KANAL (1957) - ♦♦♦♦♦

Directed by - Andrzej Wajda

Written by - Jerzy Stefan Stawinski

Starring - Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Wienczyslaw Glinski

"ANDRZEJ WAJDA's KANAL tells the story of a company of Polish Home Army resistance fighters who escape Nazi onslaught in Warsaw by taking refuge in the sewers. However, the sewers is also where they become trapped. 

KANAL was the second film of WAJDA's famed WAR TRILOGY, with which he achieved the well deserved reputation as one of the best filmmakers in the international cinematic scene. 

The film begins with an honest and humanising depiction of the home army, as they take base in a house. The second part of the film is intensified by the chokehold of the clautrophobic setting of the dark sewers, a damned labyrinthyne prison from which there seems to be no way out. 

To his credit, WAJDA is able to intensify the experience by being quite sensible to all of the characters in the story, each with their own personal conflicts and individual personalities. Through his masterful touch, he is able to make his audience care for the characters and enhance the psychological thriller aspect of the film, as different types of breaking points are teased that allow him to explore the human element of the screenplay by JERZY STEFAN STAWINSKI. 

KANAL was followed by the excellent ASHES AND DIAMONDS, which in the longrun possibly outshadowed it. Nevertheless it is quite different and simoultaneously every bit just as good."

War, Poland