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A Bodiless Enemy

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Marszałek R.

Kwartalnik Filmowy

2013

issue Special Issue - Polish Film Scholars on Polish Cinema

31-36

The following is the text of Rafał Marszałek’s address during the international conference on "The Warsaw Uprising in the Context of Polish-German Relations" (Warsaw, 30 March – 1 April, 2007). Marszałek argues that there is no room for an "absolute enemy" in the selected works by Andrzej Wajda, Kazimierz Kutz and Andrzej Munk of the so-called "Polish Film School" and that the films are free of the hatred to the Germans as invaders and occupiers. What emerge from the films are a toothless enemy and then a bodiless enemy. The thesis is exemplified in "Canal" – the death of the Warsaw insurgents is portrayed in a symbolic language; in "Ostinato lugubre", the second part of "Eroica", in which the Germans (as enemy) are not the demonic personification of oppression; in "The Dog" (part of "Cross of Valor") – the hero saves the life of the dog guarding inmates at an Auschwitz death camp; in "Speed", one of few war films in the history of cinema that does without the character of a (German) enemy. Marszałek points out that the "dematerialization" of the enemy flows from the special (both psychological and moral) instinct of self-preservation rather than forgiveness.

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A Bodiless Enemy