Category: Directed by Andrzej Wajda

  • Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Andrzej Wajda)

    Ashes and Diamonds is unexpectedly on the nose. There’s even a scene where protagonist Zbigniew Cybulski taps his nose; I had no idea it meant director Wajda was going to go for not just narrative obviousness in the third act, but also visual obviousness. In just a few minutes, Wajda and co-screenwriter Jerzy Andrzejewski (adapting…

  • Danton (1983, Andrzej Wajda)

    Period pieces and biopics tend to fail, at least ones made since 1950. I was just reading something about the growing audience want for realism in movies–this movement growing in the 1960s and 1970s (though the location shooting of the late 1940s is certainly a precursor)–that want made period pictures and biopics difficult… there needed…