From the editors
COLLECTIVE TRAUMA - WAR AND HUMOUR Words Oliwia Jackowska
It was April 4th 1960. The realm of the Polish cinematic art scene became divided in how to represent the nation’s painful recent history. In the aftermath of unmeasurable destruction and hardship as Poland became Europe’s battlefield, the filmmakers faced challenges in preserving the memory of suffering and reflecting the moods of their society.
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A still from Bad Luck (Polish: “Zezowate szczescie”), 1960. Jan Piszczyk in Struga.
Just fifteen years after the end of World War II, and at the time of the current socialistic regime, Andrzej Munk and Jerzy Stefan Stawinski made a first film that comically presented the Polish martyred history. It was the main character who made this film so hilarious. Clumsy, unsuccessfully conformist, but most of all unlucky Jan Piszczek goes through different periods of his life, which spread through the 1930s, the war period and the post-war aftermath. Thrown into situations he did not ask for, he is a complete mess and failure, nothing goes as he would like to. Critics were polarised by either praising this new approach to writing history or found the production to be disrespectful. The film was criticised for presenting “a hero of our tragic history, but at the same time a villain ridiculing that same history”, while on the other hand it was praised for its realistic approach to every day people.
