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A Generation More at IMDbPro »Pokolenie (original title)
| Index | 9 reviews in total |
12 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
The Young who must Kill, 26 December 2005
Author:
(futures@exis.net) from Ronn Ives/FUTURES Antiques, Norfolk, VA.
"A Generation" (Polish, 1954): This is the first of a war trilogy by Andrzej Wajda. Photographed in rich black & white, "A Generation" is about the youth of Poland, who joined underground rebellions against the Nazis. They formed small "cells" (sound familiar?) of fighters, used pseudonyms, and seldom met with larger groups – for the sake of secrecy and safety. The photography is wonderful (the long opening scene is alone worth the price of admission), the acting is great to average (with a TEENAGED Roman Polanski in one of the supporting roles!), and the dialog gives insight into kids who must grow up overnight and become not merely premature adults, but calculating killers. Made less than a decade after the war, this film depicts the serious, accurate, and even on extremely rare occasion, lighthearted moments that made up their lives. "Kanal" (1957), and "Ashes & Diamonds" (1958) follow.
8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
excellent but not quite as good as KANAL, 26 February 2006
Author:
planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
This was director Andrzej Wajda's first full-length film--and because
of that, this stands as an amazing achievement. On the Criterion disk
is an interview with Wajda and he credits much of the film's success to
the cameraman and I agree wholeheartedly that this is one of the best
looking black and white films I have ever seen.
The film concerns a young man during the Nazi occupation of Poland. In
the beginning, he's a bit of a jerk but eventually gets a job and shows
great responsibility. Later, he is welcomed into the partisans and it
is an interesting look into this seldom talked about period of history.
The film gets a score of 8. It would have had a higher score had the
film been more honest--as it portrays the Communists as being THE
resistance and those partisans wanting a return to the democratic
system as being greedy bourgeoisie. However, on the Criterion DVD,
Wajda talks about how this was one of the required changes the
Soviet-dominated Polish government mandated before they'd allow his
film to be shown. So, considering the sensibilities of the time, it's
not surprising that a little misrepresentation occurs. Still, it's a
near-great film and a wonderful addition to KANAL. Wajda's 3rd film,
ASHES AND DIAMONDS, unfortunately is a big disappointment to me and is
considered the third in this trilogy about life in Poland during WWII.
There is one MINOR mistake in the film. At one point, the hero is hit
in the head and is bleeding. Later in the same scene, there is no head
wound!
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
In only his first feature, Wajda has shown that he has what it takes to become a master filmmaker., 22 September 2010
Author:
Eternality from Singapore
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Andrzej Wajda's A Generation or Pokolenle is the great director's first
feature-length film and is also the first installment of a 'War'
trilogy that brought the world's attention to Polish cinema as never
before. The two other similarly-themed films in the series are Kanal
(1957) and Ashes And Diamonds (1958). These three films combined
remains to be one of the finest collective works to come out of Eastern
European cinema in the 1950s.
A Generation tells the story of Stach, a wayward teen living in a slum
on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. He works as a carpenter in a
small, local factory making bed frames and doors, and earning a pay of
paltry proportions. He is then introduced to an underground resistance
group comprising of youths which is led by Dorota, a confident young
woman who wants to fight for the freedom of her homeland. A true
believer of Communism, Stach matures from a lazy kid living a life of
emptiness to a leader of a patriotic cause worth dying for.
A Generation opens with a wide panning shot that slowly swivels from a
barren, quiet open field to a small village with joyfully loud children
playing. Yet there is something disquieting about the shot. The stark
photography induces a feeling that we may never hear these voices
again. Wajda's filmmaking style is simple; he never indulges in
fanciful camera tricks or long technically-demanding takes. Here he is
focused on telling Stach's story with certain immediacy. Supporting
characters are introduced and established with consistent pacing; Wajda
allows each key supporting role to have enough one-to-one time with
Stach so that an emotional bond is developed between them.
Wajda has a strong sense of location. In the film's most powerful
sequence, one of Stach's close friends finds himself separate from the
group after they encountered Nazi resistance. Armed with a pistol, he
tries to outrun the Nazis but ends up in a building with a spiral
staircase. He climbs up helplessly, ducking sprays of bullets that seem
to come from all corners. His pistol is now emptied but at the top he
sees a door. Sensing salvation, he opens the door only to find a locked
gate behind. A sharp ray of hope becomes a painful stab to the heart.
Realizing his impending doom, he unwillingly jumps to his death.
In only his first feature, Wajda has shown that he has what it takes to
become a master filmmaker. A Generation may not feature the best in
acting, but Wajda's careful direction behind the camera allows the
characters to breathe life into Stach's story of sorrow. Wajda's
realist, social dramas have not only become the singular voice of
post-war Polish youths disaffected by their mournful past, they have
also, in his later works, become a voice of a nation struggling for
identity amid a thick haze of political and economical uncertainty.
SCORE: 8/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!
Poland, 1942-43, 17 April 2012
Author:
bandw from Boulder, CO
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This movie opens in Poland in 1942, on the outskirts of Warsaw. The
opening scene is impressive, starting with a long view of a poverty
stricken area and panning about 180 degrees while slowly zooming in on
three boys playing a knife-throwing game. One of these boys is the main
character, Starch, who provides a voice-over during the scene.
Starch works as an apprentice in a woodworking shop. Very early on the
complex political situation is introduced, and that is where things get
a little complicated for those not overly familiar with Polish history
during the war. One factor to keep in mind is that this film was made
during the time that Poland was a Soviet satellite state, so I assume
certain restrictions needed to be adhered to in order to get it
approved. The so-called "good guys" in this are members of the Soviet
backed People's Guard, whose goal was to fight the German occupiers as
well as to oppose the Polish resistance movement, a movement loyal to
the Polish government in exile. It seems that the Soviets had no desire
to see Poland as a free independent state.
The political tensions are played out in the woodworking shop. A
communist, Sekula, works in the shop. We know where he is coming from
when he says to Starch, "You work eight hours for the price of one.
There once was a wise bearded man by the name of Karl Marx. He once
wrote that workers were paid just barely enough to renew their
strength." Starch is naive and aimless, so he is taken in by Sekula and
a pretty young female Communist and joins their group. There are also
members of the Polish resistance movement in the shop. They are
represented here as bad guys. Then there is Jasio who works in the
shop. He is conflicted--basically he wants to stay out of it and just
do his job, but he is drawn to act. It is interesting that he is the
first person in the group to kill a German.
The acting is pretty pedestrian. The black and white cinematography is
quite good; there are a lot of dark shots with only faces lighted. The
overall feel is of film noir.
A good part of the movie is played out against the backdrop of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. One outstanding scene has the conspirators
talking while at a carnival that is just outside the ghetto walls, with
smoke coming from the ghetto in the background.
For someone, like myself, who has meager knowledge of Polish history
during WWII, this film helps (although I wonder if the glorification of
the Communists was exaggerated). I think that I could spend several
days researching the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
This is a film for those who bemoan the preponderance of shallow
entertainments in contemporary movies.
1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Totally unimpressed., 5 April 2012
Author:
paloma54 from Washington State, USA
If you have read some of the other reviews, you already have a fair
idea of what this is about. Considering the miserable legacy left
behind, Marxism is not something that I can consider a positive
development. And the growing self-righteousness of the anti-Nazi
Marxists is typical of an increasing number of Americans who seem to
think that we need to try the Marxist ideas yet again.
The acting in this film is really pretty terrible. All the time I was
watching A Generation, I kept thinking I was watching a movie from the
1920s. The story line is flimsy, there is almost no character
development, and frankly, I felt as if this was a piece of Soviet
propaganda. I'll watch two more Wajda movies, but I'm hoping they will
be a marked improvement.
0 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
next generation of Poles, 29 March 2012
Author:
Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) from Portland, Oregon, USA
The movie that made Andrzej Wajda famous depicts a group of people in
Poland's resistance during WWII. In one scene, the movie's protagonist
Stach (Tadeusz Łomnicki) learns about Marxism from another man. It's
clear that this speech is directed not only at the Nazi occupation, but
also at the Soviet occupation. A scene towards the end of "Pokolenie"
("A Generation" in English) reminded me of Agnieszka Holland's "In
Darkness", which was recently a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film
at the Academy Awards.
As for what I thought of Andrzej Wajda's feature debut. I earlier saw
Wajda's "Popiół i diament" ("Ashes and Diamonds" in English). From what
I understand about the themes that Wajda depicted in that one, it
sounded like what we might call the perfect Polish movie. "A
Generation" is also really good, although I did find "Ashes and
Diamonds" to be a little better. In an interview, Wajda noted that the
title refers to his generation: the leaders of Poland's pre-war film
industry had fled the country, and so his generation was essentially
starting it from scratch.
All in all, a very good movie. Watch for a young Roman Polanski as one
of Stach's compatriots.
1 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Generation Game, 8 September 2010
Author:
writers_reign from London, England
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Westerners like myself have at least two strikes on them when faced in 2010 with a film shot more or less half a century earlier under a regime which we in the West have never experienced. It begins very much in the vein of the Italian neo-realism school that began a decade earlier so that the first impressions are that Polish cinema was stuck in a stylistic rut but gradually it sheds that look and emerges as a movie in its own right. It is, of course, depicting events less than a decade old so presumably is authentic in that respect. For all I know there WERE groups of young Poles who became active in the Resistance at exactly the same time very much as the group here. For me it was difficult to become involved with the characters possibly because they were all and - with the exception of Roman Polanski who fails to distinguish himself here - and remain unknown to me, unlike say, the cast of L'Armee des Ombres. Nevertheless I will persevere with the other two - Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds - of the trilogy.
3 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Mediocre first film, 5 September 2008
Author:
Cosmoeticadotcom (cosmoetica@gmail.com) from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Sometimes films get reputations way out of proportion with their
artistic merit simply because they expound a point of view that the
public, or critics, like or agree with. Such is the case with the first
feature length film from Polish film legend Andrzej Wajda. Released in
1955, the 87 minute long black and white film A Generation (Pokolenie),
is not a particularly good film. No, it's not a bad film, but it
visually resembles a mediocre 1940s film noir admixed with a touch of
Italian Neo-Realism from its blighted and impoverished landscapes. Its
characters, such as they are, are not realistic, and merely one
dimensional tools for the agitprop that is at the heart of the film.
Yes, one must realize that the film needed to be green lighted by
Polish censors, but unlike the ways a more mature Wajda, and later
filmmakers like Roman Polanski (who has a small acting role in the
film) and Krzysztof Kieslowski (called the Polish School), would, A
Generation plays out more like a Primer for Communism. It became part
of a de facto War Trilogy of films made about Poland's World War Two
Experience, and it is packaged by The Criterion Collection as part of a
Three War Films collection, along with Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds
(Popiół I Diament). Hopefully the two later films provide more true
cinema to be savored .
The cinematography by Jerzy Lipman is solid but unspectacular, and the
scoring not even up to Hollywood B film melodrama standards. Often,
mediocre films like this are defended by acolytes on grounds that its
visuals are 'pure cinema,' or some such. Well, this one's are not, but
even were the mise-en-scene great, it would not make up for the leaden
acting, dull script, and agitprop galore. Given that an average feature
film will have dozens to hundreds of framed shots, the laws of average,
and random chance, will demand that a few will be well-composed. So?
It's whether or not a far greater number than average are which
matters. Or whether or not the few that are are super-poetic, or the
like. Then, one might have an argument over the visual elements raising
up the bar for the film. A Generation lacks that, all of that.
Similarly, although it is reasonable to argue that the Marxist
references in the film were intended, at the time, as a sly backhanded
critique of the system, none of that matters now, as it is simply
blatant agitprop. Great art rises above such strictures, and the
idiocies of would be censors. Minor anachronisms- such as a racist
caricature of a black man on a cuckoo clock, are not as egregious,
since it is emblemic of the times and its attitudes. Overall, A
Generation does show some promise, especially in the Jasio Krone
character, and a few scenes of realistic interplay, such as when Dorota
and Stach first have sex, because she refuses to let him leave after
the Nazi curfew has come. But, these are few. Wajda may have gone on to
become a great filmmaker, but that grace is not evident here. Perhaps
that is another legacy of art in totalitarian states, inside or outside
a celluloid frame.
8 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
Surely not the viewing experience it once was, 29 September 1999
Author:
allyjack from toronto
Hard not to view this film with the benefit of hindsight when - for example - the final image, of faces almost tangibly seeing the light of a new tomorrow, is apparently so straightforwardly propagandistic; scenes such as that in which the older workman talks reverently about the promise of Karl Marx now seem at best quaint. That's probably not an entirely fair prism through which to consider the film, but the theme of anti-Nazi resistance obviously becomes less stirring when one considers the limitations of what's being put forward as the alternative. Furthermore, although the movie's gritty, shadowy pace generally makes for entertaining viewing, there's a fairly consistent series of images which seem to push too hard - the heart-shaped photo slot at the fair through which we watch as she steps away from him; the Hitchcock-like fall through the well of the spiral staircase. The movie's pace and concentrated immersion in its time and place makes it engrossing, and the earnestness and deprivation are still touching, but it's surely no longer the viewing experience it once was.
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