Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski | |
|---|---|
 Skolimowski at the 10th Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival in 2016 | |
| Born | 5 May 1938 Łódź, Poland |
| Alma mater | Łódź Film School |
| Occupation(s) | Filmmaker, director, screenwriter, actor, painter |
| Years active | 1960–present |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2 |
Jerzy Skolimowski (Polish: [ˈjɛʐɨ skɔliˈmɔfskʲi], born 5 May 1938) is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist, actor and painter.[2] Beginning as a screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorcerers (1960), Skolimowski has made more than twenty films since his directorial debut The Menacing Eye (1960). In 1967 he was awarded the Golden Bear prize for his Belgian film The Departure (1967). Among his other notable films is Deep End (1970), starring Jane Asher and John Moulder Brown.[3]
He lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years where he painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and occasionally acted in films. He returned to Poland, and to filmmaking as a writer and director, after a 17-year hiatus with Four Nights with Anna (2008).
He received the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. His film EO (2022) was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.
Early life
[edit]Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland, the son of Maria (née Postnikoff) and Stanisław Skolimowski, an architect.[4] 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 German occupiers Nazis. His mother hid a Polish Jewish family in the house and Skolimowski recalls being required to take candy from German soldiers to maintain appearances.[5]
After the war, his mother became the cultural attaché of the Polish embassy in Prague. His fellow pupils at school in Poděbrady, a spa town near Prague, included future film-makers Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer, as well as Václav Havel.[6]
Skolimowski was considered as a trouble maker at school as he was the origin of many pranks 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.[7]
Writer and actor
[edit]In his early twenties Skolimowski was already a writer, having published several books of poems, short stories and a play. Soon Skolimowski met Andrzej Wajda, the leading director of the then dominant 'Polish school' and twelve years his senior, who 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.[8]
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 were later clipped off and joined together into one piece of work. While scoring poorly in course work Skolimowski had a finished feature film by the end of the course.
Into the movie arena
[edit]Skolimowski then collaborated with Polański, writing the dialogue for the script of Knife in the Water (1962).[9]
Between 1964 and 1984 he completed six semi-autobiographical feature films: 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. Barrier won Grand Prix at Bergamo International Film Festival. Le Départ won the Golden Bear at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival.[10]
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.[11]
Film as life
[edit]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, stating that it "does not have the serious layers that I like in my work." [citation needed] Skolimowski returned to Poland to make Ręce do góry (Hands Up!), the third film of the Andrzej trilogy and the fourth of his Polish sextet. The anti-Stalinist themes of Hands Up! resulted in that film being banned and him being effectively expelled from then communist Poland.[12] He then resettled in London, notably having Jimi Hendrix as a neighbor in the same building.[13]
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 Zbyněk 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 Szczerbic.
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. His films The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982) became critical successes, with Moonlighting, made in the UK and starring Jeremy Irons, the fifth of his Polish sextet, being critically and commercially his most successful film.
In the United States
[edit]The Lightship, Skolimowski’s first US production, was adapted from a novella by the German writer Siegfried Lenz and starring Robert Duvall and Klaus Maria Brandauer. Set on a US Coast Guard 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 Russian author 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 appearances 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. In 2012, he appeared in The Avengers, as a villain interrogating Black Widow.[14]
Later career
[edit]
In 2008, he directed his first film after his return from the US Cztery noce z Anną (Four Nights with Anna).
In 2010, he directed Essential Killing starring Vincent Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner. The film won multiple awards including Special Jury Prize at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, Golden Ástor Award at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival and the Golden Lions Award for Best Film at the Gdynia Film Festival. In 2011, he became the recipient of the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[15]
In 2015, he directed thriller film 11 Minutes starring Richard Dormer and Andrzej Chyra. It was selected as the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards.[16]
In July 2016, at the Venice International Film Festival, Skolimowski was honoured with the Golden Lion for "lifetime achievement".[17]
His film EO premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize. The Polish-Italian co-production is a contemporary interpretation of the 1966 drama film Au hasard Balthazar directed by Robert Bresson.[18] Submitted by Poland, EO was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.[19] In 2022, he co-wrote Roman Polański's drama film The Palace.[20]
Filmography
[edit]| Year | Original Title | English Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Actor | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Hamles | Little Hamlet | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1960 | Oko wykol | The Menacing Eye | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1960 | Erotyk | Erotique | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1960 | Niewinni czarodzieje | Innocent Sorcerers | No | Yes | No | Yes | |
| 1961 | Boks | Boxing | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1961 | Pieniądze albo życie | Your Money or Your Life | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1961 | Rzeźba | Yes | Yes | No | No | ||
| 1962 | Nóż w wodzie | Knife in the Water | No | Yes | No | No | |
| 1962 | Druga taryfa | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| 1962 | Akt[21] | The Nude | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1965 | Rysopis | Identification Marks: None | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Also editor and art director |
| 1965 | Walkower | Walkover | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Also editor |
| 1966 | Sposób bycia | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 1966 | Bariera | Barrier | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1967 | Le départ | The Departure | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
| 1968 | Dialóg 20-40-60 | Yes | Yes | No | No | Anthology film; segment: "The Twenty-Year-Olds" | |
| 1970 | The Adventures of Gerard | Yes | Yes | No | No | ||
| 1970 | Deep End | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| 1972 | King, Queen, Knave | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| 1972 | Poślizg | No | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| 1978 | The Shout | Yes | Yes | No | No | ||
| 1981 | Ręce do góry | Hands Up! | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Filmed in 1967; also art director |
| 1981 | Die Fälschung | Circle of Deceit | No | No | No | Yes | |
| 1982 | Moonlighting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| 1984 | Success Is the Best Revenge | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| 1985 | The Lightship | Yes | No | No | No | ||
| 1985 | White Nights | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 1987 | Big Shots | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 1989 | Torrents of Spring | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | ||
| 1991 | Ferdydurke | 30 Door Key | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1993 | Motyw cienia | The Hollow Men | No | No | Yes | No | |
| 1996 | Mars Attacks! | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 1998 | L.A. Without a Map | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 2000 | Before Night Falls | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 2007 | Eastern Promises | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 2008 | Cztery noce z Anna | Four Nights with Anna | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2010 | Essential Killing | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | ||
| 2012 | The Avengers | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 2012 | Bitwa pod Wiedniem | The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683 | No | No | No | Yes | |
| 2015 | 11 Minut | 11 Minutes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2018 | Una storia senza nome | The Stolen Caravaggio | No | No | No | Yes | |
| 2018 | Juliusz | No | No | No | Yes | ||
| 2022 | IO | EO | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2023 | The Palace | No | Yes | No | No | ||
| Warszawianka | No | No | No | Yes | 7 episodes | ||
Awards
[edit]See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Shaffer, Marshall. "Interview: Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska on Changing Hearts with EO". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
- ^ "JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI – PAINTINGS". artefakt-berlin.de. Retrieved 20 February 2023.
- ^ "Deep End". 18 March 1971 – via www.imdb.com.
- ^ "Jerzy Skolimowski Biography (1938–)". www.filmreference.com.
- ^ "Wiecznie młody i niepokorny. Skolimowski kończy 80 lat". Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ Geoffrey Macnab, The Guardian, 11 March 2009, 'I had a wild life'
- ^ "Na początku był jazz". Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Portret: Skolimowski Jerzy". Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ Orr, John; Ostrowska, Elżbieta (2006). "The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World". ISBN 9781904764755. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Berlinale 1967: Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2010-02-27.
- ^ "Jerzy Skolimowski". Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Essential Killing, director Jerzy Skolimowski « Movie City News". moviecitynews.com. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2011-03-19.
- ^ Jak Skolimowski poznał Jimiego Hendrixa?[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Full Cast & Crew: The Avengers (2012)". Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Jerzy Skolimowski". filmpolski.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 8 March 2023.
- ^ Holdsworth, Nick (22 September 2015). "Oscars: Poland Nominates '11 Minutes' for Foreign-Language Category". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
- ^ Vivarelli, Nick (14 July 2016). "Venice Fest To Celebrate Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jerzy Skolimowski".
- ^ Macnab, Geoffrey (18 May 2022). "Jerzy Skolimowski on two-year shoot for Cannes Competition title 'EO'". Screen Daily. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
- ^ "2023 Oscars Nominations: See the Full List". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. January 24, 2023.
- ^ Keslassy, Elsa (April 25, 2022). "Roman Polanski's 'The Palace' Adds 'Fantastic Beasts' Actor Oliver Masucci, Fanny Ardant (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
- ^ "Jerzy Skolimowski". BFI. Archived from the original on April 15, 2016. Retrieved 2023-02-24.
- The Demons of Modernity: Ingmar Bergman and European Cinema, John Orr, Berghahn Books, 2014.
Further reading
[edit]- Jerzy Skolimowski - Entretien avec Jerzy Skolimowski In: Cahiers du cinéma (2011), no 666, pp. 23–28
- Jacques Déniel, Alain Keit, Marcos Uzal (eds.): Jerzy Skolimowski: Signes Particuliers, Editions Yellow Now, Crisnée 2013
- Ewa Mazierska: Jerzy Skolimowski: The Cinema of a Nonconformist, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford 2010 (Paperback 2013)
External links
[edit]
- Jerzy Skolimowski at culture.pl
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Jerzy Skolimowski at IMDb
- 'Two Paths, Little Glory For This Polish Director', Anthony Paletta, The Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2011
- External Wandering, Michael Atkinson, movingimagesource.us
- Finding Zen in Poland: An Interview with Jerzy Skolimowski, Ben Sachs and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, MUBI
- Photographs and literature on Jerzy Skolimowski
- 1938 births
- Living people
- Łódź Film School alumni
- Polish male actors
- 20th-century Polish dramatists and playwrights
- Polish male dramatists and playwrights
- Polish film directors
- Polish screenwriters
- Film people from Łódź
- People from Łódź Voivodeship (1919–1939)
- German Film Award winners
- Directors of Golden Bear winners
- Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay winners
- Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement recipients