Adapting the National Literary Canon: Polish Heritage Cinema
2011; Canadian Comparative Literature Association; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1913-9659
Autores Tópico(s)Polish Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoCanadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Litterature Comparee CRCL SEPTEMBER 2007 SEPTEMBRE RCLC 0319-051X/07/34.3/298©CANADIAN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ASSOCIATION Aft er overcoming the rough transitional period at the beginning of the 1990s, a group of well-established Polish fi lmmakers, whose names are oft en synonymous with Polish national cinema, succeeded in winning back their audiences toward the end of the decade. Th eir commercial success came with fi lms that were always popular in Poland—lavish adaptations of the Polish national literary canon. Th anks to Jerzy Hoff man’s With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem) and Andrzej Wajda’s Pan Tadeusz, which together had more than thirteen million viewers in 1999, Polish cinema shared an unprecedented sixty percent of the local market. Th e success of Polish fi lms prompted the infl uential Rzeczpospolita fi lm critic, Barbara Hollender, to title her review article: “Hoff man and Wajda won over Hollywood” (Hollender 2000, 8). Another prominent critic, Zbigniew Pietrasik from the weekly Polityka, proclaimed in his 1999 article the long-awaited “true victory” of Polish cinema (Pietrasik 52). Th is essay looks at the recent Polish adaptations of the national literary canon and their successful competition with Hollywood cinema, which is partly achieved by nostalgic ventures into the distant past and the reliance on stereotypical attributes of Polishness.
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