Film Forum

Krajobraz po bitwie
Poland, 1970
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Daniel Olbrychski, Stanisława Celińska
Approx. 109 mins.

The Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski, survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, captured his experiences in the surreal short story collection This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, and committed suicide in 1951, at age 29. His memories of life in the camps, and the disorienting experience of trying to return to normal life, inspired LANDSCAPE AFTER BATTLE, a series of vignettes with the great actor Daniel Olbrychski playing Borowski. A young Jewish woman Borowski meets at the Displaced Persons Camp that is the film’s primary setting tells him, “you must forget in order to live.” Wajda’s film eloquently asks how his country can possibly forget, and emerge from the horrors of the war.

Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film, The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film, and The Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films, donated by Leon Constantiner and Family

Reviews

“It is so beautifully composed, so elegiacal, it compels attention and will be likely to stay in the memory for a very long time.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“The direction by Wajda is unquestionably a major achievement in the artistic recording of that troubled transition from World War II to peace in central Europe. A picture of this caliber is something to be endured and appreciated as a living page of history.”
– The New York Post

“Late in the film one realizes that love is the central theme of the story, for it is a potent regenerating force.”
 – Jewish Film Institute