What do you do when you’re sick?  i don’t know about you, but when something comes along that can knock me down for the better part of two weeks, reading usually isn’t an option. Words on a page become strangers to me- running, hiding, colliding and mingling to form jumbled concepts so that i wind up reading the same paragraph three or four times before anything makes sense. Film, on the other hand, goes down fairly easily, although recall  days afterward leaves something to be desired. There are, however,  those hours upon hours when something like this- not the flu, but a kind of coughing, sniveling void that can drain one of the energy to get up the stairs- leaves one conscious enough to accept some cinematic input. It’s times like these when being prone in bed with a video in the player is not a source of guilt and/or damning evidence of sloth. It’s just necessary.

During this suspended existence, there were a bunch of films i floated through, but probably the most important were the boxed set trio from Polish director Andrzej Wadja that i found on half price sale last Summer and haven’t had the nerve to get into until now. Part of my hesitation toward viewing these three was the old test of time thing. The third film in the box, Ashes and Diamonds, was actually my reason for getting the set- it was not available in any other form. It was also a film that i had seen more than thirty years ago as a part of my major introduction into ’something other than hollywood’  land. It was a film that blew me away at the time. Often times, one can go back to a book or an album or a film that  was a strong influence in those formative years, only to find that you have grown while the game-changer has become diminished in stature. We, or at least i, don’t like to see that.

As it turns out, this time i wasn’t disappointed. i would say though that the pedestal where Ashes and Diamonds (1958) had been residing is now more of an Olympic podium shared by the other two films, A Generation (1955) and Kanal (1957). All three deal with World War II, the oppression of Naziism, Communism and the Polish resistance, and having been made relatively soon after the conflict by people who had lived it, they all serve as time capsule windows into another culture and another time.

 A Generation was Wadja’s first feature film, and is astounding in its all ’round mastery of the craft. It tells of the early days of the war and the organization of a faction of the Polish underground. Kanal takes place during the time of the Warsaw Uprising, and is shot in two parts- in the light of day in battle in the ruins of Old Town Warsaw, and in an incredibly lit system of sewers beneath the city. Ashes and Diamonds chronicles the last days of the War, when the Nazis are being driven from the country just as the Soviet occupying forces come in to “save ” the day. In all of these films, beyond the skill of their making and the intrigue of their tales, the extras sections provide a whole other level of insight into what they are about. While one might have thought (i certainly did) that this band of filmmakers in the Iron Curtained purgatory of post-War Poland would have been isolated from outside cinematic influences, i was surprised to find out that it was the style and presence of James Dean, in his performance in Rebel Without a Cause, that strongly influenced both the look and the concept for the main character, Maciek, in Ashes and Diamonds. Sometimes these extras things are a bit too much information packed for me, but in this case, the insights and backstories all made this revisitation of this past fascination a box load of  an education, in spite of the fog.