Reviews (3)

A film about making a film
"Czlowiek z Marmuru," directed by Andrezej Wajda, is a story about a student making a film about a bricklayer that was idolized in the 1950s, and then denounced. She uncovers more and more details of what happened to him by interviewing people that knew him (that tell her their story) and viewing film clippings about him (which are shown in black-and-white). Between tracking down details in the present time (1976), watching black-and-white newsreels from the 1950s, and the stories various people tell (flashbacks), the film is a captivating mystery that unfolds, while holding your attention.

"Czlowiek z Marmuru" (1976) is 156 minutes, spoken in Polish, and has optional English subtitles.

Andzej Wajda: Czlowiek Z Marmuru (1976)
One of the most important movies in history of Polish filmaking! Winner of Cannes Festival in 1978.
The originality of Andrzej Wajda's film Man of Marble lies in the fact that it is not original (what can be less original than the fate of a labour-leader from the stalinist era?).

The beauty of this exceptional film lies in the complexity of the director's attitude towards Birkut, a representative - perfect in his submissiveness - of the whole miserable, alienated period. Wajda wants to communicate two opposing truths: first, that stalinism was a disaster and second, that the people who believed in it - and whom it consequently crushed - were driven by an honest spirit of idealism. It hasn't been easy to juxtapose these two messages, but Wajda has succeeded completely. Like every artist worth his name, he began not with the typical, but with the individual. Before Birkut became a lead labourer he possessed all the virtues and vices which have always been a constant element of humanity, regardless of place and time. Disguised by the label of socialist hero were humility and decency - qualities which made him a real hero. What was the effect of this delicate operation? Stalinism has been unconditionally condemned, but socialism as an idea and utopia seems to be saved.

The film is strictly consistent in form, which leaves no room for sentimentalism, so easy to introduce. The action takes place among the bare walls of the shipyard and office buildings, and it draws us in like a detective story, one, however, in which we don't search for the criminal but for historical truth. The only feeling is one of regret that the problems, which caused so much suffering in the past, have not been fully solved

Powerful Potrayal of Post World War II Poland
Man of Marble provides a fascinating insight into the late 40s, 50s and 70s in Poland. Wajda skillfully weaves a multi-layered narrative. The film revolves around the life story of Birkut (Radziwilowicz), an idealistic bricklayer Stakhanovite in Nowa Huta, who gets involved in the politics, propaganda, and complications of the post World War II period. But it is also a story of an aspiring film director (Janda) in Gierek's era, pursuing Birkut's life story as the subject matter for her diploma movie. In addition, the film portrays the motivations of Birkut's contemporaries: a movie director, a secret police agent, a friend from work, and a party leader. We meet these characters again, later in life, in the context of the 70s when Huta Katowice was the symbol of the times. Lastly, Wajda produces an excellent footage in the documentary style that provides a historical backdrop and binds various themes together.

I was delighted to see Man of Marble and its witty contrast between the two historical periods in which truth and reality suffered considerable distortion. When it was made in 1976 at the height of Gierek's economic and propagandistic excesses, this film was a courageous, revealing, and thought provoking piece. I highly recommend the movie to anyone seeking out the nuances of the Polish culture and psyche. Although the film contains references to true historical figures and events, its plot is purely fictional.

The subtitles are crude and far from the original and colorful language of both periods in the movie. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a well made film
this film captures the essence of the struggle of the polish people to achieve not only freedom but unity. The Focus is on a journalist who is assigned by the government to learn about a solidarity leader in the Gdansk shipyard strike around 1980. The journalist is expected to gather information about the leader from unsuspecting members or sympathizers of solidarity and then to create negative propaganda that would help the government destroy the strikers. He becomes torn between his conscience and his fatalistic desire to survive in the communist system. He has sympathy for the strikers, but he doesn't want to lose his job or go to jail. Should he refuse to help the communists or should he betray the strikers and, ultimately, Poland? It is not a easy choice for a man, who, like most of us, is less than perfect. The journalist's moral dilemna evolves as we find out more about the background and motivation of the solidarity leader and as great political and social events rock Poland. Wajda succeeds in showing us the intensity and drama of a great historical event while also showing us how individuals struggle to react and adapt to these events. This film is very well made, and, in my opinion, meaniful not only to poles, but to many of us in the West who take alot of what we have for granted. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Jean-Luc Godard's 1982 film about filmmaking, art, life, and love is an often stunningly beautiful work about a Polish film director (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) re-creating in tableaux vivant some masterpieces by Goya, Rembrandt, El Greco, and others. While Radziwilowicz's director is criticized by his film's backers for lacking a story, a number of actual stories take place among the characters working on the film--yet Godard keeps them all at enough of a distance that they can't take over his deconstructed narrative. As he often does, Godard calls upon the elements of filmmaking (and, for Passion, painting and classical music as well) like forces of nature, and then arranges them so that their powers are their very point. Passion may not be one of those ordinary, lightly accessible valentines to the art of making movies, but it has more fervor for the form than most directors could ever feel. --Tom Keogh ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Passion
This film was made well into the (seemingly) third phase of Godard's career, with his more linear narratives occupying the 1960's and his overtly political films (including his work as a member of Dziga Vertov) comprising much of the 1970's. Less didactically Marxist in tone (perhaps due to disillusionment), the third "postmodern" period consists, roughly, of the 1980's through the present. Although "postmodern" is an agreeably irritating modifier for this period, since the term is thrown around with more randomness in current social theory than is deserved, it is appropriate for this period--and its appropriateness explains why it has been received with such animosity, as evidenced in other reviews in this page. In other words, if you are expecting the tone and the linear constructions of, say, Breathless or A Woman Is a Woman, you are likely to be (angrily) disappointed.

Admittedly, all of Godard's films could easily be considered postmodern (or at least, high-modern), but the last period, in which Passion may be situated, best exemplifies this "tendency." The "plot" (if it may be called one) is threadbare and beside the point. The construction is disjointed. The tone is ironic and self-aware. The themes are, largely, theoretical and often focus on the nature of art itself (and film, in particular). In short, the film is an affront to all modernist expectations in film. That is, a person who would ask half way through the film, "What is going on?" is looking for elements of film that Passion does not have to offer.

It is easy to cast aside a work like this, condemning it to "pretentiousness" or self-indulgence, but it is important to remember that it is film (and television, of course) that has been the only "prominent" art form to evade change: Today's commercial successes and even critical favorites follow pretty much the same formulas as films in the 1930's. There have been minimal efforts, by and large, to stretch this medium beyond these limits. Godard is one director who has consistently attempted to challenge the traditional narrative form and to explore less familiar territory.

On to the film Passion itself... The rough outline consists of a director (Godard-like) attempting to make a decidedly uncommercial films featuring "re-enactments" of famous paintings. As might be expected, the financial backers are none too thrilled about a sluggish, aimless production by a neurotic director. Meanwhile, a factory-worker (Isabelle Huppert), with whom the director is having a relationship, attempts, unsuccessfully, to organize a revolt among her co-workers, and a desperate, self-effacing hotel owner (Hanna Schygulla) similarly forms an attachment to the director--perhaps as an only means of escape from her otherwise dreary existence. (It is interested to note that Schygulla also appeared in Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore, a film also about a creatively-impotent director working under disastrous conditions, but beware of Beware of a Holy Whore: it is a shrill and thoroughly bad film that seems a little too derivative of Godard's later style to be taken seriously.)

All in all, Passion is a successful film. It insightful (and ironically) connects disparate themes (e.g., the factory worker's fight for her very livelihood, and the director's struggle to bring about his "vision"). Despite the comic elements of the film, the overall impression one takes from it is a sort of empathetic frustration at passions left diverted or unfulfilled.

Prententious and Overbearing!
The more films I see by Godard, the more he shocks me, in a bad way! What this movie basically is, is, a excuse to see beautiful women naked for no apparent reason! Godard tries to shove this off as "art" but all the while we know what we're watching. A pretentious, boring, unsatisfying, porno! Godard tried pulling this stuff off before in "Two or Three Things I Know About Her". He created absurb questions such as "Why is blue called green?", and tried to make it some profound, earth shattering question. And the worst part of it is, people are suckered in to really thinking this stuff is "heavy". That it's so profound in it's meaning. When it's nothing more than junk! This movie is about a director (I assume someone pretty close to the real life Godard) who wants to make a movie with no story, in the style of paintings by Goya and such. He keeps on stating for the next 90 minutes that you can't write stories unless you live them. Or at least it's something of that nature. He then takes on two affairs, I'm not quite sure why, it's not really explained. When he's on the movie set, he does nothing but complain about something, claiming the lighting is wrong, or, why won't people leave him alone and let him make a movie about nothing ( Didn't we have a tv show like that lol). But in the background, I think they're filming some sort of Roman movie. We see men in Roman style costumes walking along side naked women, and horses. This movie is "more put together" than other Godard films. He didn't film this in his famous "disjointed" style. But even though it's shot "normally", the movie has no being. It wants us to believe we're watchng "art", but no one is that stupid to believe that. I know right now I must seem like I absolutely hate Godard, but that's not true. I do, believe it or not, have respect as a filmmaker, I'm a wannabe one, so in a sense I do look up to him. But, I know a bad movie when I see one. If you really want to watch Godard's films I suggest watching "Breathless" and\or "My Life To Live". Two movies that show Godard to be in fine form. But whatever you do, stay away from this one!

Must art forbid character development entirely? Really??
I understand that cinematic luminaries contributed to this film, and that art-house power is claimed for it. Yet no reasonable excuse is provided for the discontinuity among events. It may mimic the filmmaking process in which a producer/director's attention will be diverted many times per day, but it is still preferable to reveal a more cogent story. It is preferable because otherwise it is simply too easy to allege a movie.

The people behave stiffly throughout. The characters are caricatures. The issues raised are flat and uninteresting, and are as undeveloped as the characters.

The dubbing is quite bad. There are long stretches during which there is absolutely no connection between lip movement and sound.

I am not opposed to art in film. It is possible to incorporate disjunction into a film and create art that lacks a clear story. My point is that this movie basically fails. Three stars for the attempt, and because I admire the character who dances. She is about the only one who received a moment in which to behave authentically.

Strange, surreal, often wonderful.
This is a semi-autobiographical film about a Polish director making some tableaux vivants of clssical works of art, some of which are amazinngly beautiful. Contrasted with these are the mundane elements of his private life. It owes someting to Truffauts Day for Night, but being Godard, it's infinately more complex and ambiguous. My favourite scene takes place in factory, where someone asks why you nver see factories in movies. Vintage Godard! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A great movie, a great director
I was happy to find another great movie to buy. I bought this one taking the chance, because I never have heard anything of it. But once again Kieslowski take over deep fellings and a complex speech, opening a door of sensations. Great movie. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A great movie, a great director
I was happy to find another great movie to buy. I bought this one taking the chance, because I never have heard anything of it. But once again Kieslowski take over deep fellings and a complex speech, opening a door of sensations. Great movie. ... Read more