Independent Films, Film Profiles

A Generation
by Andrzej Wajda

A Generation (Polish: Pokolenie) is a 1955 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It is based on the novel Pokolenie by Bohdan Czeszko, who also wrote the script, and it was Wajda's first film and the opening installment of what became his Three War Films trilogy set against the second World War, completed by Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds.A Generation is set in Wola, a working-class section of Warsaw, in 1942 and tells the stories of two young men at odds with the Nazi occupation of Poland. The young protagonist, Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki), is living in squalor on the outskirts of the city and carrying out wayward acts of theft and rebellion. After a friend is killed attempting to heist coal from a German supply train, he finds work as an apprentice at a workshop, where he becomes involved in an underground communist resistance cell guided first by friendly journeyman there who in turn introduces Stach to the beautiful Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska). An outsider, Jasio Krone (Tadeusz Janczar), the temperamental son of an elderly veteran, is initially reluctant to join the struggle but finally commits himself, running relief operations in the Jewish ghetto during the uprising there.