Dekalog, dziewiec (29 Jun. 1990)
"Dekalog" Dekalog, dziewiec (original title)

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife". Roman, after discovering his impotence, urges his wife Hanka to take a lover. She reluctantly complies, and Roman, despite his earlier words, ... See full summary »

Director:

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Writers:

Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Krzysztof Kieslowski

Stars:

Ewa Blaszczyk, Piotr Machalica, Artur Barcis

Cast

Episode complete credited cast:
Ewa Blaszczyk	...	Hanka
Piotr Machalica	...	Roman
Artur Barcis	...	Bicyclist
Jan Jankowski	...	Mariusz
Jolanta Pietek-Górecka	...	Ola
Katarzyna Piwowarczyk	...	Ania
Jerzy Trela	...	Mikolaj
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Renata Berger
Malgorzata Boratynska
Jolanta Cichon
Janusz Cywinski
Slawomir Kwiatkowski
Dariusz Przychoda

Storyline

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife". Roman, after discovering his impotence, urges his wife Hanka to take a lover. She reluctantly complies, and Roman, despite his earlier words, becomes obsessively jealous. Spying on her, he learns of her affair, and vows to kill himself - not knowing that Hanka was in fact breaking off the relationship...

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Plot Keywords:

impotence | eavesdropping | melbourne australia | bicycle | childlessness | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish

Release Date:

29 June 1990 (West Germany)

Filming Locations:

Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland

Company Credits

Production Co:

Sender Freies Berlin (SFB), Telewizja Polska (TVP), Zespol Filmowy "Tor"

Technical Specs

Runtime:

58 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Connections

Referenced in Three Colors: Red (1994)

User Reviews

Next to the End

I'm a bit upset at our filmmaker.

I know that each of these ten is its own little experiment. Each has its own adventure in vision and dreaming. But all ten have an arc as well. Oh, not in the stories; they're good enough in their way. What I mean is the cadence that comes from the difference in how each of these sees.

Some have an eager eye, others lazy. Sometimes the eye is inside the emotional container of the thing. Sometimes, often, the camera is liquid on some surface that is emotionally tipped. They're all different, and together we have a sort of poem in how the rocks are arranged in the sky for us to see as art after we have seen the immediate art by standing on each of them.

So we are nearing the end, and this penultimate eye is essential to giving us distance.

Sure enough, almost everything about this is perfect. Its about spying, about placing yourself to see — hoping to not get hit by what we see and knowing we will.

There's lots of architectural framing, interstitial platforms and invaginations. Its about children lost before they were had, the greatest tragedy.

So why am I miffed, if it is so perfect, so delicately jolting? Because in the final scene he leaves his Kieslowski world and gives us a shot so banal, so ordinary, so conventionally shot we wonder what he was thinking. Its a phone call, alternating between the husband calling and the wife receiving.

Its a Hitchcock-derived shot. Now don't get me wrong, Hitchcock invented the curious, floating camera that Kieslowski (and Chris Doyle) exploit. But his setups are so quoted now that to use one today is almost a matter of parody. And that's what we are left with.

I can only assume that the difference was intended, that our filmmaker wanted to let us know that things will be different now. That it will now be "real" and not a man and woman acting real and watching themselves work at it.

But it is shocking, that call.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.