Rent Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

Youth searching for meaning after WWII in Poland - Ashes and Diamonds review by CP Customer

I'll first say that Ashes and Diamonds was a lot different to what I was expecting, I thought there would be a lot more guns etc. I thought it would be a story of a kind of serviceman which Maciek kind of is looking at it, I couldn't quite tell what he was part of exactly! Anyway, I still thought it was decent and the film had a couple of good moments and quotes.

I was kind of confused by what the film was though, was this to show a celebration after WWII? Or was it meant to be more of a love story? No idea honestly but it does work in a way, just all in all I didn't find a lot of scenes that memorable, there's some good conversation between Maciek and the lobby desk clerk when they find out they are both from Warsaw and between Maciek and his lover, all in all it's worth a watch to see what Poland was like when Germany surrendered in WWII, but I was expecting a bit better, there's not that many memorable characters in the film and a lot of the scenes left me feeling like they weren't that iconic, this is a far off comparison but even in a film like Rules of the Game for example, in that movie I wouldn't say there was a bad or boring scene, but in this I felt like there was some.

Also, I'll add the film deserves some credit for some of its cinematography, like the fireworks at the end, superb! Overall though I'm torn.

Victory, Terms and Conditions Apply - Ashes and Diamonds review by griggs

War films usually end with victory, defeat, or at least the pretence that something has been settled. Ashes and Diamonds starts where those films stop. Nazi Germany has fallen, but Poland isn’t free. The tanks are Russian now: former co-signatories of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the same power that invaded Poland from the east in 1939. Liberation arrives wearing a different uniform. Lovely.

Maciek is the film’s bruised centre. Zbigniew Cybulski plays him like a noir hero who has wandered into history by mistake: cool glasses, frayed nerves, bad orders. Maciek looks less like a soldier and more like a Mod who has accidentally wandered into a civil war, which makes him feel oddly modern. He should be smoking in a café, arguing about jazz, and making terrible romantic decisions. Instead, he is carrying a gun and trying to work out whether the future has room for him.

His brief connection with Krystyna gives the film its ache. For a few hours, an ordinary life seems possible. Then politics taps its watch.

Wajda’s imagery is bold without turning into homework: flaming vodka glasses, the upside-down crucifix, that ghostly white horse.

What stayed with me is the trap. The war is over, but history hasn’t finished with him.

Not Much To Celebrate - Ashes and Diamonds review by NC

1945 meant the beginning of freedom for some countries, but for Poland it only signalled a shift of power from Nazi to Soviet - hardly something to celebrate. Ironic then that much of the film revolves around a party to mark the end of the war, and a local dignitary's promotion. It's a heady cocktail: political expediency by such people as councillors and the military anxious not to rock the boat with their new masters, mixed in with continued resistance, as young Maciek keeps on killing, and thinking little of it, until he meets Krystyna.

Only an expert hand could blend the two contents into a winning formula. There are quite a few reasons for thinking Wajda comes up short. First of all, it's too specialist and particular. Much of what is said in irritatingly long conversations can only be wholly understood by a native audience, or someone learned in Polish history. The rest of us are left to grasp the gist and cling on. There are too many of these longueurs. Secondly, the acting. Maciek needs to show two contrasting sides of his personality: an insouciant assassin, and a young man hitting the wall of an emotion he never before knew existed. Zbigniew Cybulski is nowhere near up to the task. Unbelievably he isn't the worst actor in the film. Bogumil Kobiela, the Danny Kaye lookalike, unfortunately also acts the fool like Kaye, much to the detriment of the serious meaning trying to be conveyed. The lovely Ewa Krzyzewska shows up best, a barmaid hoping to find a chink of light in a drab town and a drab future.

So what's left? There are about half a dozen brilliantly realised, exquisitely photographed scenes worthy of Angelopoulos at his best. But even then, whereas the Greek would dwell on the images, allowing the viewer to float in their beauty, Wajda almost throws them away in next to no time.

Some call this one of world cinema's great films. What a massive disappointment to find it is nothing of the kind.