The director of Polish Andrzej Wajda is death on 9 October in Warsaw at the age of 90 years. In 2014, Le Figaro was interviewed on the occasion of the release of his film the Man of The people.
Legend of world cinema, the film-maker Andrzej Wajda has died of pulmonary insufficiency on October 9, in Warsaw, at the age of 90 years. Le Figaro had interviewed the famous director of the Polish government in 2014, on the occasion of the release of his film the Man of The people, dedicated to the life of Lech Walesa.
The birth in Poland of Solidarnosc, the first free trade union of the countries of the East, was an upheaval. The director Andrzej Wajda, who has supported and filmed the movement since its beginnings, look back on this crucial moment in the history of Poland. And puts the spotlight on its charismatic leader that nothing predisposed to bring down the regime, the first gap which was going to cause, there are twenty-five years, the fall of communism.
LE FIGARO. – the Man of The people is your third film in the shipyards of Gdansk, and the second on the birth of Solidarnosc. In 1980, you are now in the shipyards during the strike, and you’re shooting these hot events?
Andrzej WAJDA. - I arrived in Gdansk in July 1980 as a representative of the Association of filmmakers. We were struggling at the time to have the right to film the political events at the time they occurred. It was not easy. However, we had permission to put our cameras in the building to the condition not to keep our footage. We are committed to make to the authorities. At this time, I had already turned Man of marble, a history of repression and bloody against strikers of the shipyards in 1970.
Ten years later, a worker led me through the building again on strike. He had an armband, red and white. I spawn a path in the crowd from the portal up to the room. Suddenly, he said to me: “Mr. Andrzej make a movie about us.””What movie?”, I asked. “Well, you’ve made Man of marble are now iron Man.” I never realized film on order, but it was just a simple worker, and I told myself that I was going to do it. The need to take advantage quickly of this moment of freedom. Filming began at the end of 1980.
We had to shoot summer in the winter. It was a terrible cold. The fog was pouring from the mouths of the actors when they spoke. It doesn’t matter: it was imagined that they smoked all the time. And the ruse worked. One only sees the fire. We managed to make believe in the month of August in the middle of December. The film was completed in the spring of 1981.
The spring came, and with him the 34th Cannes film Festival. Who gave you the idea to send iron Man?
This festival was very well known in Poland, because Polish films have already been award-winning, as my opus on the Warsaw uprising, They loved the life. But then he had the agreement of the party. Before I request anything, I received a letter from the minister in charge of the cinematography. He asked me to make cuts in twenty and one places.
In reality, the minister has been bombarded with letters from all over the country, messages of support of Nowa Huta, from the shipyards of Gdansk, Szczecin. And he has had to give up in the face of insistence from the working class? This palme d’or received for iron Man was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I was well aware of that, and I made clear at the time, that this reward does not come back to me only. It was the palm of Solidarnosc and all these people who have contributed to create this new situation. I only have to put it in images.
You go back thirty-two years later with a film focused solely on Walesa. Why?
Lech Walesa is a historical character. But also a man who has been, and continues to cause an endless controversy. I would like to that all the Polish see it through my eyes. What happened then, when Lech Walesa became president, and all cases in which he was involved, does not interest me. We thought at the time that communism would carry in his pocket these workers by turning them into staunch supporters. But instead, these shipyard workers were his best critics. Lech Walesa has given them the example.
It took the arrival of this man, who knew the communist regime from the inside, a man who was seared by this plan. At the time, we do not think that the dictatorship could be overthrown. We only thought reform. I knew that many of the threats hovering over our heads. Lech Walesa knew it too. But I think he knew something more. And this is what I wanted to show in my film.
In the Man of The people, the shipyards are no longer in the foreground?
There remains much today. A large part is occupied by the immense Museum Solidarnosc, still under construction. Another has been destroyed. In the former meeting room, there is an exhibition, which does not please me, because Solidarnosc has become the subject of a trade, the source of bad emotions and disputes, to determine who is worthy or who is not of his inheritance. Finally, Solidarity is no longer the today. But this is not the story of defeat that interested me. It is to recall those moments of freedom that led to the fall of the Berlin wall. I saw this wall divide Europe? And also how it has been put into pieces. But if it is dropped, it is thanks to Lech Walesa.
do You remember your first meeting with Lech Walesa?
I had just arrived to the building in 1980. I sat down next to him. And I said to him: “Lech, good God, it’s going to end with the entry of Russian tanks on our territory! You got what you wanted, why go further?” He looked at me and just told me: “The Russian tanks? No, there will be no Russian tanks!” That day, I saw him as a great politician. As an artist, a politician relies on his imagination. And history has proven him right. He has managed to be adamant where it needed to be and give where it was needed to drive Poland towards democracy. If today we live in a free country, it is thanks to the imagination and to the political meaning of Lech Walesa.
Your film also throws a light interesting on the couple Walesa and responds to the recent controversy surrounding the Memoirs of the wife of the leader of Solidarnosc, not very tender with her hero of a husband?
At first glance, Lech and Danuta were not going at all. We wondered all the time where he had found such a woman. Him, with his humour, sometimes bawdy, and, restraint. But for pierce, it was in need of a woman who was not like him at all? Curious, is it not? It has played an important role, it has been fantastic. She was able to find his place. In my film, I attempt to show how she sees her husband walk away, to leave it, because the world, the political, the it takes? Could it be otherwise? I don’t know.
You told me one day that, in each film, you have a scene that you guide, which is like the matrix?
With this film, the situation is more complicated. This biopic is composed of two layers: one is the life of Lech Walesa, his choice? The other is the historical context. To make it, I used a lot of archives. On these images of the time, it recognizes the protagonists, we witness their conversations, but it is clear to the crowds that take part in these events. It is this which gives to this path particular policy in a broader sense, and shows how a few words spoken by him were an echo vibrating in the expectations of the people. A true man of the people, Walesa was able to become the spokesman of these mobs, until then silent.
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