Jerzy Radziwilowicz Movies

Jacques Rivette's Histoire de Marie et Julien (The Story of Marie and Julien) stars Emmanuelle Béart and Jerzy Radziwilowicz as a pair of ex-lovers who get back together after their lives change. Julien (Radziwilowicz) is a clock repairman whose girlfriend has left him. Marie (Béart) is a mysterious woman who does not bleed after being cut. Her boyfriend has died. Marie and Julien had once engaged in an affair when they were each involved with other people, and now that they have no emotional entanglements, they slowly begin a new relationship. This film started decades before as a project in Rivette's "Scenes From a Parallel Life" series and abandons the majority of the formal rules imposed by the filmmaker on the other films in the cycle. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Respected French actor Michel Piccoli directed and co-wrote this allegorical drama. A (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) is a veteran political activist in an unnamed country with a long history of human rights abuses. When the nation's dictatorial government is overthrown and a new democratic leadership comes into power, A's wife Sylvie (Dominique Blanc), who was born in France, travels to Paris to work on an article about the nation's new political freedoms. But A soon discovers that the changes have not been as dramatic as he imagined after Sylvie is told she will not be allowed back into the country. A and his daughter Joyce (Jade Fortineau) wait out Sylvie's immigration problem at his family's seaside vacation home, but while he and his friends have long been subject to political harassment, A discovers that the new regime's tactics have a far more dangerous undertow, with executions of radicals suddenly becoming commonplace. La Plage Noir was screened in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The title of this film -- taken from graffiti on a wall near director Krzysztof Zanussi's home -- provides ironic commentary on its subject, which revolves around a doctor's questioning of his beliefs when he is confronted with terminal illness. Tomasz (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz) is first seen working as the doctor on the set of a French movie production about the life of Saint Bernard. After his work is finished, he returns to Warsaw, where he makes the unpleasant discovery that he has cancer. Tomasz' only hope is an expensive operation in Paris, and he is forced to ask his ex-wife Anna (Krystyna Janda) -- now remarried to a self-important yuppie -- for money. Anna writes him a check, but when he goes to Paris for the operation, Tomasz is informed that his condition has become inoperable. Facing imminent death, he begins to question the beliefs he has held all his life and, with a sense of fatalistic liberation, starts to experiment with both his own life and those of others. A great success in Poland, Zycie Jako Smiertelna Choroba Przenoszona Droga Plciowa won the Best Picture award at the 2000 Moscow Film Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

Edith Stein was a German-Jewish intellectual who in the late-'30s created considerable controversy and broke her mother's heart when she converted to Catholicism and then joined one of the Church's most rigorous monastic orders, the Carmelite Nuns. This European biopic tells her story, a tale that ended tragically when Stein, who finally made it through the long, painful novitiate process and found true peace, was brutally yanked from the convent by Nazi soldiers and sent to Auschweitz where she died. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Ema (Angela Molina) shares a home with Jorge (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), a college instructor. She herself is a scholar, and may soon be moving to Boston to study, if her grant comes through. Meanwhile, she and Jorge are talking of getting married. One day, they come home to discover a young punkster, Ernesto, calmly sitting in their home, just as if he belonged there. Ema's all for throwing the bum out, but Jorge finds his presumption fascinating. It is almost the last straw when Ernesto brings his girlfriend over to stay as well, but then things get really dicey: Jorge appears to be losing his mind. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Two lovers who meet again six years after World War II suffer at the hands of Stalinist oppression in this thrilling political drama. Anna (Krysyna Janda) hides the fugitive Marcel (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) when he receives a death sentence for his role in the Home Army. For five years, Anna hides him from the authorities, and her invalid mother is unaware of his presence for years. She summons a doctor when Marcel suffers from pneumonia, and she later has his child out of wedlock. The changing political climate allows Marcel to emerge from the underground, but he is arrested once again. He is freed at his rehabilitation trial when the court admits to "previous mistakes." ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Set during the Inquisition at the end of the 16th century, this excellently costumed but routine period drama tells the tale of Ruprecht (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) and his love for the beautiful Renata (Boena Krzyzanowska). Ruprecht first meets the woman of his dreams while he stops at an inn, but he soon finds that it will be difficult indeed to turn her eyes and heart away from the man of her dreams, Count Henryk (Jerzy Gralek). Unfortunately for Henryk and the vagaries of love, it also happens to be the era of the Inquisition. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Mayhem and tangled love knots in the Southwest U.S. desert are the scourge of a group of stranded German immigrants living in a few mobile homes at the crossroads of two desert highways. Joe loves Rosa, and kills someone she had slept with because he thought their union was consentual (a rape), and he gets five years for the murder. When he is released from jail, his first priority is to attend his mother's funeral -- a death that has upset his sister so much that she is on the verge of a breakdown. His sister is supposed to marry a Mennonite, but is stuck on Joe and so that plan is scotched. Meanwhile, Rosa has taken up with another trucker, who is jealous of Joe and tries to kill him. The next thing anyone knows, the trailers and nearby buildings are going up in flames -- will Joe and Rosa survive to continue their desert saga? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Lynx is an adaptation of a short story ("The Church at Skaryszew") by Polish writer Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, originally about the 1863 uprising in the Ukraine against the Russians, but changed in this film to the time of the German Occupation. The "lynx" of the title is Satan himself, incarnate as an assassin out to eliminate a collaborator - and his counterpoint in the priest in the village church who first encounters the "lynx" in the confessional. From that point on, the priest's own mettle is sorely put to the test - and the adversary is not one to back down easily. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

At the core of this docudrama are six French-speaking villages that were transferred to the jurisdiction of a Dutch-speaking province when political lines were drawn. The director of Le Grand Paysage d'Alexis Droeven (Jean-Jacques Andrien) was born and raised in this area and filmed scenes of the demonstrations that took place when the transfer occurred -- scenes that are used in the film. Additional background on the region emerges as the viewer sees that the economic policies dictated by the European Common Market intensify the cultural clashes in this zone because the policies often damage the earnings of the farming community -- and the farmers have no way to alter the ECM mandates. The film conveys a good sense of these issues that threaten the way of life of the small community, and at the same time, a mini-drama plays out against this backdrop. The drama begins with the death of an elderly farmer and unfolds over the four days that elapse between his death, the funeral rites, and the day following the burial. The son in the family, Jean-Pierre Droeven (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) must make a decision about the family's milk-producing cattle farm -- should he sell it and move out of this politically blighted region? His Aunt Elisabeth (Nicole Garcia) has her own views on the decision. She is a lawyer, and lives in the city of Liege, long since abandoning the small farming community herself. As the son and aunt interact with each other, their perspectives begin to shift, unsettling questions arise as to their real roots, and they find that even the memories of their dead father are not always in agreement. Through its in-depth probing of ordinary human situations, the film conveys a sense of dignity and meaning to lives that are beset by forces they cannot control. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's sequel to his immensely well-received Man of Marble covers some of the same ground: the relationship of labor leaders to their communist political masters and the difficulties the media encounters in covering that story. But it adds an exceptionally timely element: footage from the real-life Solidarity movement strikes led by Lech Walesa that were taking place during the film's production are woven into the dramatic story. There are a few glimpses of Walesa, and he even pops up as a guest at the wedding of the fictional story's hero. That man, Tomczyk, is the son of Birkut, the labor leader profiled in Man of Marble, and he's played by the actor Jerzy Radziwilowicz, who played Birkut in the first film. In Man of Marble, a student filmmaker in late 1970s Poland tried to uncover the story of Birkut, a working-class hero of the '50s who was later politically discredited and killed in a 1970 strike demonstration. Here, Winkiel (Marian Opania), an alcoholic radio journalist, is assigned by the state to cover the rise to prominence of Tomczyk, but with an eye to discrediting him and the Solidarity movement as well. Like The Godfather II, Man of Iron successfully expands on the story of its predecessor while provocatively exploring many of the same issues. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

The first of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's two "Solidarity" films, Man of Marble (originally Czlowiek z Marmuru) concerns bricklayer Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilowicz). Lauded as a national hero in the 1950s due to his skills at his trade, Birkut has inexplicably fallen into obscurity. In making a film of the bricklayer's life, documentary director Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) discovers that the bricklayer used his sudden fame to become involved in labor politics -- whereupon the repressive government did its best to wipe out all traces of his accomplishments. This climactic revelation was, ironically, excised by the Polish censors when Man of Marble was first released. Director Wajda followed this film with Man of Iron, which traced the further political exploits of director Agnieszka and her husband, the son of the unfortunate bricklayer -- also played by Jerzy Radziwilowicz. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi