Authors

Discussion

Natalia Lemann (2016) has shown that the Piast-set Polish novel, written in response to the Nazi invasion of 1939, not only preceded cinematic representations of Poland’s earliest medieval history, but indeed pre-empted the Party’s programme of enlisting culture in defence of national self-interest. After the regime promoted the slogan of the new Poland’s being a return to its historical lands, to the territory of ‘Piast Poland’.

This paper will focus on the three sole feature films of the 1970s that deal with the period from 960 until 1370. For the first fifteen years of postwar Poland’s existence, no medieval film was made in the People’s Republic. Ford’s adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s Krzyżacy (released in 1960) in many respects was a surprising choice, given the regime’s hostility towards the writer during the Stalinist period. Sienkiewicz’s nationalist xenophobia appeared diametrically at odds with the regime’s internationalist and especially pro-Russian outlook. 

It was not until 1969 – at which point the Party’s default use of anti-German sentiment was largely redundant – that Polish television dealt first with the Piast realm. This was quickly followed by the feature film Bolesław Śmiały (1971, dir. by Witold Lesiewicz). This film and the two subsequent films addressing the Piast dynasty - Gniazdo (The Nest, 1974, dir. by Jan Rybkowski) – and Kazimierz Wielki(1976, dir. by Ewa and Czesław Petelscy) – met largely unjustified critical opprobrium, and were relatively ignored during the remaining twenty years of communist rule. The paper seeks to reassess these films, in terms of their status, intention and impact. Since the political moment for producing yet more anti-German films had passed, we might validly ask whether there was any instrumental, if not propagandistic, purpose in making these films.