Franciszek Pieczka in The Scar (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1976)
Cast: Franciszek Pieczka, Mariusz Dmochowski, Jerzy Stuhr, Michal Tarkowski, Stanislaw Igar, Joanna Orzeszkowska, Halina Winiarska, Agnieszka Holland. Screenplay: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Romuald Karas, based on a novel by Romuald Karas. Cinematography: Slawomir Idziak.
The Scar was Krzysztof Kieslowski’s first non-documentary theatrical feature – he had previously made a fiction film for television – and it’s a quite accomplished one. He draws heavily on his work as a documentary maker to tell the story of the frustrating experiences of Stefan Bednarz (Franciszek Pieczka), a member of the Polish Communist Party, who is picked to build and run a factory making chemical fertilizer in Olechów, a town where he and his wife had previously lived. His wife (Halina Winiarska), however, has no interest in returning to Olechów – she has unpleasant memories of the place and its people, some of whom Bednarz will be forced to work with – so she stays behind in Warsaw, as does their grown daughter, Eva ( Joanna Orzeszkowska), whose liberated lifestyle vexes Bednarz. From the outset, Bednarz is faced with conflict from the residents of the town, who resent having the forest felled and some of the older houses torn down to make way for the construction. Throughout his stay in Olechów, Bednarz will struggle with townspeople, old resentments, management bureaucracy, government bureaucracy, discontented workers, and the media. Seen today, The Scar resonates with both Polish history and worldwide environmental concerns – there’s a heartbreaking scene of a deer, displaced from the forest, begging food from humans, who feed it cigarettes – but even then it was a striking demonstration of Kieslowski’s ability to work with actors, including many non-professionals, and to craft a narrative.
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