Abstract

Jerzy Skolimowski is one of the most original Polish directors and one of only a handful who has gained genuine recognition abroad. This is the first monograph, written in English, to be devoted to his cinema. It covers Skolimowski's career from his early successes in Poland, such as Identification Marks: None and Barrier, through his émigré films, Deep End, Moonlighting and The Lightship, to his return to Poland where, in 2008, he made the internationally acclaimed Four Nights with Anna.

Ewa Mazierska addresses the main features of Skolimowski's films, such as their affinity to autobiographism and surrealism, while discussing their characters, narratives, visual style, soundtracks, and the uses of literature. She draws on a wide range of cinematic and literary texts, situating Skolimowski's work within the context of Polish and world cinema, and drawing parallels between his work and that of two directors, with whom he tends to be compared, Roman Polański and Jean-Luc Godard.

"Ewa Mazierska's monograph is the first book-length study of [Jerzy Skolimowski's] work, nearly half a century after his emergence as a one-man Polish New Wave ... Mazierska eschews a chronological survey in favour of five themed essays ... this approach allows her to make connections between outwardly disparate films and mount a convincing challenge to the received opinion that there are fundamental differences between his Polish and non-Polish output ... this is an important, desperately overdue book."  ·  Sight & Sound

“This is a long-awaited book. Although Jerzy Skolimowski, along with Roman Polanski and Agnieszka Holland, is among the most recognized Polish filmmakers working abroad, his oeuvre has not so far been the subject of a detailed analysis. Ewa Mazierska's monograph fills this gap… Mazierska's strength lies in solid close analysis within a broad contextual framework provided in relation to the films. The last chapter of the book devoted to aural strategies is a genuine achievement in analytical writing on cinema. Its scope and depth goes beyond the usual attention given to this aspect of cinematic form in monographs on filmmakers. Mazierska offers a groundbreaking analysis of both the formal and semantic aspects of sound and music in Skolimowski's work.”  ·  Slavic Review

“Mazierska pioneers in the field with the first ever book fully devoted to the director. Her monograph with its rich factual and theoretical tissue appears to be a breakthrough work that not only collects in one place information and available scholarship about the director, but also proposes solid conceptual framework, upon which further studies can be based...Next to its contribution to film knowledge, Mazierska’s work can certainly play an inspirational role for researchers and students of European cinema.”  ·  Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Contemporary Cinema, Department of Humanities, University of Central Lancashire. Her publications include Crossing New Europe: The European Road Movie (Wallflower Press, 2006), Dreams and Diaries: The Cinema of Nanni Moretti (Wallflower Press, 2004) and From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003), all co-authored with Laura Rascaroli and Women in Polish Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2006), co-authored with Elżbieta Ostrowska.