An intelligent low-budget film which uses its actors well in a study of the effects of love and a Borgesian examination of memory. The film is framed by Felicja's plane journey- her first- "now" (about 1963) to Paris, where she remembers her life. She is a famous radio actor who takes part in a two-character programme, part drama, part soap-opera, part sitcom, with Tomasz about a still-loving middle-aged couple. Felicja is a young actor in the provinces in 1939, in love with Wictor, who plays Hamlet to her Ophelia, her first part, when the Germans invade Poland. Tomasz, a kindly older man in love with Felicja, and the cynical Peters are other members of the cast. A year later she is a waitress in a café run by Tomasz. Peters comes in with a pair of Germans and Wictor slaps his face. Peters and the Germans leave and an unknown man shoots Peters. Wictor has to hide. Rather than take him to the arranged place, Felicja hides him in her flat- fortunately, as the original hiding-place is raided and Wictor is believed to have died jumping from a window in the raid. To keep Wictor hidden successfully, Felicja has to let two German soldiers have sex with her instead of searching the flat and takes a job in a German-run theatre. After the liberation Wictor leaves her- as she expected he would- and a tribunal bans Felicja from acting for five years as a collaborator, despite Tomasz's pleas for her, because she will not defend herself. The five years up, Tomasz offers Felicja the part that will make her famous. Later he tells her that Wictor is a drunk who has lost his talent and left his lover. Felicja goes to see him. Wictor reveals that the Germans may have killed Peters as a French agent and that he had confessed- truly or not- to betraying the people hiding him and said Felicja was a prostitute in the occupation. It would have been better, he says, if he had died when they said he died. Felicia still takes him back to the flat where she had originally hidden him and Wictor throws himself out of the window and dies. In short, as Wictor and Felicja and Felicia and Thomasz- and perhaps Felicja and her audience- show, the way to be loved and stay loved is not to love the person loving- a cruel cliché. However, the interest of the film is not the story but the fine acting and the skill with which Has directs. It has the standard aspects of low-budget cinema- long still shots, long conversations between two people, limited sets, but the actors- as well as the ones mentioned, there is a bacteriologist Felicja talks to on the plane, an expatriate former pilot returning from his first visit to Poland since the war- and director make the best of them and show no signs of strain or haste and there are shots which fore-show what Hals would do in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, The Doll or Pharaoh with much bigger budgets and larger casts. A small film, then but still worth seeing.
4 Reviews
Love in times of war
paulo-m-a-gominhas30 March 2024
"Jak byc kochana" or "How to be loved" was made by polish director Wojciech Has in 1963. The movie centers around a women, named Felicja, travelling to Paris, all the while remembering her old life during the war in Poland, and her turbulent and complex relationship with a theater actor, Wiktor, who is forced to go into hiding in her apartment.
Albeit a simple and traditional story about the II World War, Has seemed to be more focused on the characters per se than the overarching context of the time. From the beginning, the contrast between the main characters positions is evident. Being theater actors, before the war, their entire "being" (in particular that of Wiktor) was defined by being the center of attentions, the receiver of the applause, and the adoration that comes with it. Once in the times of war, however, he not only loses his status, but also his "self", being reduced almost to bird trapped in a cage. With no freedom to go out, to socialize, throughout the movie he feels as though he doesn't exist anymore, extending even after the end of the war itself.
Felicja, on the other hand, is also portrayed as a caged bird, but not in relation to her role in society, but in her relation towards Wiktor, whom she deeply loves. Her whole identity and purpose is shaped towards making sure that his object of adoration stays under her "wings" during the war, establishing an inevitable relationship of toxic dependency between her and him.
All this, however is nothing but mere memories, conceptualizations of the mind, being reflected on by the "present" Felicja, one who, despite far from the dangers of war, is deeply sorrowed by the lost love it entailed.
Has consequently portrays something more than just another II World War drama. Here, the facts of war, despite being in the epicenter of the times, are thrown into the background, to instrumental means to represent the loss of liberty, the loss of individual autonomy and "self", the loss of purpose in the world. Despite showing in some scenes the horrors associated with war, the major condemnations it makes of it are shown on how the characters reorient themselves in times of distress. How can they live day-by-day? How can they have hope? How can they endure all the suffering? In sum, how can they find meaning in their lives? These are the questions the movie tries to answer.
Albeit a simple and traditional story about the II World War, Has seemed to be more focused on the characters per se than the overarching context of the time. From the beginning, the contrast between the main characters positions is evident. Being theater actors, before the war, their entire "being" (in particular that of Wiktor) was defined by being the center of attentions, the receiver of the applause, and the adoration that comes with it. Once in the times of war, however, he not only loses his status, but also his "self", being reduced almost to bird trapped in a cage. With no freedom to go out, to socialize, throughout the movie he feels as though he doesn't exist anymore, extending even after the end of the war itself.
Felicja, on the other hand, is also portrayed as a caged bird, but not in relation to her role in society, but in her relation towards Wiktor, whom she deeply loves. Her whole identity and purpose is shaped towards making sure that his object of adoration stays under her "wings" during the war, establishing an inevitable relationship of toxic dependency between her and him.
All this, however is nothing but mere memories, conceptualizations of the mind, being reflected on by the "present" Felicja, one who, despite far from the dangers of war, is deeply sorrowed by the lost love it entailed.
Has consequently portrays something more than just another II World War drama. Here, the facts of war, despite being in the epicenter of the times, are thrown into the background, to instrumental means to represent the loss of liberty, the loss of individual autonomy and "self", the loss of purpose in the world. Despite showing in some scenes the horrors associated with war, the major condemnations it makes of it are shown on how the characters reorient themselves in times of distress. How can they live day-by-day? How can they have hope? How can they endure all the suffering? In sum, how can they find meaning in their lives? These are the questions the movie tries to answer.
Has at his best
kpiotrzk23 January 2022
Beautiful and heart-breaking
emepar30 April 2021
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