From Wojciech Jerzy Has, the director of the dazzling The Saragossa Manuscript, this early low key work (presented in the Cannes competition) from his Polish Film School period explores the effects of WW2 on the Polish psyche. Adapted by Kazimierz Brandys from his own story the film is distinct in its depiction of the German Occupation from a female perspective.
Barbara Krafftówna gives a compelling performance as Felicia, an actress struggling to reconcile personal choices and her career as she travels from Warsaw to Paris for the first time in years. Poland’s James Dean, Zbigniew Cybulski, appears as her former lover. His larger than life character (and boastful stories) reveals the vulnerability of ordinary people in the theatre of war and leaves us to consider the individual human tragedies that happen in that arena every day.
