LA POUPEE

By : Wojciech J. Has

With : Mariusz Dmochowski, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Jan Kreczmar, Tadeusz Fijewski, Kalina Jedrusik
Pologne, 1968, PAL, 4/3 - 159 mn
zone 2, Couleur, mono
12.00 €


English title: THE DOLL
original title: LALKA

Directed : Wojciech J. Has

With : Mariusz Dmochowski, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Jan Kreczmar, Tadeusz Fijewski, Kalina Jedrusik
Poland, 1968, PAL, 4/3 - 159 mn
zone 2, Color, mono

Original Polish Version with French subtitles

During the 1870's, in Poland, the bright businessman Stanislas Wokulski wins the heart of Isabella Lecka, a beautiful ruined aristocrat. Then begin love's and ambition's games, during this period of big scientific discoveries and middle-classes rising in Europe.

THE DOLL is an adaptation of the novel "The Doll" written by Boleslaw Prus, which is considered by many as one of the finest Polish novels ever written. Along with the other novel "Pharaoh", it made Boleslaw Prus a potential candidate for the Literature Nobel Prize. The influence of Émile Zola is obvious, and some have also compared the novel to "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert; both are Prus' contemporaries. The movie, however, may be more compared to Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" ("The Red and the Black").

THE DOLL constitutes a panorama of life in Warsaw between 1878 and 1879, and at the same time is a subtle story of three generations of Polish idealists, giving details of their psychological complications, their involvement in the history of the nineteenth century, their moral problems and their experience of tragic existence. At the same time this story describes the disintegration of social relationships and the growing separation of a society whose aristocratic elite spreads the models of vanity and idleness. At this time, anti-Semitic ideas are born, valuable individuals meet obstacles on their way, and scoundrels are successful.

Bonus: review by Jacques Mandelbaum (LE MONDE).


Watch a video excerpt :

La poupee
envoyé par malavidafilms