MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: DROGA NA ZACHOD / THE ROAD TO THE WEST (1961)

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Thursday, May 15, 2014

DROGA NA ZACHOD / THE ROAD TO THE WEST (1961)

The ‘road to the West’ in this WWII endgame story is a train heading toward ‘the front.’ But as a Polish pic from the 1960s, this ain’t your regular military supply train, it’s an existential military supply train. At first, the Ruskies are in charge, with an officer who commandeers the rails and ‘recruits’ a pensioned engineer to get things up & running. The old man will work, but only with a proper assistant. What he gets is a young Pole with zero experience, but a great desire to get out of Russian territory and restart his life in one of the Polish towns they have to pass thru. Whether anyone will get past the bombs, strafing planes and even a switch from Russian officers to Germans is debatable. War, it seems, is Hell. Director Bohdan Poreba runs a decent show and stages some straightforward action set pieces to reasonable effect. (To the extent you can see them in PolArt’s smeary-looking DVD transfer.) But this is second-tier futility-of-war stuff at best.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Also out of Poland: Andrej Munk’s EROICA/’57 covers similar terrain to superb effect in a double-bill of two 40 minute stories.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Thursday, May 15, 2014

DROGA NA ZACHOD / THE ROAD TO THE WEST (1961)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE