Popiól i diament [Ashes and Diamonds] (1958)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) I’m not always bullish about cold war east-of-the-iron-curtain cinema, but Ashes and Diamonds had just enough to keep me interested. Here, writer-director Andrzej Wajda whips up a sombre tale of assassination and doubt in the wake of WW2’s closing days and follows his characters through a quasi-noir atmosphere of doom. There are some effective character moments, plot beats that aren’t mean to ape conventional genre works, ruminations on the complexity of political alignment (complicated by the oversight of the time’s communist regime—re-complicated by a contemporary look at communist filmmaking), stylistic and symbolic flourishes as well as ending moments not meant to comfort. The tone is grim and the pacing is slow (especially in the middle), but the film holds up better because it does have a good mixture of plotting to style. It would be an exaggeration to say that I’m a big fan, but graded on a curve of similar films, Ashes and Diamonds exceeds expectations.