Product Details

• Actors: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzynska, Tadeusz Janczar, Janusz Paluszkiewicz, Ryszard Kotys
• Directors: Andrzej Wajda
• Format: Black & White, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: Polish
• Subtitles: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: June 6, 2000
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303031374
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,701 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
A Generation, the first film in Wajda's unplanned war trilogy (Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds), began a Polish film renaissance that would later include filmmakers Jerzy Skolimowski and Roman Polanski (who is featured in the cast)-Wajda, who fought for the Resistance during World War II, offers a strikingly unsentimental appraisal of heroism in the tale of a cocky Polish youth who decides to fight the Nazis after he falls for a pretty Resistance leader. Barely out of their teens, he and his brash friends approach their first mission-to help escapees during the Warsaw ghetto uprising-like a game of cops and robbers. Inevitably, the game turns deadly and the innocence of a generation is lost under the grueling conditions of war. With its unflinching realism, Wajda's first feature film set the tone for his many powerful works (Danton, Man of Marble, A Love in Germany).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The First Act..., November 25, 2001

By	Adam Martin (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews

A tragic yet ultimately hopeful film (in stark contrast to the unrelentingly bleak "Kanal", or fatalistic "Ashes and Diamonds"), "A Generation" follows a young mans progression from niave lover to hardened fighter through his involvement with a woman and, subsequently, the Polish resistance during WWII. The story is told more lyrically than other Wajda films, but the harsh realities of the protagonists situation are never far from mind. Performances are excellent across the board, and Wajda's direction, as always, subtly indicates what is to come: feelings of claustrophobia and inevitability are less blatant than Kanal, but are there none-the-less, and serve as effective counter points to the couple's love story. Altogether a superb film, and an essential first act for those following the thematic arcs of the trilogy as a whole.

3.0 out of 5 stars So-so, September 5, 2008

By	Cosmoetica "cosmoeticadotcom" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

Sometimes films get reputations way out of proportion with their artistic merit simply because they expound a point of view that the public, or critics, like or agree with. Such is the case with the first feature length film from Polish film legend Andrzej Wajda. Released in 1955, the 87 minute long black and white film A Generation (Pokolenie), is not a particularly good film. No, it's not a bad film, but it visually resembles a mediocre 1940s film noir admixed with a touch of Italian Neo-Realism from its blighted and impoverished landscapes. Its characters, such as they are, are not realistic, and merely one dimensional tools for the agitprop that is at the heart of the film.
Yes, one must realize that the film needed to be green lighted by Polish censors, but unlike the ways a more mature Wajda, and later filmmakers like Roman Polanski (who has a small acting role in the film) and Krzysztof Kieslowski (called the Polish School), would, A Generation plays out more like a Primer for Communism. It became part of a de facto War Trilogy of films made about Poland's World War Two Experience, and it is packaged by The Criterion Collection as part of a Three War Films collection, along with Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds (Popió I Diament). Hopefully the two later films provide more true cinema to be savored....
The cinematography by Jerzy Lipman is solid but unspectacular, and the scoring not even up to Hollywood B film melodrama standards. Often, mediocre films like this are defended by acolytes on grounds that its visuals are `pure cinema,' or some such. Well, this one's are not, but even were the mise-en-scene great, it would not make up for the leaden acting, dull script, and agitprop galore. Given that an average feature film will have dozens to hundreds of framed shots, the laws of average, and random chance, will demand that a few will be well-composed. So? It's whether or not a far greater number than average are which matters. Or whether or not the few that are are super-poetic, or the like. Then, one might have an argument over the visual elements raising up the bar for the film. A Generation lacks that, all of that.
Similarly, although it is reasonable to argue that the Marxist references in the film were intended, at the time, as a sly backhanded critique of the system, none of that matters now, as it is simply blatant agitprop. Great art rises above such strictures, and the idiocies of would be censors. Minor anachronisms- such as a racist caricature of a black man on a cuckoo clock, are not as egregious, since it is emblemic of the times and its attitudes. Overall, A Generation does show some promise, especially in the Jasio Krone character, and a few scenes of realistic interplay, such as when Dorota and Stach first have sex, because she refuses to let him leave after the Nazi curfew has come. But, these are few. Wajda may have gone on to become a great filmmaker, but that grace is not evident here. Perhaps that is another legacy of art in totalitarian states, inside or outside a celluloid frame.