Polish Film Academy KANAL

Polish Film Academy — Wajda. Director of the painting SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE — MAN IN FRONT OF THE MATTER OF THE WORLD Canal (1956) lecture: dr Anna Taszycka

Warsaw, 1944. The uprising is coming to an end. After an unsuccessful attempt to break through the German positions, Lieutenant Zadra's company enters the canal at the corner of Bałucki and Szustra in Mokotów. They are heading towards Downtown, but of the more than forty insurgents, no one will survive.

The unit is soon broken up into three smaller groups of people wandering blindly through the stinking depths of the capital. The liaison between Daisy and the wounded Korab was stopped by a grate at the outlet of the canal; Halinka committed suicide; the composer Michał became confused. The wise man went out at Dworkowa directly for the German patrol. After a seventeen-hour hike through the Zadra canals, Kula and Smukły finally find the right hatch. The corporal is killed while disarming the grenades hanging at the exit, and Zadra returns to the canal for his soldiers, not knowing that they have shared the fate of the Wise.

The first film dedicated to the tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising and the soldiers of the AK, opening the current soon to be called the Polish Film School. A work full of expressive, metaphorical images connecting romantic philosophy with the theme of Polish death. /Jan Słodowski, Lexicon of Polish Feature Films, Warsaw 1996/