THE WEDDING (1972)
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
106 minutes
The turn-of-the-century wedding between a famed poet and a peasant woman inspired the popular 1901 play The Wedding by Stanislaw Wyspiański. Written at a time when Polish intellectuals were trying to find connections with the country's peasantry, the play is a satire of this idealistic urge, and an allegory for the nation's history, making it ideal source material for this rarely screened adaptation. A kaleidoscopic whirl of activity, the film follows the revelries of the wedding guests, and things get more surreal as the evening goes on, and figures from Polish history appear, including a king's jester, a medieval hero, and the leader of a peasant revolt. Wajda creates a fantasmagoria; he says he wanted "a film reality in which the worlds of thoughts, feelings, and occurrences might co-exist on an equal footing; where dream and reality would imperceptibly intertwine."