Rent Kanal (1957)

No Exit, Only Forward - Kanal review by griggs

I like to think I’ve got a decent stomach for war films. Then this one puts you in Warsaw on 25 September 1944 and turns “escape” into a nasty little word. A battered Home Army unit heads for the sewers, and the further they go, the less “out” feels like a real direction.

Wajda makes the underground a grim second world — part escape route, part confessional, all labyrinth. The camera crowds in, the sound is drip, breath, and panic, and the moments that sting aren’t speeches but scraps: a joke that lands with a thud, a tenderness that can’t do the job, a dawning sense that maps are just wishful thinking.

It’s devastating, but never showy. The Cannes prize in 1957 makes sense. Kanal respects courage — and refuses to pretend it comes with a guarantee.

Warsaw Uprising. - Kanal review by Steve

Horrific and daunting psychological war drama based on the last few hours of the unsuccessful 1944 Warsaw Uprising by the Polish resistance against the Nazi occupation. The opening battle against superior German forces isn’t well staged, though the newsreel footage of the ruined city is astonishing.

But when the action moves underground as the few remaining partisans attempt to escape through the sewers, this becomes a distressing and profound experience. It was controversial in ‘50s Poland as it subverted as story of national heroism and turned it into a vision of terrifying hell.

These fighters are not disciplined, they are pessimistic and poorly equipped. It’s a study of their failure as they literally pass through the waste of humanity. This makes it sound surreal and impressionistic. And it is an arthouse classic, by a celebrated director. But it also feels unbearably, viscerally real.

It loses dramatic tension in the middle period, and the individuality of the resistance fighters isn’t well defined; they are flawed and all that unites them is their cause. But there is an extremely strong conclusion in a moment of surreal absurdity. These events have been told many times, but never with such macabre credibility.