Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

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GaryC
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Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

#1 Post by GaryC » Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:34 pm

It's not on DVD or Blu-ray yet as it comes out in Polish cinemas this week, but has anyone heard any word of mouth about Bitwa Warszawska 1920 (Battle of Warsaw 1920)? A friend currently visiting her relatives in Poland has told me it's being advertised everywhere - it's a big expensive war epic in 3D. Is it supposed to be any good, though?

I have no idea if or when this will be getting a release in the UK or USA though!

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Duncan Hopper
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Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#2 Post by Duncan Hopper » Tue Sep 27, 2011 3:20 pm

Battle of Warsaw 1920 is showing at the Hammersmith Cineworld as from Friday the 7th, in 3D and 2D. This is not the first time they've shown a new first run Polish film there, it now seems to be a regular thing. Lots of the local Polish shops have posters for it in their windows, as they did for previous releases.

None of this is too surprising considering Hammersmith is pretty much the main Polish area of London, the Cineworld is right next to the Polish Cultural Institute, which may I add serves some mean Polish delicacies - the apple and cinnamon crumble is to die for.

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MichaelB
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Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#3 Post by MichaelB » Tue Sep 27, 2011 3:31 pm

GaryC wrote:It's not on DVD or Blu-ray yet as it comes out in Polish cinemas this week, but has anyone heard any word of mouth about Bitwa Warszawska 1920 (Battle of Warsaw 1920)? A friend currently visiting her relatives in Poland has told me it's being advertised everywhere - it's a big expensive war epic in 3D. Is it supposed to be any good, though?
It's opening in Poland on Friday, and it's widely tipped to be massive there - large-scale romanticised patriotic historical epics have always had a very strong track record at the domestic box office, usually out of all proportion to their international profile. For instance, Andrzej Wajda's Pan Tadeusz was a Titanic-beating blockbuster at home, but barely got seen abroad at all - and while Katyn was a middling arthouse success in other countries, it came second only to Shrek the Third in Polish cinemas.

If anything, Battle of Warsaw 1920 director Jerzy Hoffman's historical epics have done even better (I think quite a few of them are among Poland's all-time domestic champions) and the fact that it's Poland's first homegrown 3-D film should give it a pretty strong curiosity factor as well. It also has the Katyn formula of being about a famous event in Polish history which was impossible to dramatise during the Communist era (because it's about the Poles defeating the Bolsheviks - which was one of the reasons Stalin wreaked such a hideous revenge on them twenty years later). I imagine the starry cast will also be a major draw - Daniel Olbrychski, Bogusław Linda and Borys Szyc are arguably the iconic male leads of their respective generations (60s/70s in Olbrychski's case, 80s/90s in Linda's, and 2000s in Szyc's), and the fact that Olbrychski is playing Józef Piłsudski (one of the great figures of 20th-century Polish history) will doubtless be a big attraction too. So it's hard to imagine it flopping.

As for whether it's any good, Polish friends of mine who've seen press shows have been a bit sniffy, but that doesn't surprise me - the trailer (no subtitles, but it doesn't really need any) makes it pretty clear that it's an unashamedly mainstream blockbuster. If nothing else, you can certainly see where the money went!
I have no idea if or when this will be getting a release in the UK or USA though!
Believe it or not, it's opening in the UK on Friday next week, rather ambitiously in 21 cinemas - which has to be a record for a Polish film (certainly a recent one). But I suppose Britain has a sufficiently large Polish population to make that worth a gamble.

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GaryC
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Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#4 Post by GaryC » Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:48 am

MichaelB wrote:
I have no idea if or when this will be getting a release in the UK or USA though!
Believe it or not, it's opening in the UK on Friday next week, rather ambitiously in 21 cinemas - which has to be a record for a Polish film (certainly a recent one). But I suppose Britain has a sufficiently large Polish population to make that worth a gamble.
Thanks, Duncan and Michael! And it's just appeared on the BBFC website - certificate 15, 115 mins 21 seconds.

ETA: Not listed on the Launching Films website, which is why I missed noticing its UK release date.
Last edited by GaryC on Wed Sep 28, 2011 8:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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MichaelB
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Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#5 Post by MichaelB » Wed Sep 28, 2011 7:01 am

It looks as though I'm going to the British premiere on Thursday 6th - I'll report back when I see it.

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Re: Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

#6 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:12 pm

The first English-language review that I've spotted, from Screen International - it sounds as though it delivers what the trailer promises, and that I should at least be in for a thoroughly entertaining ride.

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Re: Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

#7 Post by MichaelB » Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:23 am

Well, it was a thoroughly entertaining ride, but it was also a load of hoary old nonsense whose script could honestly have been written at any point in the last sixty years - and it would probably have got produced back then too, if it hadn't been for the pervasive anti-Soviet line.

So anyone hoping for an in-depth analysis of a complex and often neglected period of Polish history would be far better off with a history book, but fans of Gainsborough melodrama or similar will have a whale of a time.

I particularly liked the nightclub singer who answers a call for women to join up, becomes an expert machine-gun operator and mows down swathes of Bolsheviks without mussing up her hair, and the exploding graveyard that tossed stone crosses at the audience (the film rarely missed an opportunity for crude symbolism), while full-on cavalry charges really do look very impressive in 3-D. Thankfully, the process was shamelessly ostentatious: since there wasn't a smidgen of subtlety anywhere else, a lower-key, more immersive approach really wouldn't have worked.

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GaryC
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Re: Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

#8 Post by GaryC » Fri Oct 07, 2011 3:11 pm

Thanks, Michael. I'm seeing it on Sunday.

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GaryC
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Re: Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

#9 Post by GaryC » Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:06 pm

Well, I did see it in Hammersmith yesterday. The friend I saw it with (Anglo-Polish) reckoned that I was one of about two non-Poles in a pretty decent audience for a showing starting at 12.40pm.

I pretty much agree with Michael's comments above. Just to be pedantic, the on-screen title is actually 1920 Bitwa Warszawska. It was a digital presentation, the aspect ratio turning out to be a rather surprising 1.66:1.

Nicholas

Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#10 Post by Nicholas » Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:11 am

MichaelB wrote:Believe it or not, it's opening in the UK on Friday next week, rather ambitiously in 21 cinemas - which has to be a record for a Polish film (certainly a recent one). But I suppose Britain has a sufficiently large Polish population to make that worth a gamble.
The film opened across England and Scotland in Cineworld multiplexes in both 3-D and 2-D versions after a big premiere in London s West End attended by Greta Scacchi and Nickolas Grace and a dozen UK directors such as Mike Sarne and Tony Palmer, as well as the legendary Jerzy Hoffman and some of the Polish cast and producers. This must be the first time any foreign-language film has been released with sub titles into multiplex screens and apparently it is paying off thanks to the number of Polish in the UK as the film has performed better than any film in the opening weekend after Lion King re-issue and Johnny English Reborn.So the run is extended for another week in every Cineworld, and maybe it is old-fashioned in its style ,but it is spectacular and it is a decent telling of a page of history that was never taught in Polish schools (thanks to the Russian Communists I guess) and certainly not in UK schools. Unusually the 3-D actually works and is an integral part of the filming and not added afterwards as in most of the Hollywood movies (such as precisely The Lion King!!)

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MichaelB
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Re: Polish Cinema on DVD

#11 Post by MichaelB » Wed Oct 12, 2011 12:26 pm

Nicholas wrote:The film opened across England and Scotland in Cineworld multiplexes in both 3-D and 2-D versions after a big premiere in London s West End attended by Greta Scacchi and Nickolas Grace and a dozen UK directors such as Mike Sarne and Tony Palmer, as well as the legendary Jerzy Hoffman and some of the Polish cast and producers.
...not to mention yours truly. In fact, Mike Sarne acted as MC - a slightly odd choice given that he hadn't seen the film beforehand and his only connection with Polish cinema was that he was best mates with Polanski and Skolimowski in the 1960s.
This must be the first time any foreign-language film has been released with sub titles into multiplex screens
You're parroting the distributor's press release, and it simply isn't true: I myself worked on multiplex releases of subtitled films twenty years ago (I vividly remember Delicatessen being such an unexpected hit that we had to scramble to get new 35mm prints made to meet demand from multiplex cinemas), and nearly sixty years ago the French-language The Wages of Fear became a surprise hit on the Rank circuit. True, this was before the term 'multiplex' had been coined, but it was the exact equivalent.

Mind you, this almost certainly is the first time a Polish-language film has been given a UK multiplex release - maybe that's what they meant to say, but it got lost in translation?
and apparently it is paying off thanks to the number of Polish in the UK as the film has performed better than any film in the opening weekend after Lion King re-issue and Johnny English Reborn.
"Performed better" is a highly loaded term, as the film didn't make the UK top ten - in fact, its gross of £87,688 is less than a third of that notched up by number 10, and a minuscule fraction of the £2,746,763 grossed by The Lion King and the nearly £5 million managed by Johnny English Reborn.

What I suspect you mean is that because of its relatively limited number of screens (21), its average take per screen was higher than any new film opening last week apart from those two.

To be fair, £4,176 per screen is nothing to be ashamed of (especially not for a foreign-language film with next to no promotion outside Polish communities - it wasn't press-shown, and my Sight & Sound review was commissioned as I was literally round the corner from the world premiere, as the reviews editor had only just spotted that it was opening - I had to pop into WHSmiths to buy a notebook and pen!), but it's not quite the Disney-challenging megahit that you're implying.
maybe it is old-fashioned in its style ,but it is spectacular and it is a decent telling of a page of history that was never taught in Polish schools (thanks to the Russian Communists I guess) and certainly not in UK schools.
True, but that's one of the problems I had with it - the historical background is fascinating, but nowhere near enough makes it into the film. In real life Józef Piłsudski was one of the most enthrallingly mercurial figures in Polish history, but he's not that far removed from Blackadder's General Melchett here - with no disrespect to Daniel Olbrychski and his spectacular moustache, who made the best of a pretty hackneyed script. And even the love story fizzled out by the halfway mark, largely because Borys Szyc has next to nothing to do after fleeing the Chekists - his entire conversation with the Cossacks is almost a model of how not to shoehorn politics into conversation if you want the latter to sound as though it was conducted by actual human beings.
Unusually the 3-D actually works and is an integral part of the filming and not added afterwards as in most of the Hollywood movies (such as precisely The Lion King!!)
You can rest assured that in my upcoming review I single out cinematographer Sławomir Idziak for particular praise. I also make it clear that the film is enormously entertaining - but that's despite the script, not because of it.

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Re: Battle of Warsaw 1920 (Jerzy Hoffman, 2011)

#12 Post by MichaelB » Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:50 am

Battle of Warsaw 1920 is currently the front runner in the line-up for the Snake Awards, Poland's equivalent of the Razzies.

Though the nomination for Worst 3-D film is a tad cruel, as Poland has only made one.

And I'm willing to bet that the name of the awards was inspired by the notoriously terrible 1987 film The Curse of Snake Valley (Klatwa Doliny Węży). I reviewed it as part of Telewizja Kinopolska's sci-fi box a few months ago:
Offsetting the other films’ philosophical seriousness, The Curse of Snake Valley is an absolute hoot. A would-be Polish Indiana Jones travels to Vietnam at the behest of a mercenary with the intriguingly Sierra Madre-ish name of Bernard Traven, while a female journalist tags along to supply screaming and gratuitous nudity, usually when encountering venomous snakes that appear whenever an ancient manuscript is unfurled. Lacking a decent literary source this time, director [Marek] Piestrak blithely tosses in saffron-robed Buddhists, statues with deadly laser eyes, liquids triggering hideous mutations, and a papier-mâché giant serpent that would have disgraced even a 1950s Corman cheapie.

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