Jerzy Skolimowski

Jerzy Skolimowski was born in Lódz, Poland, on May 5, 1938. In other words, World War II caught up with him as a child. For this reason, his cinema does not fit in, neither among the pro-government directors that emerged after the end of the conflict, nor in the Polish School that addresses the issue of war. For filmmakers like him, the name “Third Polish Cinema” was coined, bringing together young filmmakers who had been trained in the post-war context. In addition to his film interests, the author has explored other forms of artistic expression, in poems and paintings.

The filmmaker’s mother was an architect, which surely influenced the spatial sense of his films, and the care of the set design; and when she was appointed cultural attaché in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Jerzy happened to be in her classroom withMilos Forman . His father, a member of the Polish resistance during the war, was executed by the Nazis. Skolimowski graduated in ethnography from the University of Warsaw in 1959, and in cinema from the Lódz School in 1963. He had been sponsored by Andrzej Wajda -with whom he collaborated on the script for Innocent Witches (1960), as well as acting in the film- , and in the classrooms he met Roman Polanski , for whom he would write the script for The Knife in the Water (1962). An amateur boxer, his student medium-length film De él Boks (1961) won him an award at a sports film festival in Budapest.

Skolimowski’s main thematic interest is the look at his generation, where he confronts with autobiographical elements the accusations of cynicism and indolence that youth endures. The director does not deny the problem in his first feature Señas de identificación: ninguna (1964), where he himself gives life to the disenchanted protagonist, but subtly points to the communist authorities as responsible for the situation, something that would end up causing him problems; What stands out in the film is Skolimowski’s ability to take advantage of a long filming over time and in fits and starts, when he was a student, using class work, to give the whole a remarkable cohesion. He will continue to look at young people in Walkover (1965), The Barrier (1966) and The Game(1967) -Golden Bear in Berlin-, with an incredible visual power, also in the design of the sets, in the planning and movements of the camera, and in the very wandering of the characters. There are expressionist influences in his films, and also a certain very personal absurd humor. Skolimowski captures the youthful bewilderment in a captivating way, which leads to wonder how it could have come to such a situation. His plots are conceived as existential journeys of the characters, who must seek and find themselves. For this reason, the comparisons of the filmmaker with Jean-Luc Godard , and the consideration of a kind of “new Polish wave” in Skolimowski do not imply a crazy point of view.

after hands up(1967), a satirical film that suffers the ups and downs of censorship, Skolimowski decides to embark on an international journey that gives him more freedom, and he will come to reside in Italy, Great Britain and the United States. The film produced strange feelings in him: “I have a dislike for him, since he ruined my life,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Arriba las manos , I’d probably still be a New Wave artist. Necessity forced me off that path.”

In The Adventures of Gerard (1970), he adapts a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle . Although it takes new stylistic paths and is more depressing and bitter, Deep End(1970) once again addresses the theme of disenchanted youth, here in the form of an adolescent who works in a bath, sexually attracted to a partner. With Clandestine Work (1982), starring Jeremy Irons , Skolimowski will receive an award for his screenplay at Cannes; the film follows some illegal Polish workers in Great Britain, at the time when martial law has been declared, which shows the interest with which the filmmaker followed the historical evolution of Poland. The Lighthouse (1986) is a claustrophobic film shot indoors, very singular, and with a great pair of actors, Robert Duvall and Klaus Maria Brandauer .

The director’s jobs begin to space out, andThe Year of Torrential Rains (1989), according to Ivan Turgenev’s novel, does not have the desired reception. Not even he himself was satisfied in 1993 with Ferdydurke , about a thirty-something man who mysteriously relives his adolescence, a subject very much his. After a long period of silence, dedicated to painting or making sporadic appearances as an actor in titles such as Eastern Promises , he has returned to direct a film in Poland, Four Nights with Anna (2008), the story of a “voyeur”, where themes such as loneliness, anguish, the search for love in eternal adolescence appear again.