Country: Kazakhstan
Year: 1967
Duration: 72'


"Rece do gory is by far my best film. Everyone who has seen it says so. I had complete freedom to make it exactly as I wanted. Nobody saw the rushes and nobody tried to force anything on file. Consequently I was astonished when it was banned, but I still hope it will be released in the uncut version. It is a very ambitious film which will be understood differently in Poland and abroad. It is a provocation about political and social problems in Poland: a black film, not very explicit, with lots of allusions. The story line is realistic and nonrealistic at the same time, but difficult to talk about. It is a kind of trip in the imagination. If I were to represent Rece do gory graphically, there would be very vehement and vigorous oscillations in the pattern, interrupted every now and then by soft arid gentle wavy lines. People argue and quarrel a lot, and the points of view are brought up sharply against each other not in cinéma vérité style, for I work in the very opposite way, although I too am a realist. The discussions tear along like a boxing match, and suddenly the film becomes quiet for a few moments, tender and lyric scenes with quiet music before the fight goes on. It is my best and most mature film, and it is not funny at all." (Jerzy Skolimowski, "Sight and Sound", Summer 1968)

"It is on a few square meters in a boxcar full of bags of chalk that the drama of the five doctors Mio are the protagonists of Rece do gory takes place. Of an almost intolerable dramatic intensity at the same time unusual and realistic, bizarre and poetic, filled with sarcasm and tenderness, this film is perhaps the most important work of the young director. And it is perhaps the greatest Polish film after Popil i diament, which it resembles for its passionate tone and for the moral dimensions given to a banal story." (Bolestaw, Michatek, "Cinéma", n. 122, January 1968)

Biography

film director

Jerzy Skolimowski

(Lodz, Poland, 1938), director, screenwriter, producer, and actor, after inconsistent studies and experience as a boxer and a poet, became involved in cinema thanks to Andrzej Wajda, who encouraged him to enroll in the film school in Lodz. With Polanski, he wrote the screenplay for Knife in the Water (1962) and he debuted as a director with Rysopis (1964), which, with his next film Walk over (1965), made him one of the major exponents of the international Nouvelle Vague of the 1960s. In 1967, his film The Departure won the Golden Bear in Berlin but that same year another movie of his, Hands Up!, was censored (it was released only in 1981) and he never made another movie in his home country. Skolimowski's international career is full of risky production adventures and great masterpieces and spans various countries (Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany, England, the United States). After the failure of King, Queen, Knave, he spent a great deal of inactive time in England and Poland, followed by the great success of his English movies The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982). In 1985, he directed his first all-American movie, Lightship and he moved to the US. After returning to his homeland, in 1991 he directed his first Polish movie after Hands Up!, 30 Door Key and over the years continued to work in cinema, writing and producing the film by his two sons Józef and Michal, The Hollow Men (1993). After a long hiatus from film, he returned to directing movies in 2008 with Four Nights with Anna, presented at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes, followed by Essential Killing (2010), Special Jury Prize in Venice; 11 Minutes (2015); and EO (2022), the Jury Prize in Cannes.

FILMOGRAFIA

Rysopis (Rysopis - Segni particolari nessuno, 1964), Walkover (1965), Bariera (Barriera, 1966), Le Départ (Il vergine, 1967), The Adventures of Gerard (Le avventure di Gerard, 1970), Deep End (La ragazza del bagno pubblico, 1970), König, Dame, Bube (Un ospite gradito... per mia moglie, 1972), The Shout (L'australiano, 1978), Ręce do gory (Mani in alto, 1981), Moonlighting (Moonlighting - Cittadini di nessuno, 1982), Success Is the Best Revenge (Il successo ad ogni costo, 1984), The Lightship (Lightship - La nave faro, 1985), Torrents of Spring (Acque di primavera, 1989), Thirty Door Key/Ferdydurke (1991), Cztery noce z Anną (Quattro notti con Anna, 2008), Essential Killing (id. 2010), 11 minut (11 Minutes, 2015), EO (2022).

Cast

& Credits

Regia, sceneggiatura e scenografia: Jerzy Skolimowski.
Collaboratore alla sceneggiatura: Andrzej Kostenko.
Director of photography: Witold Sobocinski.
Editor: Zenon Piorecki, Jadwiga Ignatczenko.
Music: Krysztof Komeda Trzcinski.
Cast and characters: Jerzy Skolimowski (Andrzej Leszczyc, "Zastawa"), Joanna Szczerbic ("Alfa"), Adam Hanuszkiewicz ("Romeo"), Bogumil Kobiela ("Wartburg"), Tadeusz Lomnicki ("Opel Record").
Director of Production: Jerzy Nitecki.
Production company: Gruppo "Syrena".
Selezionato per il concorso del Festival di Venezia del 1967, ritirato dalle autorit` polacche poco prima dell'inizio del Festival e proibito per quattordici anni. Nel 1981, quando la censura è stata ritirata, Skolimowski ne ha realizzato una seconda versione.
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