Kino Eye: Warsaw’s anti-fascist resistance

Submitted by AWL on 2 November, 2021 - 9:49 Author: John Cunningham
Kanal

There are a number of films which depict aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, including Jacob the Liar (Peter Kassovitz, 1974), The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002) and Run Boy Run (Pepe Danquart, 2013). However, I want to highlight what I think is the best film of the Polish anti-fascist resistance films: Kanal, by Andrzej Wajda (made in 1957), which actually shows the later Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

In many ways it is a harrowing film; a band of Polish resistance fighters are trapped and the Nazi forces are closing in on them. Driven to desperation they devise a scheme to escape through the sewers which have previously been used as a communications system. The cinematography captures the nightmarish conditions in the sewers as the Polish fighters struggle to keep mind and body intact. At one point they are attacked by gas and they find that all escapes are closed off by the Nazis.

Eventually, a small group reach the Vistula but their escape is prevented by an iron grill which they cannot dislodge. Starving, exhausted, covered in filth, they are eventually forced to emerge from the underground, to be taken prisoner.

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