Kanał: Their Final Hours Underground
Stanisław Mikulski in Kanał. Source: Moviemaker
Written by Mariacarla Bettocchi
In 1957, the Cannes Film Festival saw the Special Jury Prize awarded to a Polish film about the Warsaw Uprising. The accompanying international fame illuminated Poland as it was finally able to inch out from behind the iron curtain.
In an exclusive interview, Director Andrzej Wajda shares that the movie was never supposed to be released. The script was originally proposed to Andrzej Munk (another prominent Polish director), but because the story took place primarily in the sewers of the capital city, and he refused to shoot the film with artificial lighting, it went to Andrzej Wajda. Even after Wajda assumed the position, the screenplay commission was known to be harsh with its censorship of Polish cinematic content. The commission’s initial decision to reject the film revealed the deeper restrictions imposed by the new Stalinist government; the Uprising was deemed an appropriate topic in limited forms of literature, but inappropriate for the screen, where it would reach a mass audience and “upset society”. In reality, the Communist government was worried that the film was provoked by the Polish government (which had been exiled to London) and would cause another rebellion.
Filming for Kanał began in 1956, a year that marked a new era in Poland; leadership in the screenplay commission had changed for the better and Stalin’s death brought a new president. Poland’s arts were beginning to start up again. Wajda notes, “for that reason, [we were] making the film… with the deep conviction that we were voicing our opinion on the subject… [because] in the end we must take into account that the capital city was destroyed, the intelligentsia were destroyed… it made it easy for Stalin to seize Poland.”
The film was based on events experienced by Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, the author of the novel Kanał was modeled after. His perspective gave an especially realistic side to the story, as Stawinski had been a company commanding officer in the Uprising. But the film became a project in which everyone could contribute; Wajda even allowed the younger assistants on set to add in their ideas, creating a work of art that formed a real snapshot of the experiences and opinions of the Warsaw Uprising generation, resulting in one film split into various storylines that followed different characters.
It was the first film about the Warsaw Uprising, the largest resistance movement in World War II. The Uprising was a city-wide rebellion organized by the Home Army (Arma Krajowa) of Warsaw as an attempt to counteract the German army’s occupation of the city in 1944. However, the Soviet Red Army was approaching from the other side as well. The Soviets also wanted to take the city; thus Poland was stuck between two enemies who both wanted to take the capital.
The Poles managed to hold off the Germans for a considerable amount of time with some victories. Foreign allies sat and watched, some trying to help, others ignoring, others feigning sympathy. Poland was outnumbered and out-weaponed, and the Germans killed a reported 250,000 civilians and fighters alike. Coordination between the government-in-exile and the resistance was minimal, resulting in a disheveled, unorganized rebellion. For the country, the Uprising was more of a final bout of patriotism. Towards the end of the 63 days in which it lasted, the insurgents attempted to escape through the sewers, where above them, tanks rolled, the city was destroyed, and the Polish people were slowly conquered.
Kanał follows a group of these fighters escaping through the sewers, or kanały. The characters meet fleeing civilians, crazed mothers in search of their children, and they encounter their own selves; each one goes through their own personal hell down in the maze of sewers. One character makes her way through with her lover, but upon finally reaching an opening she discovers he is dead. A young woman flees with the man she is having an affair with, only to discover that he has a wife and child and cares nothing for her. Another character, a musical composer completely unaccustomed to war and guns, slowly goes mad and steadily unravels like the notes he played on the piano. None of them were meant to be placed in a situation like this, but that is how war works. Angry governments shake everything out of orbit and people have to continue revolving around whatever they are thrown into.
And when the Polish people expected a heroic film, with red and white flags flapping in the wind and brave martyrs on the streets of Warsaw, Wajda did not give his audience a comforting story. Instead, he was not afraid to depict the awful scenes that the Resistance fighters and civilians had to endure. People were shocked, but they were moved. The crew used real shots of the destroyed city. They did not cut out images of sewer filth and desperation that would induce shame. There is no room for lofty romanticization or sugar coating.
One of the crew members of Kanał admits, “the fact that the uprising suddenly became concentrated in the sewers, where people were escaping and saving themselves- there doesn’t appear to be any heroism in that, only humiliation and terrible defeat.”
And yet, this hopelessness makes one almost proud. It requires strength to embark on a journey underground with a group of people with which you only share your hometown and patriotism, and it takes bravery to depict the final hours of your country even if failure is inevitable. It is hard to present your national identity as the story of a nation of people who struggle collectively but win personal victories each day.
This is not an uncommon theme associated with the Polish identity. The country is frequently praised for its strength in the face of foreign conquerors and its bravery in keeping with their culture despite oppressors. In Iris Murdoch’s book Nuns and Soldiers, she writes of “the Count”, a Pole living in England who cannot make peace with his Polish identity and the rich, turbulent history he left behind. His anguish is met with a quiet reverence for his country: “Sometimes this awful past which was his and yet not his was a subject about which he could almost calmly reflect. Sometimes it came upon him suddenly as a painful incomprehensible jumble against which he had no natural defense; it penetrated into his body… and mingled, as it did now, with some… other anguish… but he could not help believing that his country had in spite of everything a spiritual destiny, an unquenched longing for freedom and spirit. There was some old unique indestructible entity over which the red and white flag could still proudly fly.”
And many Poles think similarly. Because, what does it really mean to come from a country who has been constantly stomped by conquerors and imperialists, yet still chooses to fight back? Even now, in the age of independence, Germany continues to stretch its arm over Poland’s fields and Russia’s long face looms on. For a patriotic people, this presents pain, because they feel that people fail to see the real heart of this conquered country. Once again the Count’s identity falls in line with this theme; “no one seemed to perceive or appreciate that unique burning flame of Polishness which, though still dimmed by a ruthless neighbor, continued to burn as it had always done.”
In the last scene of the film, Daisy, the only fighter in the group who has an extensive knowledge of the sewers, reaches a grate in the wall. The bank of the river Vistula is just in sight. Viewers would expect her to become enraged over the fact that the grate is barred and escape is impossible. Yet, all she does is stare across the water. The Warsaw Uprising generation knew what she was looking at- the waiting Russians. Wajda could not have inserted a real shot of the Red Army because of the political situation, but he wanted to include this secret clue. Dreams and thoughts of Daisy and the other characters’ final outcomes trail behind the viewer as they leave the screen. Wajda almost suggests that, though the country was overshadowed by these enemies, personal victories and achievements- like the bravery and intelligence of Daisy in the sewers- are what remain of the Polish people despite the wars and uprisings.
I link my pinky with my ancestors in a promise to remember them and the sewers. But perhaps there is room for some romanticization, a desperate attempt to make peace with the past, a longing for a different Polish time. Murdoch’s Count broods, “sometimes (I) dreamed of calmer scenes, Warsaw empty, very beautiful, rebuilt or never harmed, a magic city, a city of palaces, sinister…”
Mariacarla Bettocchi is a high school student and co-founder of Rosebud. Her passions include Slavic studies, linguistics, cinema, literature, and listening to Houdou Nisbi by Ziad Rahbani for the thousandth time. As a proud Italo-Pole, she spends a lot of her free time trying to find the middle space between Federico Fellini and Andrzej Wajda. She can be contacted at mariacarla.bettocchi@gmail.com.
Sources Used:
Kuzma, Darek. “A Tale of Truth and Darkness: An Appreciation of Andrzej Wajda’s Kanał - MovieMaker Magazine.” MovieMaker Magazine, 20 Apr. 2017, www.moviemaker.com/a-tale-of-truth-and-darkness-an-appreciation-of-andrzej-wajdas-kanal/. Accessed 20 Oct. 2022.
“Kanal.” The Criterion Collection, 2017, www.criterion.com/films/916-kanal. Accessed 20 Oct. 2022.
“Warsaw Uprising | Summary, Dates, & Monument | Britannica.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2022, www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Uprising. Accessed 20 Oct. 2022.
“Kanał.” Andrzej Wajda, The Criterion Collection, 1957.
Murdoch, Iris. Nuns and Soldiers. Penguin Classics, 30 Jul. 2002.