Critics reviews

In many ways a gangster film, with Poland’s future on the line instead of loot. Zbigniew Cybulski as Maciek, the cynical assassin, is so fiercely present he drags the movie out of its ostensible setting and even the time period in which it was made.

The casting of Cybulski was the single most subversive thing Wajda did in "Ashes and Diamonds", since it completely shifted the audience's sympathy towards the figure of what the authorities perceived as an ideological foe. Maciek's cause was as unacceptable for the communist party in 1958 as it was at any given moment in the history of the regime, which is the reason his character needed to die at the end.

Cybulski speaks for a new, younger disaffected generation, reassessing its past and uncertain of its future. In this complex and beautiful film, Wajda finds a way to lucidly express confusion and capture the soul of a people constantly trapped by the forces of history.

If the film exhilarates, it is through the power of its artistry and because the authority of its synthetic image of the postwar Polish dilemma does indeed tell as much of the truth as could be told—as Dabrowska had said. The artistry is not confined to Cybulski's performance or Wajda's compression of Andrzejewski's more leisurely novel and list of dramatic personae into a tightly knit, twenty-four-hour confrontation. It is also continually present in the deep focus of cameraman Jerzy Wojcik.

Cybulski spends hours waiting for his target in a hotel, where he bides his time by flirting with a blonde bartender (Ewa Krzyzewska) who immediately captures his heart. Suddenly, his priorities are thrown into disarray: Does he continue to fight for a dubious cause, or abandon his post for love? During the spectacular climactic sequence, set against the celebratory fireworks display overhead, Ashes And Diamonds delivers a supremely ironic answer.

A baroque director, Wajda frequently recalls Orson Welles in his use of low angles and deep focus, as well as in his fancy sense of dramatic detail and counterpoint: A Christ-like figure hanging upside down from the rafters of a bombed-out building, an explosion of fireworks occurring at the same moment that Szczuka dies in the arms of Maciek's murderous embrace.

Zbigniew Cybulski totally identifies with Maciek, bringing to the role a mysterious inner passion and a number of personal mannerisms, private rituals, and ritualistic props, such as the German canteen out of which he drinks his vodka, and the glasses he rarely removes.

One of the first works of the Polish New Wave, Andrzej Wajda's 1958 film is a compelling piece, although it's been somewhat overrated by critics who considered its story of a resistance fighter's ideological struggle as a cagey bit of anti-Soviet propaganda, and hence automatically admirable. Following the art cinema technique of the time, Wajda tends toward harsh and overstated imagery, but he achieves a fascinating psychological rapport with his lead actor, Zbigniew Cybulski.