Wojna swiatow—Nascepne stulecie
Poland
, 96 min
Shown in 1981
CREDITS
- dir
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Piotr Szulkin
- scr
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Piotr Szulkin
- cam
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Zygmunt Samosiuk
- cast
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Roman Wilhelmi, Krystyna Janda, Mariusz Dmockowski, Jerzy Stuhr, Marek Walczewski
The second feature by Piotr Szulkin (with Andrze Kotkowski, the brightest of the new Polish film scene) is, like Golem, his debut work, a splendidly imaginative creation. He is introduced to American audiences on this festival occasion, and it is hoped that that Szulkin’s future will flourish with further sparks of his cinematic genius. This film is an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ famous science-fiction classic, but touched with Szulkin’s original flair for merging fantasy with philosophical and social criticisms of mankind. Wells’ premise is followed by having extra-terrestrial beings from Mars land on Earth for the first in human history. The media, especially television, look upon the Martian’s arrival as a momentous event and a great chance for mankind to discover the mysteries of another planet. However, the Martians are not entirely controllable: not only are they insatiably sex-crazed, with a cruel streak, but their other trait is an unquenchable thirst for human blood. A massively scaled campaign is launched for voluntary blood donations, but the participation is actually made to be a compulsory, patriotic duty. A young, independent newscaster by the name of “Iron” Idem protests against the government’s widespread tide of hypocrisy and, to silence him, the police kidnap his wife. In order to save her, Idem pretends to conform to the circumstances, and has to submit to a growing atmosphere of repression and chaos caused by the Martians. He meets a prostitute, Gea, in a brothel, and she seems to be the only person around who has held on to her sanity. Their fate, in a world where violence becomes an indispensable “norm” of survival, is revealed in a bitter, sardonic conclusion. Szulkin’s War of the Worlds is an absorbing thriller, castigating human weaknesses and fears when confronting the unknown, rallying round a cry as deadly as “Martians Love Law!”
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
