Main Cast: Wienczyslaw Glinski, Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Emil Karewicz, Wladyslaw Sheybal
Release Year: 1957
Country: PL
Run Time: 96 minutes
Plot
The second of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's WWII trilogy, following Pokolenie (A Generation) and preceding Popiol I diament (Ashes and Diamonds), Kanal is the most physically harrowing of the set. Based on the experiences of Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, a Polish patriot who participated in the battle for Warsaw in 1939 as an 18-year-old and in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the action takes place in the last week of the 63-day Uprising, as the Nazis hunt down what few freedom fighters remain. A band of Poles takes to the sewers in hopes of escaping, but they become disoriented by the darkness and the fumes of the waist-deep filth. Whenever the Poles try to emerge for orientation or relief, the Germans are there to greet them with a hail of bullets. Kanal was Wajda's coming-out film; it won two prizes at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival and clicked with both European and American audiences, in spite of its grueling story and pessimistic tone. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Review
Few filmmakers got off to the career start that Andrzej Wajda did with his wartime trilogy, a set of stories vigorously shot and pointedly written to reflect a skeptical view of wartime heroics and postwar politics. Kanal, the middle feature, is perhaps the most famous, if only because it offers one of the more physically harrowing stories from a war packed with them. Polish people of the Communist-dominated 1950s were hungry for stories of glory about their efforts against the Nazis in WWII, but they didn't get them with this film. The nominal heroes, a band of partisans who take to the sewers in the final days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, have fought bravely against the German occupiers of their city, but what's onscreen here is a fight of another kind, one for pure survival. Reduced to wading in waist-deep filth and peeking out from beneath manhole covers only to face sniper fire, the freedom fighters soon realize that the world has turned upside down and that darkness is their friend and light their enemy. Kanal does not depict the death of heroes, only those of men and one woman -- interestingly, she is the strongest character -- who have lost touch with their ideals and have been reduced to basic instincts. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Cast
Wienczyslaw Glinski - Lieutenant 'Splinter'
Teresa Izewska - 'Daisy'
Tadeusz Janczar - Corporal Korab
Emil Karewicz - 'Wise'
Wladyslaw Sheybal - Composer
Stanislaw Mikulski - 'Slim'
Credit
Roman Mann - Art Director, Jerzy Szeski - Costume Designer, Andrzej Wajda - Director, Halina Nawrocka - Editor, Jan Krenz - Composer (Music Score), Jerzy Lipman - Cinematographer, Stanislaw Adler - Producer, Roman Mann - Screenwriter, Roman Wolyniec - Screenwriter, Jerzy Stefan Stawinski - Screenwriter
