1960 ‘Niewinni czarodzieje’ Directed by Andrzej Wajda
A young doctor is tired of being sought by women. One night he meets a young girl who all but forces herself into his room where they talk of morals and love. But he loses her when he goes out to see some friends and then rushes madly around the city after her.
Tadeusz Łomnicki Krystyna Stypułkowska Wanda Koczeska Kalina Jędrusik Teresa Szmigielówna Zbigniew Cybulski Roman Polanski Andrzej Nowakowski Andrzej Gawroński Marian Kociniak Krzysztof Komeda Henryk Kurek Sława Przybylska Jerzy Skolimowski Andrzej Trzaskowski Andrzej Wojciechowski Jan Zylber Janusz Kłosiński
Les Innocents charmeurs, Ingenui perversi, Die unschuldigen Zauberer, Nekalti burtininkai, 无罪的巫师, 순진한 마법사, Les Innocents Charmeurs
Poland
Poland
"Basil! Don’t forget that our conversation has to be intelligent"
And what a conversation it is.
This jazzy love story, primarily consists of a single real-time verbal joust, in which a young carefree womanizer finally finds a woman he actual likes, but then discovers to his surprise that he’ll need to find a way to get her to like him.
The dialogue is loaded with meaning and their patter moves so swiftly that I always felt like I was the one trying to catch up. I’m looking forward to watching this again to see if I can finally keep pace and pin down some of the underpinnings of what I missed.
BONUS POINTS for that wonderful towel illusion which, fooled me completely.
"You know Basil, for half an hour, I thought I fell in love with you…"
"For half an hour, I thought I fell in love with you."
Another wonderful Polish movie from Scorsese's Polish masterpiece collection (last year I watched Mother Joan of the Angels from the same restoration project). Very French New Wave, this is definitely a film that fans of Godard should see but also fans of Rohmer should check this out as well. I was very much reminded of Rohmer's Moral Tales, especially My Night At Maud's which is my favorite Rohmer I've seen (so far). I even prefer Innocent Sorcerers to the few Rohmer movies I've seen because I think Innocent Sorcerer's fairly unlikable male lead Bazyli (a love em and leave em doctor) is more developed and compelling even with…
Nie ma nic wspanialszego od pięknych dialogów i jazzu w tle. Dawno mnie tak żaden film nie zauroczył.
This felt like if a Polish person went to France and read the script for Breathless and then tried to translate it into Polish to somebody else and then that person made a movie based on that. I can't believe they both came out in the same year, they feel so similar.
I mean, it's just two people sitting around a studio apartment talking philosophy and flirting. Krystyna Stypułkowska is wonderful, besides her bright eyes and sly smile she's intelligent and in power–who knew an engaging female lead could happen in 1960? Tadeusz Łomnicki on the other hand reminded me of Oliver Reed in The Girl-Getters but he looked more like if Daniel Craig and David McCallum had a child. As for the meaning of it all, well I'm definitely missing some historic context here but this felt extremely Western... if you had told me this was a lost early Godard I would have mostly believed you.
On the surface, Innocent Sorcerers doesn't seem much like an Andrzej Wajda film. Indeed, it doesn't even seem like a Polish film of that era. In detailing the lives of young bohemian people in late '50s Warsaw, it's not at all like the films Wajda was previously known for (his celebrated War trilogy, which detailed the experiences of Polish youth through extreme hardship and horror) and likewise, with its depiction of the modish milieu of jazz clubs, proto-hipsters, scooters and a fondness for all things culturally pointing West, it is not what we usually have in mind when we think of Poland. Innocent Sorcerers actually feels more in line with the contemporary French New Wave, or the similar British movement…
