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Codes
(Szyfry)

Screening on Film
Directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has.
With Jan Kreczmar, Zbigniew Cybulski, Ignacy Gogolewski.
Poland/French, 1966, 35mm, black & white, 80 min.
Polish with English subtitles.
Print source: Adam Mickiewicz Institute

Has’ haunting parable of guilt and memory tells the tale of an anguished veteran returning after twenty years to his hometown of Crakow from a self-imposed exile in London where he had fled after World War II. He had abandoned his wife but not the vision of his youngest son who vanished suddenly, without explanation, during the war. Determined now to solve the mystery of his son’s disappearance, the father returns to discover the strange gap, and enigmatic coded language, separating him from former friends and family alike. To follow the trail of memories traced by the father, Codes uses a poetic structure that glides seamlessly between past and present, between memory and invention. The increasingly feverish and almost fantastical tone of the film points directly towards Has’ later hallucinatory masterpieces. The legendary Zbigniew Cybulski is remarkable as a jaded, washed up war hero, or traitor, his last Has role before his tragically premature death in a railroad crash in 1967. 

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