MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958)

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Monday, May 12, 2008

ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958)

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda must have toured the film fests with KANAL, his previous film, as this follow up is as stylistically up-to-date as a late ‘50s pic could be. Alas, the style feels more applied than integral. The last in Wajda’s WWII trilogy, follows two resistance survivors ordered to kill two Kremlin-groomed Poles after mistakenly gunning down two innocents. But Zbigniew Cybulski (Poland’s very own James Dean and just as self-indulgent an actor) as the younger assassin, inconveniently falls in love & no longer wants to kill. You can grant ASHES its international rep without thinking much of it.

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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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Monday, May 12, 2008

ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE