Polish officials were so afraid Ashes & Diamonds would attract the wrath of the Soviet authorities they declined to put the film forward for the Film Festival circuit. It eventually played in one screen in Venice in the Sixties. French film director René Claire saw it and helped the film become a sensation. An adaptation of the novel by Jerzy Andrzejewski, Ashes & Diamonds takes place on the 8th May 1945 as Germany formally surrenders.
The war may be over but the power struggle in Poland is only beginning. Various factions emerge including the Communists and anti-Nazi rebels. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young resistance fighter whose group turns their guns on the Communists. Maciek and his colleagues are ordered to kill a Communist politician, but they botch the hit killing instead two minor officials.
The action then moves to a small town hotel where a banquet is being prepared to celebrate the war ending. Wajda presents a microcosm of 1940's Polish society all under the same roof. Maciek has been ordered to correct his earlier mistake and kill the target. Yet a dalliance with barmaid Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska) awakens in him a desire to start a new life.
Maciek proves to be an early example of a cinematic cliché; the assassin who falls in love and lets his guard down. Remarkably Wajda encouraged lead actor Cybulski to wear contemporary clothing. So while everybody else is dressed in period garb, Maciek looks like he has wandered in from a night out. The effect is incongruous, but perfectly suits the movie. It marks Maciek out as being different, and would have no doubt appealed to a 50’s movie audience who were familiar with the youthful rebellion embodied by the Hollywood star James Dean.
Though Ashes & Diamonds sounds bleak Wajda injects a lyricism into the film that transcends neorealism. When Maciek shoots a man trying to seek refuge in a church the gunpowder ignites and the wounds catch fire. Maciek and a friend honour their dead colleagues by lining up shots of vodka and setting them alight as if they were candles. A dance at the climax of the film turns into a chilling waltz as the expressionless participants move towards a future in which they will have little say in their own lives.
Special Features
Ashes and Diamonds is available on Blu-ray and standard definition DVD. The only extra feature on the disc is an excellent interview with Wajda. Sadly there is no DVD commentary by an expert on the film as is the case with earlier Arrow Academy releases. There is however plenty of written material about Ashes & Diamonds with a booklet containing work by film historian Michael Brooke, a re-print of Marek Hendrykowsk’s monograph, and a lecture by Wajda given on ‘Cinema Past and Present.’
Rating 5/5
- Ashes & Diamonds
- Starring Zbigniew Cybulski
- Written by Jerzy Andrzejewski (based on his own novel), Andrzej Wajda
- Directed by Andrzej Wajda
- Running time 103 mins
- Year 1958
Kevin Sturton - Kevin is a graduate of the 2005 Post-Grad course in Film Journalism run by the BFI and writes mainly about film.
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