On October 9, 2016, the world lost a cinematic giant: Andrzej Wajda. His death is a reminder to reflect on the legacy of a man who helped shape global cinema.
An Equation of Two Loves
Wajda’s life was driven by two great loves — Cinema and Poland. Or perhaps Poland and Cinema. The order doesn’t matter; both were equally central.
If we accept that equation, we still have to acknowledge the director’s well-known fondness for women. All four of his wives — talented, attractive artists and actresses — fit naturally into Wajda’s two sacred realms: Poland and Cinema. Or Cinema and Poland.
This unity of loves helps explain why, despite gossip and critics, Wajda never emigrated. Even when he shot films abroad, he treated it as an expansion of his creative landscape. As he insisted, he remained a Warsaw native and a Polish artist through and through.
“What a fool!” a young filmmaker might have scoffed. How many big successes and fortunes might this Poland-obsessed intellectual have had if he’d left — like his compatriot Roman Polanski or the Czech Miloš Forman? He might have avoided euphemisms and the exhausting navigation of political upheaval. But Wajda was, by nature, a self-contained artist with his own limits of freedom. It’s no accident that among the directors he admired were Buñuel, Fellini, and Bergman.
Andrzej Wajda (1963)
In 1957, Cannes embraced the young Wajda. Perhaps that recognition came from the same spirit of freedom that runs through his work. In the festival competition he stood alongside Ingmar Bergman; both won the prestigious Jury Prize — the then-equivalent of the “Silver Palm.” Bergman won for “The Seventh Seal,” while Wajda won for “Canal.” Later, as a leader of the “new Polish school,” he picked up many of international cinema’s top honors, including an Honorary Oscar (2000), the “Golden Lion,” and the “Golden Bear.”
A still from the film “Canal”
A Stranger Among Strangers
Advocates of socialist realism struggled for a long time to classify Wajda. He could look like one of them, but on closer inspection he seemed an outsider. One critic within the pro-government art establishment complained that Wajda had no use for Marxism. On one hand, the director portrayed heroic figures; on the other, he romanticized and refined those characters, even showing their doubts and flaws. He refused to produce simple screen icons.
Take “Canal.” In stark contrast to the praise it received at Cannes, Soviet “experts” condemned the film as decadent and ideologically suspect. When Wajda joined Solidarity in the early 1980s, Moscow ideologues effectively erased him from the cultural life promoted by communist authorities. Wajda himself, however, did not seem overly troubled by those judgments.
Andrzej Wajda (signing autographs) with Daniel Olbrychski (1970s)
A Diamond on Bitter Ashes
In both family dramas and historical epics, Wajda infused his films with tragedy and pain. Those instincts were forged during World War II and by losses that left permanent marks on his life. Andrzej’s father, a career officer, was a victim of the Katyn massacre. In 2007 the director fulfilled a long-held desire by making a film about Katyn, which he dedicated to his father.
Wajda was a child of war and a young courier for the underground Home Army. Even as a teenager he learned deep sorrow, the humiliation of identity checks, and how to survive on society’s margins. After all, what could be more marginal than war?
Was it naive of Wajda to assume that a personal story spanning decades and driving many of his film and theater projects would interest the wider world? Not at all. His skill as a director let him transform his own story into something universal.
Andrzej Wajda on the set of “Katyn” (2007)
Is that why “Ashes and Diamonds” (1958) often ranks among the greatest films ever made? Is that why Wajda remained an object of envy for those who lacked his talent and determination? Voices in the Polish press sometimes claimed that figures like him overshadowed the national film scene. Those criticisms revealed more envy than substance.
All that bitterness has faded. The vivid portrait of Polish history Wajda built through his films endures. That is his most precious gift to the world.
Brief Biography
Andrzej Wajda directed more than 40 films and staged over 40 plays.
He was born on March 6, 1926, to an army officer and a teacher. From 1946 to 1954 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and the National Film School in Łódź. Between 1954 and 1958 he made “Generation,” “Canal,” and “Ashes and Diamonds,” films that brought him recognition beyond Poland. In 1981 his film “Man of Iron” won the Palme d’Or, marking a landmark international triumph. Starting in 1978 he led the Polish Filmmakers Association, and in 1989 he was elected a senator in the Polish parliament. Beginning in 2000 he ran his own film school in Warsaw. He died on October 9, 2016, at the age of 90.
Andrzej Wajda after receiving the Order of the White Eagle in 2011
Selected Filmography
“Everything for Sale” (1968), “Landscape After the Battle” (1970), “The Wedding” (1972), “The Promised Land” (1974), “Man of Marble” (1976), “The Young Ladies of Wilko” (1979), “Man of Iron” (1981), “Korczak” (1990), “Pan Tadeusz” (1999), “Katyn” (2007), “Walesa” (2012), “Afterimage” (2016).
