Wajda’s films part of the ‘treasure of all mankind’
When Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old his country was invaded, first by Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers and two weeks later by Stalin’s Red Army.
After the Soviets murdered his father Wajda joined the resistance movement. He witnessed the Nazis establish their death camps on Polish soil and then, after the breakdown of the Hitler-Stalin pact, watched the Red Army drive them out.
These catastrophic events shaped both Wajda’s life and his art, as he became Poland’s most celebrated film-maker.
From the stunning World War II trilogy – A Generation (1954), Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958) – about the German occupation with which he made his name, to Man of Iron, his passionate eyewitness tribute to the Solidarity movement, the patriotic struggle against external oppression was the leitmotif of his work.
Fighting against official government disapproval and censorship, Wajda was able to make subtle criticisms of socialist doctrine because of the popularity of his films.
However, tensions were raised by the emergence of Solidarity and Lech Walesa, its charismatic leader in the Gdansk shipyards, and the government moved to suppress Man of Iron. The clampdown backfired when Wajda’s fictional cinematic representation of events, which included a cameo appearance by Walesa, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. The authorities responded by forcing Wajda’s production company out of business.
Characteristically Wajda, a romantic optimist, refused to be cowed and began work on Interrogation (1982), a film directed by Richard Bugajski. A stark and terrifying expose of Stalinist brutality, the film was completed in secret and circulated on bootleg tapes.
As his international reputation grew, he was increasingly recognised alongside the likes of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa among the true greats of world cinema.
Four of his films were nominated for Oscars and he was honoured by Hollywood with the Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000.
In sponsoring his nomination for the award, Spielberg wrote: ‘‘The example of Andrzej Wajda reminds all of us as film-makers that, from time to time, history might make profound and unexpected demands on our courage ... that we might be required to put our careers at risk in order to defend the civic life of our people.’’
After the fall of the Sovietbacked regime, Wajda continued to explore the twin tyrannies of fascism and communism which had cruelly dominated his life.
He was in his eighties when he made Katyn about the massacre in which his father had been murdered, and which was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign language film in 2008.
When asked his motivation for making it, he quoted Walesa when he had stood for election as Poland’s first post-communist president: ‘‘I don’t want to. But I have to.’’
Wajda was married four times. His fourth wife, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, a theatre costume designer and actress who appeared in a number of his stage productions, survives him.
Andrzej Witold Wajda was born in 1926 in Suwalki, a garrison town in north-east Poland, close to the Lithuanian border.
His father, Jakub, was a Polish cavalry officer while his mother, Aniela, was a schoolteacher.
His early years, before the invasions of 1939, were spent moving with his parents from camp to camp. He and his brother played at soldiers and choreographed their own mock battles while his father drilled in more serious fashion.
At 16 he joined the Home Army, although he later dismissed his contribution as ‘‘a posting of no significance’’. Later he studied painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Cracow before going to the new film school in Lodz.
A gregarious man, he didn’t think he could deal with the ‘‘great loneliness’’ of being a painter. Making films offered a more sociable option. He made his name as a key figure in the new Polish cinema with his first feature, A Generation, a perceptive study of the effects of war on the nation’s youth.
As Poland became the first country of the eastern bloc to shed its communist shackles in 1989, the film-maker emotionally declared that he had ‘‘never hoped to live to see a free country’’.
At Walesa’s invitation he stood for election and served a two-year term in the Polish senate.
‘‘He has inspired all of us to reexamine the strength of our common humanity,’’ Spielberg said. ‘‘Wajda belongs to Poland. But his films are part of the cultural treasure of all mankind.’’
The Times, LONDON