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THE IMAGE OF WOMEN IN PRE-WAR CINEMA BASED ON "GIRLS OF NOWOLIPKI"
The film version by Józef Lejtes is somewhat less drastic than the original novel by Pola Gojawiczyńska.
I think there's no need to talk about
Lejtes at length, given that you've already seen YOUNG FOREST.
You are, therefore, aware that he was one of the most eminent film directors of the interwar era.
We could say that he adapted the book with due diligence.
The film was very popular, it was in cinemas for ten weeks.
I think it was a box office record at the time. Stefania Zahorska, a film critic writing for "Wiadomości Literackie" known for her sternness, wrote:
"The film surpassed the novel. It is more coherent and more synthetic than the book"
Indeed, Lejtes took the most important threads, telling the story mostly from the point of view of Bronka.
The film is, of course, a melodrama since that was the primary convention at the time,
but at the same time it breaks away from the framework of its genre, as Tadeusz Lubelski argues.
Speaking of framework: we should mention a certain formal concept which helped Lejtes organise such a complex story.
It opens in a courtyard with the girls calling one another. Later they go to school, and so on.
The final scene shows the very same courtyard, with new girls -- they are younger but we know that they will have to face the same
pitfalls and dangers as their older counterparts.
It is a naturalist curse or a doom - the fate of a woman repeats itself and some obstacles can never be overcome.
It is a rather drab image. If you want to compare this adaptation
with a later one, you might want to watch GIRLS OF NOWOLIPKI which was directed by Barbara Sass' in 1985.
It is a much more bitter film and as such more faithful to the book.
It is almost hysterical and unstable.
In Barbara Sass's version, whenever a woman is walking down a street, the music grows louder,
the frame closes in a nearly claustrophobic way, and we know that something
terrible is about to happen. Such a feminist belief that love and
sex bring both liberation and doom on the female characters and it never ends well
is expressed even more bitterly by Barbara Sass.
She had her own reasons for that, and since the 1980s she has been making harsh,
in-your-face feminist films. Lejtes downplays the harsher themes.
Another issue is the cast: he cast actors who were perhaps not known
for their expressiveness as much as for playing characters in love.
Bronka, the main character, is played by Elżbieta Barszczewska.
Her performance was described as "melodiously sweet".
She was, indeed, the most famous romantic actress of the interwar cinema, second only to Jadwiga Smosarska.
She played Stefcia Rudecka in the second
film adaptation of "The ***" from 1936 (the first one starred Smosarska).
The same year, as soon as the principal photography for GIRLS OF NOWOLIPKI wrapped,
she was cast as Elżbieta in LINE, another film directed by Lejtes.
She also had a role in a film about Tadeusz Kościuszko.
She had a lyrical emploi of a lady from a country manor.
One critic wrote: "She combines gentle, delicate femininity with a solid psychological
backbone and uncompromising fortitude." It was an ideal of the Polish lyrical romantic actress.
Indeed, the character has perhaps the most romantic storyline: she falls in love with a boy who joins the Polish army,
embodying the romantic and heroic stereotype, is a perfect match for the actress's emploi.
Her last role was Justyna in ON THE NIEMEN RIVER, a great film, the release of which
was prevented by the outbreak of the war. As regards other actresses: I don't know
if you agree with me but when I'm watching pre-war films, I often think whether the people
survived the war or not; whether those young girls we see on the
screen had only a couple of years to live, or if they made it.
Here, you can watch the film without worrying -- all of them survived.
They lived well into the 1970s and 1980s, although none of them managed to have a significant
career in the post-war cinema. Elżbieta Barszczewska (Bronka) worked
mostly in theatre. Jadwiga Andrzejewska (Franka), a blonde
teenage girl, in the interwar era was cast mainly as a schoolgirl in films such as MY PARENTS ARE DIVORCING (dir. M. Krawicz),
after the war she worked in the Łódź theatres,
although she made some films as well. The beautiful Tamara Wiszniewska (as Amelka Raczyńska)
left for the US and disappeared from the film industry entirely.
Finally, Hanna Jaraczówna, playing the character of Kwiryna (downplayed in the film
although very interesting in the novel), worked in films until the late 1970s,
with directors such as Andrzej Munk, Stanisław Bareja, or Krzysztof Zanussi.
She also played a kapo in two films about Auschwitz: in LAST STAGE (dir. Wanda Jakubowska)
and in THE PASSENGER. Aside from Mieczysława Ćwiklińska
as the widow Raczyńska, the most eminent actors in the film play Bronka's parents:
Stanisława Wysocka as Mrs. Mossakowska -- Bronka's mother, a great actress who was
once described as "the new Modrzejewska". She was a professor in a drama school,
having first trained in Stanisławski's method in Russia. She was also known for her performances in tragedies on stage.
In this film, she was cast in a supporting yet interesting role.
Her husband -- carpenter Mossakowski - was played by the greatest actor of the
interwar era; film critics and historians even go as far as to say that he was the greatest actor ever.
Kazimierz Junosza-Stępowski, known as the "chameleon man", an incredibly versatile, legendary actor.
He died in 1943, in somewhat scandalous circumstances
He died shielding his wife, who was executed by a Polish underground army -- she was a
drug addict and a Gestapo collaborator. This was the death of Junosza-Stępowski.
It was a famous case which was later made into a film.
The last of the great actors, perhaps not as famous - the handsome Andrzej Szalawski as Ignaś.
Although it is difficult to imagine, he later played Jurand of Spychów
in KNIGHTS OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER and the loathsome Bucholc in Wajda's PROMISED LAND
We could talk more about those actors
but perhaps this is enough. Suffice to say that the film by Lejtes
was certainly an ambitious endeavour. Good cinematography, both on location
and in the studio. I've already discussed the cast.
In spite of everything, the film still has a strong accusatory message.
One more historical detail -- it is set not in 1935 (when the film was shot) but
before World War One, making it a period piece. It depicts the aftermath of the 1905
revolution, the horrors of World War One, ending with the triumphant arrival of Piłsudski's Legions.
We should mention that at a Women's Congress in 1907,
Zofia Nałkowska gave a speech on the ethical tasks of the women's
movement, concluding with a passionate cry: "We want the whole of life!"
She demanded for women to be given the right to love -- also outside of marriage
and for the hypocritical divisions of so-called "decent" and "fallen" women to be banished, trying to demonstrate that the problem
could not be reduced to such a binary opposition,
and the right to the physical pleasure of love and sex (which was not even mentioned at the time).
Today, we'd say that she demanded the right to ***, although she did not mention this particular word.
Still, however, Maria Konopnicka adjusted her glasses, pushed her chair back and left the room in a huff.
The speech advocating moral liberation caused a lot of polemics but we could say
that the female characters in Gojawiczyńska's prose also want "their whole lives".
They want to be happy, they want to be loved, they want it even more that they want to escape poverty.
They fall into the very same traps that Nałkowska describes. It turns out that it is very difficult to
be a free woman, to be independent, to uphold one's reputation, to cope economically on
one's own, and to find satisfaction in all of that.
I hope you appreciate the fact that we live in times after the third-wave of feminism
and that we've managed to achieve some things.