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Andrzej Wajda - Attempts at writing a screenplay to Wyspiański's 'The Wedding' (114/222)

388 views · Published 26 October 2017 · 4:11 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), whose début films portrayed the horror of the German occupation of Poland, won awards at Cannes which established his reputation as storyteller and commentator on Polish history. He also served on the national Senate from 1989-91. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki]

TRANSCRIPT: I directed 'The Wedding' in the theatre for the first time in '60. That was the first time I'd come across 'The Wedding' and in my naivety - those were my first attempts at working in the theatre as it was my third, fourth play, fourth piece of work in the theatre - and so I thought to myself, well, 'The Wedding' takes place in a crowd, everyone's dancing. Dialogue leaps out of the the crowd - that's what a wedding feast is. However, when there's dancing in the theatre, there isn't a single actor who could make himself heard above the noise of the dance. All you can hear is the sound of feet stamping on the stage and the music needs to be sufficiently loud. It's either or. Either there'll be dancing on stage or there'll be dialogue which is the essence of the work. Because of this, I pushed this wedding feast to one side where it still sort of exists but in effect, I didn't manage to impose a new and amazing staging of 'The Wedding' in the theatre. However, I learned a great deal then, I understood much, I came to know those characters, to understand what the people in this drama signify by the thoughts that come to those who, in the middle of this wild wedding feast, suddenly begin to consider the future of our country, our future and what will happen to us. Because of this, it's not hard to guess that I had the simple idea of writing a screenplay about a wedding party taking place today with contemporary characters and all the problems that exist today. I talked Andrzej Kijowski into this and he was very enthusiastic about it, writing a work in verse, so to speak. However, in this work there appeared a village councillor, the head of the collective farm, and a Party activist from the capital. There was no way that this was going to be passed by any screenplay committee. Earlier, I'd tried to talk to Jerzy Andrzejewski about this. Among all of his projects, Jerzy Andrzejewski, who was a very capricious individual, would begin something then he'd drop it and then years later he'd go back to it. He became very enthused by it, as he always was about everything, it was fantastic. Great, he was enthusiastic, we'll make a film, let's write. At that time, one of our best known actors was getting married so he had the idea that it would be good to make this into a palace because the wedding reception was being held in a well known palace just outside Warsaw. So we'll have the Party activists on one side and the artists on the other, that way we'll have a similar divide to the way they had it. However, there was no such thing left as a real peasant - real peasants have died out, so instead we planned to take the dance troupe 'Mazowsze'. That was our dance troupe that used to travel around and represent us - a folkloric group. There were no real peasants left so we'd have folklore instead, to the delight of the establishment. This idea was even worse and had an even smaller chance of being made into a film.

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