Stanislaw Mikulski Movies
Caught at the Polish border with a faulty passport - some pages have been torn out - a sports hero nicknamed "Teddy Bear" finds himself in a desperate situation. He is not only left behind as his team goes ahead, but he realizes his wife has torn the pages out of his passport to keep him home while she goes to London to take the money out of their joint bank account. How can he stop her from making off with all that loot? Easy. He coerces a director to get a hasty script together for a film that requires himself and a double. The actor who plays the double then has to apply for a passport, and that is arranged through the interjection of a girlfriend. At the preplanned engagement celebrations, the double is slipped a barbituate and when he nods off, the real "Teddy Bear" takes off in a flash for the airport, with the assumed name of the double. The passport and its picture get him on the plane - where lo and behold - he runs into his ex-wife. Now the two of them are neck-and-neck in the run for the money, and new shenanigans have to be devised if either wants to arrive at the bank first - and alone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanislaw Tym, Christina Paul, (more)
- 1961
A whimsical, effective, and thought-provoking children's film, but for adults as well, this tale by Polish director Jan Batory centers around the problems of a little boy (Janusz Pomaski). The boy's divorced father has remarried and for whatever reasons, he and his new wife do not pay as much attention to their six-year-old son as they should. Soon the little boy is imagining that he receives visits from "The President," a man who looks and acts just like his father before he remarried and started to ignore him. Consoled with this imaginary visitor, the boy becomes so involved in his unreal world that his father and stepmother take him in for psychiatric care. Yet this gesture is inadequate, and further challenges are in store for the boy and his family. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- 1959
This suspenseful wartime drama is set in Warsaw, during the German occupation in World War II. The action starts when a group of student resistance fighters plan an assault on the very core of their oppressors -- Nazi headquarters itself. They intend to execute the despised head of the SS, General Kutscher. Once their attack is worked out, it is put into action, leading up to the requisite climax in the story. But at the same time, the group needs to survive the German manhunt launched at them after the attack, and that is another question entirely. This film was an entry in the 1959 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Grazyna Staniszewska, Zbigniew Cybulski, (more)
- 1958
As the title of this Polish seriocomedy indicates, all Ewa (Barbara Kwiatowska) wants is a good night's sleep. Newly arrived in a medium-sized city, farm girl Ewa shows up too early to set up residence in her school dormitory. With nary a penny to her name, she wanders the streets of the city in the dark of night, hoping to find temporary sleeping quaters. In the course of her ramblings, she meets all manner of eccentric characters, and briefly runs up against provincial bureaucracy when the local constabulary assumes that she's a prostitute. Ewa Chce Spac proved to be a critical and audience favorite at film festivals from Czechoslovakia to San Francisco. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanislaw Mikulski, Ludwik Benoit, (more)
Alan Burgess' novel The Small Woman was the source for the British/American co-production Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Set in the China of the 1930s, the film stars Ingrid Bergman as real-life missionary Gladys Aylward. Against the advice of practically everyone, Gladys heads into the war-ravaged interior to spread the Christian gospel. She finds a powerful ally in the form of an elderly Mandarin (Robert Donat) who, despite his early efforts to rid himself of the troublesome Gladys, eventually converts to Christianity. Gladys' burgeoning romance with Chinese army officer Lin Nan (Curt Jurgens) is interrupted when she is obliged to guide a group of Chinese children to safety over some of the most treacherous of Northern China's mountain regions. Inn of the Sixth Happiness retains its entertainment value some four decades after its production, even allowing for the preponderance of Occidental actors in Oriental roles. The film also served to breathe new life into the old children's nonsense song "This Old Man" (aka "Knick, Knack, Paddywhack"). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingrid Bergman, Curd Jürgens, (more)
The second of Polish director Andrzej Wajda's WWII trilogy, following Pokolenie (A Generation) and preceding Popiol I diament (Ashes and Diamonds), Kanal is the most physically harrowing of the set. Based on the experiences of Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, a Polish patriot who participated in the battle for Warsaw in 1939 as an 18-year-old and in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the action takes place in the last week of the 63-day Uprising, as the Nazis hunt down what few freedom fighters remain. A band of Poles takes to the sewers in hopes of escaping, but they become disoriented by the darkness and the fumes of the waist-deep filth. Whenever the Poles try to emerge for orientation or relief, the Germans are there to greet them with a hail of bullets. Kanal was Wajda's coming-out film; it won two prizes at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival and clicked with both European and American audiences, in spite of its grueling story and pessimistic tone. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wienczyslaw Glinski, Teresa Izewska, (more)
- 1956
Celebrated Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Mother Joan of the Angels, Night Train) helmed this conspiracy thriller. Exhibiting tremendous influence by Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, it begins with the fact of a dead man's homicide, and then jumps back in time to present three possible versions of the events leading up to his murder. This film ran headfirst into a substantial amount of political difficulty because of its dire and merciless depiction of Polish officials as universally corrupt and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, it did pick up a nod for the Golden Palm at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, losing to Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle's Le Monde du Silence. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 1950
First Start is a jingoistic Polish drama, emphasizing the values of technology and teamwork. Leopold Nowak plays a young student at the state's airplane glider school. Washed out because of his inability to concentrate in class, the boy proves his worth by locating a lost glider and flying it back safely. Now willing to buckle down and study, our hero is reinstated in the school. When originally released in Poland, First Start ran 143 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
