Jerzy Skolimowski

Caption	Jerzy Skolimowski
Birth date	May 05, 1938
Birth place	Łódź, Poland

Jerzy Skolimowski (born May 5, 1938) is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol (The Menacing Eye). He lived in Los Angeles where he painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and acted occasionally in films. More recently, he began dividing his time between the US and Poland and returned to film making as a writer and director after a 17 year hiatus with Four Nights With Anna (Cztery noce z Anną) in 2008.

Early life

Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland, the son of Maria (née Postnikoff) and Stanisław Skolimowski, an architect. He often recognized indications in his work to a childhood ineradicably scarred by the War. As a small child he witnessed the brutalities of war, even having been rescued from the rubble of a bombed-out house in Warsaw. His father, a member of the Polish Resistance, was executed by the Nazis. His mother hid a Jewish family in the house and Skolimowski recalls being required to take candy from the Nazis to maintain appearances.

Skolimowski was considered as a trouble maker at school as he was the origin of many harmless jokes which angered the authorities. At college he studied ethnography, history and literature and took up boxing, which was also the subject of a feature-length documentary, his first significant film. Skolimowski's interest in jazz and association with composer Krzysztof Komeda brought him into contact with actor Zbigniew Cybulski and directors Andrzej Munk and Roman Polanski.

Writer and actor

In his early twenties Skolimowski was already a writer, having published several books of poems, short stories and a play. Soon he met Andrzej Wajda, the leading director of the then dominant 'Polish school' and twelve years Skolimowski's senior, who has showed him a script for a film about youth written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, the author of the novel Ashes and Diamonds. Skolimowski was not impressed and dismissed the script. However in response to a challenge by Wajda, he produced his own version which became a basis for the finished film, Innocent Sorcerers (1960), directed by Wajda with Skolimowski playing a boxer.

Skolimowski enrolled in the Łódź Film School with the intention of avoiding the long apprenticeship required before graduating to feature film direction. He used the film stock available to him for student exercises, and with initial advice from Andrzej Munk, he filmed over several years in such a way that the sequences cut together into a feature. While scoring poorly in course work Skolimowski had a finished feature by the end of the course.

Into the movie arena

Skolimowski then collaborated with Polański, writing the dialogue for the script of Knife in the Water (1962).

Between 1964 and 1984 he completed six semi-autobiographical features: Rysopis, Walkover, Barrier (1966), Hands Up! (completed 1967, released 1981), Moonlighting (GB 1982) and Success Is the Best Revenge, a segment in Dialóg and two other features Le Départ (1967) and Deep End based on his original screenplays. Le Départ won the Golden Bear at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival.

While living and working in many countries, he also completed another six relatively big budget productions, including four international co-productions, between 1970 and 1992 (The Adventures of Gerard, King, Queen, Knave, The Shout, The Lightship, Torrents of Spring and Ferdydurke), all distinctly bearing Skolimowski’s signature.

Skolimowski has said that he makes films to please himself.

Film as life

After Barrier he left Poland to make Le Départ in Belgium in French. According to him Le Départ was a light film rather than a comedy, "does not have the serious layers that I like in my work." Skolimowski returned to Poland to make Hands Up!, the third film of the Andrzej trilogy and the fourth of his Polish sextet. Between Hands Up! and his next feature, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Gerard (1970), Skolimowski contributed a story to a Czech-produced portmanteau film, Dialóg 20-40-60 (1968), in which three different directors (with Zbynek Brynych and Peter Solan) each devised their own story using identical dialogue even though the central characters in each section are separated in age by twenty years. Skolimowski's segment, "The Twenty Year Olds", would seem to be an extension of Le départ with Jean-Pierre Léaud playing opposite Skolimowski's wife Joanna Szcerbic.

Deep End (1970) was Skolimowski's second non-Polish feature to be based on his own original screenplay. The movie with a coming of age storyline bears distinctive thematic similarities to Le Départ. Deep End was a promising film yet it was poorly handled by the studio. His films The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982) became critical successes, with Moonlighting, made in the UK, the fifth of his Polish sextet, critically and commercially his most successful film.

In America

The Lightship, Skolimowski’s first US production, was adapted from a novella by the German writer Siegfried Lenz. Set on a US coastguard ship it was filmed in the North Sea. It is suspended between psychological duel with a doppelgänger theme and a pure performance piece within the stage-like confines of the lightship. However, even though receiving the best film award at the Venice Film Festival, The Lightship had only a very limited release. Torrents of Spring (1989), adapted from a semi-autobiographical novella by the Russian Ivan Turgenev, was a big budget European co-production starring Timothy Hutton, Nastassja Kinski and Valeria Golino. It could be considered as Skolimowski’s most impersonal 'generic' film, the only real departure from his expressed interest in making films only to please himself.

Skolimowski is also an actor, having appeared as Colonel Chaikov, a ruthless yet composed KGB colonel, in White Nights (1985) and Uncle Stepan, a Russian expatriate in Eastern Promises (2007), among other roles.

Quotations

As a poet my mind is trained along the path of poetic associations — I'm not afraid to wander away from direct narrative - I feel safe with a story that tempts you to believe or disbelieve.

Filmography

Director

Erotique (Erotyk) (1960)

Little Hamlet (Hamles) (1960)

The Menacing Eye (Oko wykol) (1960)

Boxing (Boks) (1961)

Your Money or Your Life (Pieniadze albo zycie) (1961)

The Nude (1962)

(Rysopis) (1964)

Walkover (Walkower) (1965)

Barrier (Bariera) (1966)

Le départ (1967)

Rece do góry (subitiled English version entitled Hands Up!, completed 1967, released 1981)

Deep End (1970)

The Adventures of Gerard (1970)

King, Queen, Knave (1972)

The Shout (1978)

Moonlighting (1982)

Dialóg 20-40-60 (1968) (segment "The Twenty-Year-Olds")

Success Is the Best Revenge (1984)

The Lightship (1985)

Torrents of Spring (1989)

Ferdydurke (30 Door Key) (1991)

Four Nights with Anna (Cztery noce z Anna) (2008)

America (2008)

Essential Killing (2010)

Actor

Niewinni czarodzieje (1960)

Boks (1961)

Rysopis (1964) as Andrzej Leszczyc

Walkower (1965) as Andrzej Leszczyc

Sposob bycia (1966) as Leopold

Deep End (1970) as a man with newspaper

Rece do góry (1981) as Andrzej Leszczyc

Die Fälschung (1981) as Hoffmann

White Nights (1985) as KGB Colonel Chaiko

Big Shots (1987) as Doc

Torrents of Spring (1989) as Victor Victorovich

Mars Attacks! (1996)

L.A. Without a Map (1998)

Before Night Falls (2000)

Eastern Promises (2007) as Stepan

References

External links

Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database

Category:1938 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of National Film School in Łódź Category:Polish actors Category:Polish dramatists and playwrights Category:Polish film directors Category:Polish screenwriters Category:People from Łódź