LES CODES
By : Wojciech J. Has
With : Jan Kreczmar, Zbigniew Cybulski, Irena Eichler, Barbara Krafftowna, Kazimierz Opalinski.
POLOGNE, 1966, DVD 9, 4/3 - 84 min
Zone 2, noir et blanc,
Not available for sale now
English title: THE CODES
Original title: SZYFRY
Directed by : Wojciech J. Has
With : Jan Kreczmar, Zbigniew Cybulski, Irena Eichler, Barbara Krafftowna, Kazimierz Opalinski.
Poland, 1966, DVD 9, 4/3 - 84 min
Zone 2, black and white
Original Polish version with French subtitles
Tadeusz (Jan Kreczmar) is a Polish veteran of World War II who fled to London at the end of the war, leaving behind his wife Zofia (Irena Eichler�wna) and his son, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), who disappeared when he was 12 years old.
Tadeusz returns to Krakow to discover that Maciek is alive, his wife may have been a partisan, and that his son may have turned his own mother in to the authorities.
During Maciek's struggle to understand his parents' history, questions arise concerning collaboration with the Gestapo and retribution by the Home Army. Has pictures the mystical lost boy in a dark fairy-tale forest, full of the war's ghosts and wholesale executions. The hypnotic quality of these excursions foreshadows the mesmerizing passages of Has' later film, THE HOUR-GLASS SANATORIUM.
THE CODES hides a deep reflection on time and history. In this film, different aspects of reality intertwine: the documentary level and phantasmagoria. The presence of vision scenes, inspired by the poem "Anhelli" by Juliusz Sowacki, suggests that the story of Tadeusz refers not only to the actual, but also to the philosophical dimension of Polish history.
BONUS : Chaptering, Filmography, Restored master, Review by J. Mandelbaum (11 MN)
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