Slideshow
INNOCENT SORCERERS
Niewinni czarodzieje
Poland, 1960
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Tadeusz Łomnicki, Krystyna Stypułkowska
Approx. 88 mins. 4K restoration.
After completing his war trilogy with ASHES AND DIAMONDS, Wajda turned to a more freewheeling and contemporary project. INNOCENT SORCERERS captures the energy of jazz (banned in Poland until Stalin’s 1953 death) and the spontaneity of the French New Wave as it follows the tentative courtship between Andrzej (Tadeusz Łomnicki, star of A GENERATION), a young doctor who seems more passionate about music than the women who pursue him, and the playfully seductive Magda, who tries to break his cool. Working with emerging young filmmakers, Wajda used a script co-written by Jerzy Skolimowski. Martin Scorsese selected it for his 2014 traveling series “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.”
Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film
Reviews
“A sophisticated comedy of seduction, the film oozes with youth and director Andrzej Wajda gives it an intoxicating sensual fizz.”
– Evening Standard
“Wajda shows his anti-heroes as amiable, innocent, rebellious victims of a world-wide atmosphere impregnated with the fall-out of fear and nihilism.”
– Robert Vas, Sight and Sound
“All we need to do is watch—delighted by Wajda’s sudden switch to gaiety—with the spontaneous feelings of innocence on one hand and questioning maturity on the other.”
– Monthly Film Bulletin