AND MAN OF IRON By Cliff Lewis and Carroll Britch Every hour on the hour throughout Poland, Radio Cracow identifies itself by broadcasting the same trumpet notes four times. During the fourth set of soundings, the notes abruptly halt, unfinished. These trumpet notes commemorate a medieval watchman who, standing high in a churchtower, signaled townsmen of an invasion from the East. The watchman sounded three full warnings. Midway through the fourth, legend has it, an arrow pierced his throat. Hourly the legend reminds Poland of her precarious existence and of the sacrifices required if she is to endure. Over the past 1,000 years the watchman has changed but not the threat. On his way to becoming a legend in his own time, Andrezj Wajda,1 through Man of Marble (1976) and Man of Iron (1980), now sounds a warning of the invasion already within. The Soviets have not yet pierced the throat of Wajda, but they are throttling the personal freedom and national identity of the Polish people. Defiant as the Pope to Soviet encroachment, Wajda in Marble and Iron has created monuments to Poland's recent political resistance and show of national will. Indeed, his two films not only mark but also inspire ongoing political resistance to Party pressure. It is doubtful that a filmmaker of any other nation can claim this distinction. Even without the wisdom which emerges through decades of hindsight, we think it valid if not safe to say that Man of Marble has served the same purpose for the Polish people's Solidarity Rebellion that Tom Paine' s Crisis Papers did for the American Revolution and that Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Civil War. I (Lewis) saw the film in Q.li{{ Lewiò haò published axticleA on Faulknex, Hemingway, and Steinbeck, waA a Fulbfiight Lectuxex in Poland in /976-77, and ìa Aòòociate Pno^eAhOK oi Englá>h at the UniveXAiXy o{¡ Lowell. Caxxolt BhJXch tcacheA {¡ilm couXAeA and dixcctA the, dxama pnogham at Springfield College. [Moaa.) whexe he. ÍA Aò&ociate. PtioleA&on o{ English. 82 Gdansk in the spring of 1977, and will never forget how it stirred the audience. Now, we make no claim that Marble is a great film as, say, Citizen Kane is a great film. Nor is Iron a great film. We do claim, however, that despite a number of flaws in actor performance and camera work, both films are great examples of successful Social Realism and, accordingly , true "engineers" of a remoulded political consciousness and national will. A film critic like Stanley Kauffmann would reject our "affective" stance but in so doing would miss if not the basic point then the power Marble and Iron hold to move a people to action. Kauffmann accurately describes the artistic flaws in Man of Marble, but carelessly dismisses the film as unimportant. He gives three reasons: First . . . Wajda . . . isa windy film rhetorician, mannered and pretentious . . . Second, the performances of the film-maker [the central character] by Krystna Janda is a gallery of muggings and posings. Third, deeper and more delicate, this is one more film from a communist country about how tough things once were— under Stalinist regimes .... Either as an oblique way to comment on the harried present or as a way of boasting that things have improved, the device is questionable.2 He concedes that censorship injured the conclusion of the film but added that whatever the future horror in Poland, "The least important truth about the possible horror is that it won't improve Wajda's film or talents." Kauffmann aside, critics at Cannes acknowledged the sociopolitical import of Marble and so honored it. When the film went before the public in February 1977, the Polish audience acknowledged Wajda as the Watchman calling them to continue their resistance to the Soviet invasion within. The film is a specific memorial to the hundreds of martyrs gunned down in Gdansk in 1970 while protesting against the Golmulka government. In Marble Wajda traces the failures of communism in Poland since its invasion in 1947. Simply because of its public exposure of continuing Stalinst oppression, it is not an exaggeration to...