NEXT FILM:

July 21, 2010 • Wednesday

7:30 pm

'EVERYTHING FOR SALE'

Wszystko na Sprzedaz

Elzbieta Czyzewska, a great star of Polish movies and television of the 1960s, died on June 17, 2010 in New York. Film Club OKO presents 1969 film 'Everything for Sale' as a tribute to her.

Here is a video-clip from the movie 'Wszystko na sprzedaz' (this clip is in Polish only, but you can see the actress; Club OKO version has English subtitles).

Here is a link to New York Times 6/18/2010 obituary for Elzbieta Czyzewska.

Here is a link to Nowy Dziennik 7/15/2010 article 'A Step into one filmmaker's reality'.

Here is a link to Gazeta Wyborcza 7/12/2010 article (in Polish) 'Elzbieta Czyzewska'.

Inspired by the tragic death of the great Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski, the film focuses on behind-the-scenes lives of a director and his actors when they are disrupted by the mysterious death of their leading man.

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Starring: Elzbieta Czyzewska, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Daniel Olbrychski, Malgorzata Potocka

Year: 1969. Run 94 minutes. In Polish with English subtitles.

7/25: This is the first time I saw the movie and overall i liked it very much, and found many scenes simply breathtaking; was also really impressed how ahead of time it was: everything for sale in 1968? In totalitarian Poland? And I thought life only recently became disgustingly too much about money.

The Poland I lived in 1968 was different than that of the movie: more gray, and nobody I knew trashing about in cars and helicopters, self-absorbed as the characters of the film. Does that matter or not?

So I wonder how 'ethnic' the movie actually is: would the average westerner realize the characters were 'above' the rest of us, part of some some art-financial elite of the time? Would they take the prattling of the characters seriously without knowing that the film was inspired by the actual death of Zbigniew Cybulski, especially that the death 'happens' in the film close to the end? Would they understand that some seemingly empty dialogs were unscripted, therefore really 'human', because the actors literally played themselves and their own reactions to the accidental death of their colleague?

How much knowledge of these facts helps in understanding of the movie? Unfortunately I mentioned none of this in the intro, thinking the film was self-explanatory, but maybe it wasn't, because when i rushed with filling the cultural context after the movie I saw several heads nodding with an 'aha' expression on their faces: as if they guessed what it was about, but liked their thoughts to be filled in with facts obscure from today's general knowledge...

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We had 20 people attending, a bit too much for the library room: it was crowded and hot with head craning required from some corners... Note to self: prepare for screening in the big room, with a screen; we can always retreat to library if less than 10 people show up.