Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Although Andrzej Wajda's early films were staples of the mid-1960s art house circuit (which was then at its height), he is often not thought of when listing the world's greatest directors. Only in the last few years, courtesy of DVDs, have I been discovering the many interesting films he has made and continues to make. My impromptu Wajda retrospective is impaired by "Man of Iron" not being on DVD, but his trilogy about the end of World War II in Poland (Kanal, Generation, Ashes and Diamonds) and many later films of his are.

Wajda's 1979 "Panny z Wilka" (released in the UK as "Maidens of Wilko," in the US as "Young Girls of Wilco") was nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar (losing to "The Tin Drum"). It has to be one of Wajda's least political films. Indeed, if it were in Swedish rather than Polish, I would guess that it was a film made by Ingmar Bergman rather than one made by Andrzej Wajda. The title characters are six daughters of the Wilko manor.

Some time during the 1920s, Wictor (Daniel Olbrychski) returns to stay with his aunt and uncle at the next manor. He stops briefly at the Wilko manor and learns that Fela, one of the young girls there who had been besotted by him before the war is dead. Wictor's return after fifteen years stirs up the surviving sisters who had been rivals for him and one, Tunya (Christine Pascal), who was then too young to be a contender, but who resembles Fela and is very available.

Her elder sisters vie for Wictor's attention. Two are married, though only one husband is in residence (a miserly ogre) though rarely present on screen. Wictor pretty much has the run of the hen house again. He and the women of Wilko have regrets about his failure to choose one of them when he was 20.

Wictor is as oblivious to the pain he causes on his return visit as he was as a youth. In some way he cannot choose one sister, because he is in love with them as a set. It doesn't seem to me that he wants to be a brother; more like he would like a harem all doting on him. Passion is not within his character and he fails to recognize or understand it in others (to the frustration of his aunt and uncle as well as to the Wilko women who all feel spurned).

Wiktor is so lacking in agency, self-knowledge, or taking responsibility for anything as to be very unsympathetic. I think that this means that Daniel Olbrychski did a great job. It is easier to credit Krystyna Zachwatowicz's Kazia, the most insightful of the sisters and the one on whom running the household has devolved. Being the only grown-up looks to be without fun or rewards, but Kazia has a son to shape (she's teaching him French).

Although I was irritated at Wiktor from early on, I was not bored. The low-keyed penultimate scene is particularly impressive. It involves a visual trip from summer on one side of the river (green and clear-skied) to autumn (overcast with trees having already lost most of their leaves) on a hand-operated ferry. The final scene or epilogue shows a nearly empty train compartment with the author of the poetic novella on which the film is based, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz --and a snowy passing landscape. (Iwaszkiewicz also appeared earlier, walking through the woods with a book and a walking stick, passing Wiktor. Iwaszkiewicz was apparently one of the most revered of 20th-century Polish writers--but the only two whose work I know are Gombrowicz and Milosz, both of whom went into exile.)

The DVD includes multiple talking heads, including two by Wadja, one by Iwaszkiewicz's daughter, a particularly illuminating one by cinematographer Edward Klosinski, one by screen adapter, Zbigniew Kaminski, and others by actors. I found all of them interesting. There are some other Wadja materials (a letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from Steven Spielberg, the 2000 Oscarcast fanfare for him, and clickable boxes of two dozen Wadja movie DVDs.

The music is mostly work of Karol Syzmanowski,particularly the second violin concerto. Iwaszkiewicz knew Syzmanowski between the world wars and was pleased with the music used in the film, and, indeed, with the film.


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray

Reviews of some other Wadja films:

Kanal (1955)
A Generation (Pokolenie) (1957)
Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

The Siberian Lady Macbeth (1961)
Landscape after Battle (1970)
Man of Marble (1977)
Man of Iron (1981)
Danton (1983)





Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older