Jerzy Skolimowski

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Jerzy Skolimowski bigraphy, stories - Film director

Jerzy Skolimowski : biography

May 5, 1938 –

Jerzy Skolimowski ( born May 5, 1938) is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol (The Menacing Eye). He lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years where he painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and acted occasionally in films. More recently, he returned to Poland, and to film making as a writer and director after a 17 year hiatus with Cztery noce z Anną (Four Nights With Anna) in 2008.

Early life

Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland, the son of Maria (née Postnikoff) and Stanisław Skolimowski, an architect. He often recognized indications in his work to a childhood ineradicably scarred by the War. As a small child he witnessed the brutalities of war, even having been rescued from the rubble of a bombed-out house in Warsaw. His father, a member of the Polish Resistance, was executed by the Nazis. His mother hid a Jewish family in the house and Skolimowski recalls being required to take candy from the Nazis to maintain appearances.

After the war, his mother became the cultural attaché of the Polish embassy in Prague. His fellow pupils at school in Poděbrady, a spa town near Prague, included future film-makers Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer, as well as Václav Havel.Geoffrey Macnab, The Guardian, 11 March 2009,

Skolimowski was considered as a trouble maker at school as he was the origin of many pranks which angered the authorities. At college he studied ethnography, history and literature and took up boxing, which was also the subject of a feature-length documentary, his first significant film. Skolimowski’s interest in jazz and association with composer Krzysztof Komeda brought him into contact with actor Zbigniew Cybulski and directors Andrzej Munk and Roman Polanski.

Film as life

After Barrier he left Poland to make Le Départ in Belgium in French. According to him Le Départ was a light film rather than a comedy, "does not have the serious layers that I like in my work." Skolimowski returned to Poland to make Ręce do góry (Hands Up!), the third film of the Andrzej trilogy and the fourth of his Polish sextet. The anti-Stalinist themes of Hands Up! resulted in that film being banned and him being effectively expelled from then communist Poland. He then resettled in London, notably having Jimi Hendrix as a neighbor in the same building.

Between Hands Up! and his next feature, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Gerard (1970), Skolimowski contributed a story to a Czech-produced portmanteau film, Dialóg 20-40-60 (1968), in which three different directors (with Zbyněk Brynych and Peter Solan) each devised their own story using identical dialogue even though the central characters in each section are separated in age by twenty years. Skolimowski’s segment, "The Twenty Year Olds", would seem to be an extension of Le départ with Jean-Pierre Léaud playing opposite Skolimowski’s wife Joanna Szcerbic.

Deep End (1970) was Skolimowski’s second non-Polish feature to be based on his own original screenplay. The movie with a coming of age storyline bears distinctive thematic similarities to Le Départ. Deep End was a promising film yet it was poorly handled by the studio. His films The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982) became critical successes, with Moonlighting, made in the UK and starring Jeremy Irons, the fifth of his Polish sextet, being critically and commercially his most successful film.

Filmography

Director

  • Erotique (Erotyk) (1960)
  • Little Hamlet (Hamles) (1960)
  • The Menacing Eye (Oko wykol) (1960)
  • Boxing (Boks) (1961)
  • Your Money or Your Life (Pieniadze albo zycie) (1961)
  • The Nude (1962)
  • Identification Marks: None (Rysopis) (1964)
  • Walkover (Walkower) (1965)
  • Barrier (Bariera) (1966)
  • Le départ (1967)
  • Ręce do góry (subitiled English version entitled Hands Up!, completed 1967, released 1981)
  • Deep End (1970)
  • The Adventures of Gerard (1970)
  • King, Queen, Knave (1972)
  • The Shout (1978)
  • Moonlighting (1982)
  • Dialóg 20-40-60 (1968) (segment "The Twenty-Year-Olds")
  • Success Is the Best Revenge (1984)
  • The Lightship (1985)
  • Torrents of Spring (1989)
  • Ferdydurke (30 Door Key) (1991)
  • Four Nights with Anna (Cztery noce z Anną) (2008)
  • America (2008)
  • Essential Killing (2010)