Andrzej Wajda - 'Ashes and Diamonds': Zbigniew Cybulski's mysterious glasses (62/222)

To listen to more of Andrzej Wajda’s stories, go to the playlist: • Andrzej Wajda (Film di...
Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), whose début films portrayed the horror of the German occupation of Poland, won awards at Cannes which established his reputation as storyteller and commentator on Polish history. He also served on the national Senate from 1989-91. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki]
TRANSCRIPT: It's interesting that in his memoirs, Chaplin wrote... no, the cameraman who worked with Chaplin said he always asked them, 'Can you see me with my feet?' He knew then what he's supposed to act, and what was going to be on the screen. Zbyszek Cybulski was also important with his feet, his steps, you couldn't tell whether he was going forwards or backwards, whether he's turning back or looking for someone, or if he's alone and lost. Because of this it was very important to film him from further away. On close-ups, all you could see was his smile and those mysterious eyes of his which, I have to say, also fulfilled a function. It was as if those glasses became a type of antique mask. Because who hides behind glasses? Someone who has something to hide. What is he hiding? We find this out from the film, this is his secret. So these glasses, which I had been most afraid of, afraid of because they were taken from a completely different epoch, and from the point of view of common sense and from the point of view of history and of the past, which I knew well, these glasses were quite unacceptable. But suddenly, they became part of a mystery, part of a game between the viewer, who wants to look into his eyes, and the actor who keeps turning his eyes away. I think that all of this together, these symbolic scenes, Cybulski's profile, his way of acting, made... also Jerzy Wójcik's bright lighting, the over-vivid shots meant that we had almost moved into a different world, into a completely different cinema, a cinema that was over-vivid, a cinema in which every idea had not been flattened. How can I say it, it was hard to attack this film because it was an artistic film and not just an ideological one. It wasn't just the ideology that spoke to audiences, it was something more, something the censor found it hard to cut out with his scissors. His scissors fell from his hand because it was hard to know what to do with this film. And I think that this was the moment when I was finally formed and learned what I want from cinema, which direction I was going to follow, what I was going to say through cinema, what, from now on, is my cinema.

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