An internationally renowned conductor of Polish descent (played with gusto by John Gielgud) returns to his family’s homeland to conduct a provincial orchestra after meeting the orchestra’s violist – the daughter of an old love. Beloved by Ingmar Bergman, The Conductor comments on the moral decay and stagnation of a society and its artists. It’s a beautifully performed, sensitively directed drama.
bfi.org.uk
Although he freely admits that records and concerts do not mean a great deal to him, Wajda has recently completed a new film, The Conductor, that deals intensely with the world of music, and stars none other than Sir John Gielgud, alongside Krystyna Janda, the nervy, sardonic blonde from Man of Marble. ‘It’s the story,’ says Wajda, ‘of a young violinist who wins a scholarship to study in New York. There she meets a great conductor of Polish birth, and they fall in love. He comes to her small hometown in Poland and wants to give his Golden Jubilee concert there. But the provincial orchestra is not exactly ready for such a big occasion, and as the young girl’s husband is the local conductor, there is both a private and a public conflict in the making. The tension and the resonances of the drama are further heightened by the disclosure that the Gielgud character had conducted this very orchestra almost 50 years ago, at the outset of his career, when the first violinist was none other than the girl’s mother. The theme of emotional history repeating itself, and the clash between youth and age, appear central to The Conductor. Just as Wajda declares himself stimulated by the proximity of young filmmakers in his unit, so his celebrated conductor is inspired by his love for the girl violinist to spur his orchestra to fresh heights.
Gielgud’s dialogue is only partially dubbed, says Wajda, so that his splendid voice may be heard to best effect in English.
Peter Cowie, ‘Wajda Redux’ in Sight and Sound, Winter 1979/80
Given Wajda’s fresh status as a political commentator, one listens carefully to The Conductor for echoes of the Solidarity debates that were reaching a crescendo even as the film was being completed. The only resonance to emerge with audible clarity, however, is the suggestion that in the world of music the provincial is no match for the international, and it would appear to stretch a point unreasonably to detect within this theme an allegory about the extent to which Poland might take inspiration from the West.
Certainly, the film’s opening sequences suggest a hymn to all that New York has come to represent, although this quickly grows discordant when Marta tries to help a recumbent form on the pavement ignored by other passers-by. One of the film’s best scenes shows pressure being brought to bear on the young conductor by the party representative who has already decided just how and where the concert is going to be performed; in the urbane chill of government manipulation can briefly be felt the sub-zero temperatures of Rough Treatment and Man of Marble, with their revelations of bland historical reconstruction. But Wajda seems in the main to have avoided any opportunities for proclaiming the essential Polishness of his characters’ predicament – the implications, for example, of the maestro’s 50-year absence from his homeland. Instead, he seems more interested in examining the intimacies of family stress via a duet for three. Throughout the film, Marta rushes between elder and younger conductor, an emotional soloist in search of a key; neither proves to have any great musical truths to offer, and in exasperation she takes the lead herself in the final scene.
Recalling the frequency with which Wajda’s male protagonists sink into self-pity and defeat (and both men in The Conductor have their big scenes of mortification), one is reminded by Krystyna Janda’s owlish glasses and rapacious gaze of the man-eating feminists in Wajda’s Hunting Flies, a reminder which sheds a quite different, non-political illumination. Marta emerges as an ardent parasite, feeding off other reputations for the possible elevation of her own, a role which might also be related to Janda’s investigating journalist in Man of Marble.
When the reflected glory in which she luxuriates at last loses its glow, she has absorbed enough to shine for herself. But if the argument has any justification, it is muffled by the authentic presence imparted by Gielgud; although not particularly convincing when waving gently at Beethoven’s Fifth, he simply dominates the film with his familiar, elegant eccentricities even when dubbed, occasionally and awkwardly, into Polish. Whether complaining long-distance to his medical adviser in order to discard, with contempt, the recommended tablets, or reaching hastily for a drink (for himself) when a hysterical girl bursts into his hotel room, he makes a superbly complete display of the declining celebrity, all outward confidence and inner panic.
Aside from some technical lapses (there’s the odd instance of the scar that comes and goes on Adam’s face), The Conductor is an engaging collection of the stylish and the disparate: husband and wife hurrying home to bed, only to quarrel to such an extent as they strip off that with approaching nudity they’re no longer interested; the angry young conductor trying to make the supreme gesture of contempt but unable to snap his baton, and so on. Through Gielgud, however, it makes its most enduring mark as another portrait in Wajda’s gallery of isolated misfits for whom events have passed beyond control – a subject which, after all, proves to be not without a certain currency.
Philip Strick, Monthly Film Bulletin, December 1981
The Conductor Dyrygent
Director: Andrzej Wajda
©: Film Polski
Production Company: Zespol Filmowy ‘X’
Production Co-ordinators: Alina Klobukowska, Tomasz Bek, Maciej Skalski, Jolanta Jarzecka, Wanda Helbert
Production Manager: Barbara Pec-Slesicka
Assistant Directors: Jakub Rucinski, Andrzej Kazanecki, Jolanta Jedynak
Screenplay: Andrzej Kijowski
Based on stories by/conversations with: Andrzej Markowski
Director of Photography: Slawomir Idziak
Camera Operator: Piotr Kwiatkowski
Assistant Camera: Piotr Stankiewicz, Jerzy Tomczuk
Stills Photographer: Renata Pajchel
Editor: Halina Prugar
Assistant Editors: Barbara Grodner, Ewa Smal
Art Director: Allan Starski
Assistant Art Directors: Maria Lubelska, Joanna Lelanow
Assistant Set Decorator: Jozef Runo
Set Decorator: Maria Osiecka-Kuminek
Costume Designer: Wieslawa Starska
Assistant Costume Designer: Anna Plochocka
Make-up: Anna Adamek, Grazyna Dabrowska
Laboratory: Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych w Warszawie
Music Director: Stanislaw Wislocki
Music Consultant: Malgorzata Jaworska
Sound: Piotr Zawadzki
Assistant Sound: Dorota Tucholka, Waclaw Borawski, Stanislaw Hojden
Cast
John Gielgud (Jan Lasocki)
Krystyna Janda (Marta Pietryk)
Andrzej Seweryn (Adam Pietryk)
Jan Ciecierski (Marta’s father)
Tadeusz Czechowski
Marek Dabrowski
Józef Fryzlewicz (town official)
Janusz Gajos (Warsaw dignitary)
Stanislaw Górka
Jerzy Kleyn
Mary Ann Krasinski (Marta’s American friend)
Anna Lopatowska (Anna, violinist)
Elzbieta Strzalkowska
Marysia Seweryn (Marysia, Marta’s daughter)
Jerzy Szmidt
Mewis Walker (Lilian, Lasocki’s wife)
Wojciech Wysocki
Stanislaw Zatloka
Orkiestra Symfoniczna Centr
Zespolu Artystycznego
Polish Army
Poland 1979©
102 mins
Digital (restoration)
Restored by Fixafilm
The screening on Mon 9 Mar will be introduced by film critic and scholar Michał Oleszczyk
With thanks to
Marlena Łukasiak, Michał Oleszczyk, Jędrzej Sabliński
Presented with the ICA and Ciné Lumière, who will also be hosting screenings of Wajda’s works in February and March
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