Knife in the water. The generational change in Polish cinema in the 60´s

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the changing situation of Polish cinema in the 1960s through Roman Polanski's film The Knife in the Water (1962). The filmmaker made this feature film in his home country and it gave way to a new approach on Polish cinema, this time far removed from social commitment regarding the aftermath of the Second World War that prevailed in the previous generation, the so-called "Polish School", made up of great veteran filmmakers such as Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk and Jerzy Kawalerowicz. We will also discover how the filmmaker Andrzej Wajda will to a large extent shape the two generations, with the time of the "Polish School" as a great initiator and the "third generation" as a teacher of the young filmmakers who were beginning to emerge, looking for new ways to express themselves. The pioneering and groundbreaking role of the film The Knife in the Water and its success abroad, winning the first Oscar nomination for a Polish film, led to the emergence of the "third generation", whose members would bring a period of splendour to Polish cinema and raise it up to the international spotlight. The new filmmakers showed a much more cosmopolitan attitude, more focused on speaking about concerns of the modern individual such as the lack of communication, loneliness and the alienation of human beings present in a bustling and overwhelmingly opressive society. The two great directors of this new cinema will be Roman Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski. The ultimate aim of the article is to define the transition from one generation to the next through Polanski's film, which serves to analyse the keys to the conflict, the outstanding role of the new generation and the change of paradigm in a cinema that until then felt anchored in the traumatic war and its tragic aftermath.