Landscape After the Battle
- Daniel Olbrychski: Tadeusz
- Stanisław Celińska: Nina
- Aleksander Bardini: Professor
- Tadeusz Janczar: Karol
- Zygmunt Malanowicz: Priest
- Anna German: American
- Małgorzata Braunek: German girl
- Jerzy Zelnik: American camp commander
Landscape after the battle is a Polish film by Andrzej Wajda in 1970. The film is based on motifs from the concentration camp stories by Tadeusz Borowski.
Action
The film is set in a concentration camp in Germany, which has just been liberated by the Americans. The camp is now run as a DP camp by the Americans. The inmates no longer suffer from the terror of the Nazis and the inhuman forced labor. Nevertheless, they are still inmates of a camp and disoriented. The search for food and new clothes on their minds. One such orientation is lots of young Polish poet Tadeusz. He is irritated by his countrymen, who have just survived the most terrible things, but again break a political, patriotic quarrel. The only thing they have in common is the constant hunger and the desire to sattzuessen. However, sensitive intellectuals such as Tadeusz is the primitive behavior of his countrymen an abomination.
Among the Liberated is also the pretty Jewish girl Nina. Also it is Polish, but must quickly realize that the religion they just separated from their countrymen as before. The Polish men of the camp she finds repulsive. Only Tadeusz seems to be different, and so absurd in this no man's land situation develops a tender love story. Tadeusz but finds it difficult to start under these circumstances a normal relationship. Nina wants to flee with him to the West, because they see no future for themselves in a future Poland. However, Tadeusz is incapable of any decision, as he has found after surviving yet not a recipe for an everyday life in peace. Tadeusz hesitates with his decision, and the death will decide once again for his life. Nina is accidentally shot by an American sentry.
The Polish patriots in the camp host an anniversary celebration to commemorate the Battle of Grunwald. Tadeusz finally decides to return to Poland.
Music
Wajda used in addition to the original music by Konieczny, who also contributed a song to poems by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, classical music for the soundtrack of his apocalyptic paintings: The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi and the Polonaise A flat major by Frédéric Chopin.
Reviews
" Wajda's film operates self-critical Polish past coping with bitter and ironic blow lights on the national mentality and the weaknesses of human nature. A consistently compelling, haunting account of the concentration camp and the consequent psychological ravages of the experience of human malice, hunger and fear of death. The focus is on a writer who is able to save himself only in cynicism, last but assumes the risk of an unsecured freedom to be. "
Awards
The film landscape after the battle was invited to the competition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1970. However, he received no award here. He was elected by the film magazine movie 1971 the best film of the year 1970 in Poland.