Janusz Gajos Movies

Artur Wiecek's comedy Angel in Love, the sequel to Angel in Krakow, concerns Angel Giordano searching for true love so that he can return to his home in heaven. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

One of the most important figures in the Polish cinema, director Andrzej Wajda, teams up with the nation's most famous filmmaking expatriate, Roman Polanski, in this light comedy based on a perennially popular stage farce by Aleksandr Fredo. Czesnik (Janusz Gajos) and Rejent (Andrzej Seweryn) are the combative scions of two prominent families fallen on hard times, both of whom have the poor fortune of having homes which share a common courtyard. Czesnik's niece Klara (Agata Buzek) has fallen in love with Waclaw (Rafal Krolikowski), Rejent's son. However, Rejent has promised his son to Podstolina (Katarzyna Figura), a beautiful widow who has attracted Czesnik's eye. Meanwhile, Papkin (Roman Polanski), a former nobleman short on both cash and courage, hopes to wed Klara, but as a neutral party in the feud between the two clans, Klara thinks she might be able to use Papkin for her own purposes to bring her together with Waclaw. A major box-office hit in Poland, Zemsta marked the first time Wajda and Polanski had worked together since Pokolenie in 1952. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A man struggles to come to terms with a mystery that has haunted him throughout his adult life in this drama from Poland. In 1967, a 13-year-old boy named Dawid discovered a cache of explosives and began experimenting with them; one day, several of his friends saw Dawid wave to them shortly before a massive explosion went off near a railway tunnel, and no one ever saw the young man again. Thirty years later, one of Dawid's close friends, Pawel (Marek Kondrat), returns to Poland for the first time in 11 years to visit Juliane (Juliane Kohler), a woman he used to love. As Pawel returns home, he discovers his thoughts keeps drifting back to Dawid and what might have happened to him that day. Pawel keeps replaying the explosive incident in his mind, and goes so far as to track down Elka (Krystyna Janda), Dawid's girlfriend, who was with him moments before the explosion, though then as now she refuses to talk about what happened. Pawel is unable to determine for sure just what happened or how Dawid died -- or if he did in fact die at all. Weiser was nominated for the Golden Bear award at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Edward Redlinski adapted his own novel and play for this Polish comedy-drama focusing on several Manhattan misfits. Six immigrants seen over four Sundays in December are: a lawyer-criminal who involves his kid brother for a drug heist, a meat-plant laborer hoping to bring over his wife and half-dozen kids, an alcoholic, and an entrepreneur obsessed by the American Dream. The entrepreneur's sister works as a housekeeper for a crippled man who lusts for her. These tales are intercut with home videos from family members back in Poland. Shown at 1998 film fests Gdynia, Karlovy Vary). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

The second feature in filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors" trilogy, the black comedy White features Zbigniew Zamachowski as Karol Karol, an expatriate Polish hairdresser whose French wife (the breathtaking Julie Delpy) divorces him after just six months of marriage because of his impotency. Penniless and devoid of his passport, Karol must journey back to Poland by hiding in a trunk. Upon his return, he slowly begins amassing a considerable fortune, ultimately hatching a perverse plot for revenge. Often unjustly dismissed as the weak link in the trilogy, White grows in strength upon repeated viewings. An allegory about equality, the film is mordantly witty, a cynical look at power, marriage and capitalism. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

In this Polish anti-war drama, set during the 1863 peasant uprising, a young Russian officer faces the confusing realities of war. Fydor, the eager young officer, has been sent to vanquish the revolt. He is anxious to do his work well, but as he is faced by the horror and brutality of his troops against the Polish peasants who only make reasonable demands, he becomes confused. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The censor in this film is accustomed to watching characters of the films he sees speak only the lines he has permitted them to speak. He generally knows within a word exactly what he will hear. It's a boring job, but he appreciates the cat-and-mouse game of trying to suppress anything forbidden in the face of steady efforts to sneak something past him. However, it has all become old hat to him. One day at the Liberty Cinema, a commercial movie theater near his offices, the characters on the movie screen start speaking out of character and refuse to speak the lines written for them. This provokes a furor, and he is called in to attempt to deal with the situation -- to no avail. Eventually he relates the obduracy of the characters to that of those in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, but his efforts to control the situation with that understanding backfire when characters from one film start showing up in the other one. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this drama, Eva is on her yacht celebrating her forthcoming attempt to sail around the world. The country is Poland, and the time is just prior to the military crackdown on the labor/political movement Solidarity in that country the early 1980s. Her two co-celebrants are her ex-husband and her new business partner. After martial law is declared, she can still go on her journey, though there is some question about whether she will. In the meantime, her business partner suffers financial reverses, and her husband loses his job after refusing to sign a loyalty oath. This politically troubling tale was kept out of circulation in Poland from 1982, when it was made, until late in 1989. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This is a surreal treatment of the repression of the Stalin years in Poland in the early 1950s (and its later manifestations and rebellions) set in one room inhabited by a young intellectual. The director Filip Bajon has his main character wake up from a disturbing dream about himself as a little boy, staying in a clinic to be treated for his asthma when "Father Frost" comes along to give him a gift- and then takes off his disguise to show that he is really Joseph Stalin. Shocked, the intellectual wakes up, looks around him for reassurance, and realizes finally that he is in his own room and it is the present. He spends all his time in the room with his own views of Communism while his sister tries to rouse him into the more activist stance of social protest going on around them, and his mother just abdicates any role except tending her garden in '50s garb. As characters come in and out of the room, each carries a symbolic weight that is clear to most Poles, and maybe not as crystalline to the uninitiated viewer. When someone asks after the mother, both the brother and sister chime in with "She's dead." But not quite, the mother at that point, walks into the room - the 1950s apparently cannot be killed off with words alone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Polish director Andrzej Wajda had a habit of switching gears between socially conscious films and pure box-office entertainments. The Conductor, released in Poland in 1979 as Dyrygent, falls into the latter category. John Gielgud stars as an old and venerated orchestra conductor, making his annual personal appearance in a small Polish town. Violinist Krystyna Janda, who like the guest conductor is a devotee of Beethoven, finds her entire life altered by Gielgud's brief stay. The film made a few allegorical points about making oneself accessible to change, but otherwise The Conductor is all that it seems to be on surface: A simple story, simply told. English-language prints of The Conductor are blighted by the poor dubbing of the principal characters--with of course the exception of John Gielgud. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide