In 1945 a group of Polish mountaineers called the Blue Cross accomplished the impossible: snaking back and forth across the snow-blocked Tatra Mountains, they ferried wounded Czech partisans through German lines and into a safe haven in Poland. A decade later, at the end of the Stalinist era in Poland, director Andrzej Munk took on this heroic national story—endowing it, however, with an extraordinary visual vitality. Employing a verisimilitude that went far beyond the usual demands of socialist realism, he filmed with his crew in the same harsh, snowbound locations and cast several of the members of the original Blue Cross in their real-life roles. The beauty and ferocity of the Tatra Mountains and the faces of these rugged individuals become the central motif of the film.

Screens with The Men of the Blue Cross (see above)

Munk garnered international recognition with this breakthrough film, a poignant satire on the vagaries of heroism in wartime and “the bitter irony of Polish fate.” The work is presented in two parts. The first, set during the Warsaw Uprising, follows Dzidzius, a small-time con-artist and black marketeer who finds himself on the accidental edges of heroism—delivering messages across enemy lines and accessing insurgent strongholds after he cuts a deal with the Hungarian officer with whom his wife is having an affair. The second section takes place in a prisoner-of-war camp that holds officers of the Uprising. United in morale by the example of a lieutenant who has escaped, the group eventually falls victim to petty squabblings as some become aware that their hero has merely taken to the rafters.