THE PRINCE AND THE DYBBUK
Poland, 2017, 82 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski.
The prince of the title of this film is a Polish director who flourished in Poland during the 1930s, Michal Waszynski. The film opens with his being buried in Rome in 1965, testimony from his friends, his adopted family, tributes to his urbane manner, generosity, his Catholicism.
The makers of this film beg to differ – at least in some substantial issues.
In some ways, the film is a piece of detection, going behind the facade and reputation of the director, his origins in Ukraine, the town of Kolvel, his belonging to a Jewish family, his leaving home, taking on his professional name, creating a story about his being a Polish Prince, successfully directing number of light films from 1933 but a focus, especially, on his Jewish drama with Yiddish dialogue, The Dybbuk, 1937.
The film provides a great deal of information about Michal Waszynski. It is something like a dossier of visual information, of clips from his films, of interviews with people who knew him, with people who investigated him. While there is a lot of material about who he was, indications of how he behaved, there is much more that could have been made of why he behaved as he did. There are quotations from his diaries which indicate the nature of his introspection about himself.
Waszynski appeared once again in the early 1940s in a Polish squad of military, working with the allies, his role being a film director, making quite a number of documentaries including the taking of Monte Cassno and some feature films in Italy at the end of the war. He had claimed to be a Soviet prisoner in Siberia but it is suggested that he may have created this myth. A graphologist looking at his writing in the 1940s and in the 1960s suggests that he was prone to creating myths about himself and believing them (a lot of the evidence being the use of his writing the letter T).
He established himself in Italy, married an ageing Countess and inherited her fortune. People in the village with long memories at sympathetic recollections of him. He befriended Italian families, stood as godfather to one of the children, is seen in clips with such actresses Ava Gardner (at the time of the making of The Barefoot Contessa in which he appears in a scene), Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. The wife and daughter of Joseph L Mankiewiecz, the director of The Barefoot Contessa give interviews about their impressions of him.
William Bronston, son of the producer Samuel Bronston, is interviewed about the making of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), the Prince’s presence on the set, his fastidious attention to detail, and some of the extras commenting on his sexual orientation – but not being accusatory. (A great deal of attention is given to the building of the sets for the film and a later visit to the site, a forest with all indications of the film having disappeared.)
But, the important focus of this investigation is The Dybbuk. There are quite a number of clips from the film, indicating its plot of unrequited love, the self-sacrifice of the young Jewish Orthodox man, his death, transformed into the Dybbuk. Points are made about the Prince’s Jewish and Catholic identities, traditions of Jewish folklore, the young man wandering the world, exploring his identity, his loneliness and isolation.
The range of material in this film would provide a solid basis for further exploration of the career of Michal Waszynski and the puzzles of his personality.
