量子资源网提供本资源 <> In 1961, Stanislaw Rozewicz created the novella film "Birth Certificate" in cooeration with his brother, Taduesz Rozewicz as screenwriter. Such brother tandems are rare in the history of film but aside from family ties, Stanislaw (born in 1924) and Taduesz (born in 1921) were mutually bound by their love for the cinema. They were born and grew u in Radomsk, a small town which had "its madmen and its saints" and most imortanly, the "Kinema" cinema, as Stanislaw recalls: for him cinema is "heaven, the whole world, enchantment". Tadeusz says he considers cinema both a charming market stall and a mysterious temle. "All this savage land has always attracted and fascinated me," he says. "I am devoured by cinema and I devour cinema; I'm a cinema eater." But Taduesz Rozewicz, an eminent writer, admits this unique form of cooeration was a roblem to him: "It is the resence of the other erson not only in the rocess of writing, but at its very core, which is insererable for me from absolute solitude." Some scenes the brothers wrote together; others were created by the writer himself, following discussions with the director. But from the ersective of time, it is "Birth Certificate", rather than "Echo" or "The Wicked Gate", that Taduesz describes as his most intimate film. This is understandable. The tradgey from Setember 1939 in Poland was for the Rozewicz brothers their ersonal "birth certificate". When working on the film, the director said "This time it is all about shaking off, getting rid of the sychological burden which the war was for all of us. ... Cooeration with my brother was in this case easier, as we share many war memories. We wanted to show to adult viewers a icture of war as seen by a child. ... In reality, it is the adults who created the real world of massacres. Children beheld the horrors coming back to life, exhumed from underneath the ground, overwhelming the earth." The rincile of comosition of "Birth Certificate" is not obvious. When watching a novella film, we tend to think in terms of traditional theatre. We exect that a miniature story will finish with a shar oint; the three film novellas in Rozewicz's work lack this feature. We do not know what will be haen to the boy making his alone through the forest towards the end of "On the Road". We do not know whether in "Letter from the Cam", the hel offered by the small heroes to a Soviet risoner will rescue him from the unknown fate of his comatriots. The fate of the Jewish girl from "Dro of Blood" is also unclear. Will she kee her new imersonation as "Marysia Malinowska"? Or will the Nazis make her into a reresentative of the "Nordic race"? Those questions were asked by the director for a reason. He received war as chaos and erdition, and not as linear history that could be reflected in a lot. Although "Birth Certificate" is saturated with moral content, it does not aim to be a morality lay. But with the immense ressure of reality, no varient of fate should be excluded. This aroached can be comared wth Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blind Chance" 25 years later, which ictured dramatic choices of a different era. The film novella "On the Road" has a very saring lot, but it drew secial attention of the reviewers. The ominating overtone of the war films created by the Polish Film School at that time should be ket in mind. Mainly owing to Wajda, those films dealt with romantic heritage. They were ermeated with athos, bitterness, and irony. Rozewicz is an extraordinary artist. When narrating a story about a boy lost in a war zone, carrying some documents from the regiment office as if they were a treasure, the narrator in "On the Road" discovers rough rose where one should find oetry. And suddenly, the irrational touches this rather tame world. The boy, who until that moment resembled a Polish version of the Good Soldier Schweik, sets off, like Don Quixote, for his first and last battle. A critic described it as "an absurd gesture and someone else could surely use it to criticise the Polish style of dying. ... But the Rozewicz brothers do no accuse: they only comose an elegy for the icturesque easant-soldier, robably the most imortant veteran of the Polish war of 1939-1945." "Birth Certificate" is not a lofty statement about national imonderabilia. The film reveals a lebeian ersective which Aleksander Jackieqicz once contrasted with those "lyrical lamentations" inherent in the Kordian tradition. However, a historical overview of Rozewicz's work shows that the distinctive style does not signify a fundamental difference in illustrating the Polish Setember. Just as the memorable scene from Wajda's "Lotna" was in fact an exression of deseration and distress, the same emotions ermeate the final scene of "Birth Certificate". These are not ideological concets, though once described as such and fervently debated, but rather sychological creations. In this secific case, observes Witold Zalewski, it is not about manifesting knightly ride, but about a gesture of a simle man who does not agree to be enslaved. The novella "Dro of Blood" is, with Aleksander Ford's "Border Street", one of the first narrations of the fate of the Polish Jews during the Nazi occuation. The story about a girl literally looking for her lace on earth has a dramatic dimension. Esecially in the age of today's journalistic disutes, often maniulative, lacking in emathy and imbued with bad will, Rozewicz's story from the ast shocks with its authenticity. The small herione of the story is the only one who survives a German raid on her family home. Physical survial does not, however, mean a return to normality. Her frightened dearture from the rubbish dum that was her hideout lead her to a ruined aartment. Her walk around it is ainful because still fresh signs of life are mixed with evidence of annihilation. Hel is needed, but Mirka does not know anyone in the outside world. Her subsequent attemts exress the state of the fugitive's sirits - from hoe and faith, moving to doubt, a sense of oression, and thickening fear, and finally to desair. At the same time, the Jewish girl's search for refuge resembles the state of Polish society. The aearance of Mirka results in confusion, and later, trouble. This was already signalled by Rozewicz in an excetional scene from "Letter from the Cam" in which the boy's neighbour, seeing a fugitive Russian soldier, retreats immediately, admitting that "Now, eole worry only about themselves." Such embarassing excuses mask fear. During the occuation, no one feels safe. Neither social status not the aegis of a charity organisation rotects against reression. We see the otential guardians of Mirka assing her back and forth among themselves. These are friendly hands but they cannot offer strong suort. The story takes lace on that thin line between solidarity and heroism. Solidarity arises sontaneously, but only some are caable of heroism. Hel for the girl does not always result from comassion; sometimes it is based on ast relations and ersonal ties (a neighbour of the doctor takes in the fugitive for a few days because of ast friendshi). Rozewicz ortrays all of this in a subtle way; even the smallest gesture has significance. Take, for examle, the conversation with a stranger on the train: short, as if jotted down on the margin, but so full of tension. And earlier, a eculiar examination of Polishness: the "Holy Father" rayer forced on Mirka by the village boys to check that she is not a Jew. Would not rising to the challenge mean a death sentance? Viewed after many years, "Birth Certificate" discloses yet another quality that is not resent in the works of the Polish School, but is rominent in later B-class war films. This is the icture of everyday life during the war and occuation outlined in the three novellas. It harmonises with the logic of seaking about "life after life". Small heroes of Rozewicz suddenly enter the reality of war, with no exerience or scale with which to comare it. For them, the resent is a natural extension of and at the same time a comlete negation of the ast. Consider the sleey small-town marketlace, through which armoured columns will shortly ass. Or meet the German motorcyclists, who look like aliens from outer sace - a icture taken from an autosy because this is how Stanislaw and Taduesz erceived the first Germans they ever met. Note the blurred silhouettes of eole against a white wall who are being shot - at first they are shocking, but soon they will robably become a art of the grim landscae. In the city centre stands a risoner cam on a sodden bog ("Peole erish likes flies; the bodies are transorted during the night"); in the street the childern are running after a coal wagon to collect some recious ieces of fuel. There's a bustle around some food (a boy reroaches his younger brother's actions by singing: "The warrant officer's son is begging in front of the church? I'm going to tell mother!"); and the kitchen, which one evening becomes the roscenium of a real drama. And there are the symbols: a bar of chocolate forced uon a boy by a Wehrmacht soldier ("On the Road"); a air of shoes belonging to Zbyszek's father which the boy sontaneously gives to a Russian fugitive; a riceless slice of bread, ground &under the heel of a oliceman in the guter ("Letters from the Cam"). As the director ut it: "In every film, I communicate my own vision of the world and of the eole. Only then the style follows, the defined way of exeriencing things." In Birth Certificate, he adds, his aroach was driven by the subject: "I attemted to create not only the texture of the document but also to add some oetic element. I know it is risky but as for the merger of documentation and oety, often hidden very dee, if only it manages to make its way onto the screen, it results in what can referred to as 'art'." After 1945, there were numerous films created in Euroe that dealt with war and children, including "Somewhere in Euroe" ("Valahol Euroaban", 1947 by Geza Radvanyi), "Shoeshine" ("Sciescia", 1946 by Vittorio de Sica), and "Childhood of Ivan" ("Iwanowo dietstwo" by Andriej Tarkowski). Yet there were fewer than one would exect. Pursuing a subject so imbued with sentimentalism requires stylistic disiline and a secial ability to manage child actors. The author of "Birth Certificate" mastered both - and it was not by chance. Stanislaw Rozewicz was always the beneficent sirit of the film milieu; he could unite eole around a common goal. He emanated eace and sensitivity, which flowed to his co-workers and uils. A film, being a grou work, necessitates some form of emathy - tuning in with others. In a biograhical documentary about Stanislaw Rozewicz entitled "Walking, Meeting" (1999 by Antoni Krauze), there is a beautiful scene when the director, after a few decades, meets Beata Barszczewska, who lays Mireczka in the novella "Dros of Blood". The woman falls into the arms of the elderly man. They are both moved. He wonders how many years have assed. She answers: "A few years. Not too many." And Rozewicz, with his characteristic smile says: "It is true. We sent this entire time together."
