a-a-d
Old master director Jerzy Hoffman makes $8 million look like Peter Jackson's $800 million, and then some. Lord of the Rings looks juvenile and cheap in comparison. The massive battles are more massive. The costumes, weaponry, armor, and horses are real and period-correct. The hack and slash sword fights look like sword fights, not superhero ballet, but are all the better for it.Think of a sort of medieval "Three Musketeers", but bigger, brighter, and better, in the final days of knights, swords, lances, and chivalry. It is a tale of love, honor, passion, and two men's fight for a woman, to the backdrop of civil war that began in much the same way.The year is 1647. The historical backdrop is what begins as a personal feud, when a Polish nobleman, Sheriff Chaplinsky, burns and loots his rival Ukrainian Cossack commander Bogdan Khmelnitsky's estate, whips his son from a prior marriage to within an inch of his life, and kidnaps and forcibly marries his lover and bride-to-be. It turns into civil war over equal rights for Ukrainian nobility. Khmelnitsky (played by the then-Minister of Culture of the Ukraine) is laughed out of a Polish courthouse, given an insultingly meager compensation for damages, and told that his woman is now her kidnapper's and rapist's legal wife, in the eyes of God and men. When he protests and calls for justice, he is asked if a Cossack doesn't have a sword to cut out his own justice, and almost killed. Unwittingly, the Polish protagonist saves him, when he sees the well-dressed proud man assaulted by a gang of lowlifes masquerading as Tartars.Angry, slighted, shamed, bitter, and insulted, feeling that he has been denied the rights given to him by God and King, he heads out to the Sich, the Cossack's stronghold. There, he campaigns on a platform of Cossack rights to equal those of Polish nobility, is elected Warlord (hetman), and leads the wild, freedom-loving, and fiercely independent Orthodox Cossack host in rebellion against the Catholic Polish crown, which will ultimately end (off-screen) with the Ukraine's secession to the Russian Empire.(just background historical info above; possibly some MILD SPOILERS below)As this bloody war burns in the background, four Polish knights led by the protagonist, dashing young Hussar (heavy lancer) officer Jan Skrzetuski, and Ukrainian Colonel Bohun, perhaps the most daring and charming antagonist rogue of all cinema ever, fight their own private feud. At the center of the conflict is lovely Ukrainian maiden Helena, who although promised by her family to the dark and passionate Cossack Bohun, falls for and chooses our handsome Polish knight Jan. Bohun learns of this, and in a murderous rage slaughters her relatives, then pursues her across war-torn Ukraine. Between gorgeous massive battle scenes in excellent period costume, Jan and his sidekicks clash over and over with the tragically obsessed Bohun for Helena, find her, lose her, regain her, and are themselves imprisoned, released, escaped, and ransomed, in a film full of daring escapes, edge-of-your-seat duels, shootouts, and all manner of other swashbuckling staples, with even a bit of wholesome cross-dressing involved.Our hero Jan is aided by his old friend and sometime rival Michal Wolodyjowski, called the Little Knight, the diminutive first sword of Poland. With them tags along morbidly obese, homeless, and impoverished cowardly drunkard, ex-knight, and experienced cheat old Pan Zagloba. Later, this company is joined by the aptly-named towering 7-foot walking anachronism Longinus Podbipieta, and aging oaf of a knight, sworn to celibacy until he chops off 3 men's heads in one swing (and he does). Armed with a gigantic ancient family two-hander passed from father to son since the Crusades, so heavy he alone can swing it, he wanders Poland and the Ukraine to fulfill his quest and finally marry. With them also is Jan's squire, a no-good thieving opportunist and coward who never lets anyone forget that, though now impoverished and forced to serve, he too comes from noble blood. Again and again, they run afoul of the reckless and fearless rogue Cossack Bohun, part knight and part brigand, harsh, hateful, depressive master of the banzai charge, ever fighting and winning hopeless battles, and laughing death in the face every step of the way.Watch this motley crew fight, drink, swindle, and flee through a treacherous landscape of civil war, battles, sieges, duels, and skirmishes, overflowing with barbaric Cossacks, mercenary Tartars (Mongols), stalwart and merciless Polish knights, sadistic, self-serving, and rather homosexual Turkish beis (lords), dashing brigands, cowardly peasants, and rows of corpses hung on trees for no greater crime than being in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time. There are even men dying on stakes, a lesbian pagan witch guarded by a blind sharpshooter that she keeps for a dog, and a long nude maiden bathing scene for the viewer's pleasure.This is THE epic swashbuckling tale, the kind of film you remember 10 years after seeing it. A must watch, even if you've never been partial to the genre, and possibly your new favorite movie ever if you like this sort of stuff!
Pantera-3
When Jerzy Hoffman completed the filming of this, the first of the stories in Henryk Sienkiewicz's epic Trilogy, he was actually completing a 30-year labor of love. Although it is the first of the three stories, "Ogniem i Mieczem" (Eng. "With Fire and Sword") was filmed last. (This allowed Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski to appear in this film as the father of the character he portrayed in "Pan Wolodyjowki", the finale of the saga, in 1969. Olbrychski also played the lead in "Potop" (Eng. "The Deluge"), part two of the trilogy, in 1974. I believe he is the only actor to have appeared in all three parts.) After seeing all four films ("The Deluge" is so long that, on film as in the novel, it was split into two parts), I was inspired to read the books, and enjoyed them immensely.Maybe it's because I saw it first, or appreciate the more modern production values, or like the story better, but this is my favorite of the films. It instantly became one of my all-time favorite movies.If you love the tales of Alexander Dumas, then this film is definitely for you. It has swashbuckling "all for one and one for all" heroes, a beautiful princess, sword fights and battles, two delightful comic relief sidekicks (although one comes across far better in the book), a vivid and colorful assortment of characters (and what faces!), a lovely score... well, I could go on and on.Far better, though, that you sit down with a copy of this and just enjoy it for yourself.
