Ashes and Diamonds
As World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland. Maciek, a young Resistance fig…
Ashes and Diamonds
As World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland. Maciek, a young Resistance fighter, is ordered to kill Szczuka, a Communist district leader, on the last day of World War II. Though killing has been easy for him in the past, Szczuka was a fellow soldier, and Maciek must decide whether to follow his orders. —Kevin Dorner <mrkevvy@pathcom.com> During the German occupation nobles, bourgeois and workers' partisan groups lived in peace with another. On the first day of freedom they start to fight each other. Maciek and Andrzej (noble group) get the task of killing a Communist leader (Szczuka). They have carefully chosen the place where Szczuka will soon come in a car, but another car with two innocent persons come a little earlier, and both are shot in the belief that one of them is Szczuka. They learn about their mistake when Szczuka and his co-worker check into a hotel. Maciek manages to get the room next to Szczuka's. It turns out that Szczuka's son is in a noble partisan group. A very tender love story, one of the best ever made, develops between Maciek and the waitress Krystyna. This makes Maciek want a normal life. Andrzej is his superior but also his friend. They agree that Maciek alone will finish the Szczuka affair and then leave the partisan group. Andrzej will go to Warsaw to replace an officer who has been killed. Maciek shoots Szczuka in the street. His shots are drowned by the midnight fireworks but he knows that it would mean suicide to stay with Krystyna. The plot is not finished with their leave, which is particularly painful to her. —Max Scharnberg, Stockholm, Sweden On 8 May 1945, the year of Germany's surrender, a post-war Poland finds itself struggling to rise from the ashes, as ambitious cliques of patrician patriots, determined Communists, Soviet soldiers, and brave anti-German resistance fighters all jockey for position. Against the backdrop of this explosive melting pot somewhere in a small Polish town, Maciek Chelmicki, a former Home Army member and now an efficient assassin, fails in his mission to execute the newly-appointed district secretary, Commissar Szczuka, only to have a fateful encounter with the charming barmaid, Krystyna. But, how can Maciek start afresh and rebuild his life with Krystyna away from a cause he served his entire life, especially now that the dilemma between patriotism and skepticism is more agonizing than ever? —Nick Riganas
Ashes and Diamonds
Drama,Romance,War
Film Details
As World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland. Maciek, a young Resistance fighter, is ordered to kill Szczuka, a Communist district leader, on the last day of World War II. Though killing has been easy for him in the past, Szczuka was a fellow soldier, and Maciek must decide whether to follow his orders.
—Kevin Dorner <mrkevvy@pathcom.com> During the German occupation nobles, bourgeois and workers' partisan groups lived in peace with another. On the first day of freedom they start to fight each other. Maciek and Andrzej (noble group) get the task of killing a Communist leader (Szczuka).
They have carefully chosen the place where Szczuka will soon come in a car, but another car with two innocent persons come a little earlier, and both are shot in the belief that one of them is Szczuka. They learn about their mistake when Szczuka and his co-worker check into a hotel. Maciek manages to get the room next to Szczuka's.
It turns out that Szczuka's son is in a noble partisan group. A very tender love story, one of the best ever made, develops between Maciek and the waitress Krystyna. This makes Maciek want a normal life.
Andrzej is his superior but also his friend. They agree that Maciek alone will finish the Szczuka affair and then leave the partisan group. Andrzej will go to Warsaw to replace an officer who has been killed.
Maciek shoots Szczuka in the street. His shots are drowned by the midnight fireworks but he knows that it would mean suicide to stay with Krystyna. The plot is not finished with their leave, which is particularly painful to her.
—Max Scharnberg, Stockholm, Sweden On 8 May 1945, the year of Germany's surrender, a post-war Poland finds itself struggling to rise from the ashes, as ambitious cliques of patrician patriots, determined Communists, Soviet soldiers, and brave anti-German resistance fighters all jockey for position. Against the backdrop of this explosive melting pot somewhere in a small Polish town, Maciek Chelmicki, a former Home Army member and now an efficient assassin, fails in his mission to execute the newly-appointed district secretary, Commissar Szczuka, only to have a fateful encounter with the charming barmaid, Krystyna. But, how can Maciek start afresh and rebuild his life with Krystyna away from a cause he served his entire life, especially now that the dilemma between patriotism and skepticism is more agonizing than ever? —Nick Riganas.