You mention Cyrankiewicz a couple times in the piece, a person who I find an interesting case of someone who made it through horrific circumstances with true heroism. But after it was over, was a broken man of a special sort. As a leading figure in the anti-communist Socialist underground during the war, Cyrankiewicz had to either flee or at least pay lip service attesting to his true loyalty to Poland's new Stalinist masters if he wanted to escape Pilecki's fate. But he went much further, rising to power, prestige, and a very comfortable life on the tortured corpses of his old friends and fellow resistance fighters, people whose painful deaths he loudly cheered.
The contrast had always puzzled me until I read a long article on him a few years ago. In it was an account of a conversation Cyrankiewicz had in 1945 where he told a friend that he had gone through hell and that he deserved a good life after that. Cyrankiewicz was known for his sybaritic lifestyle in Communist Poland, I wonder if his conscience ever bothered him, if he bore a 'wound in his heart'.
Its main character is a simple man, a dike guard, who is caught up in the propaganda campaigns of the early Stalinist (pre-1956) communist regime. After several grotesque episodes, he is chosen to be a witness in a show trial of a disgraced communist - but he fails to play his role when he sees the previou false witness, the never punished ex-fascist who happened to be the one who during WWII broke all his teeth during an interrogation... *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Only? I am mortified!... :-) Seriously, it deserves every 10 it got.
And the synopsis sounds interesting.
The best is not the story, but that almost everything they say in the film is a quotable grotesqueness all in itself. Several lines became integrated into the Hungarian language.
Do you know if there is a German version?
The film's problem on the international stage was that it was indexed for ten years - when it came out (both in some theatres at home and some film festivals), it was 'old' and thus didn't got the attention a new film would have. (But I am told those who saw it wrote ravish critiques.) So sorry I am not much of a help here - I am not sure it was ever shown in Germany outside a film festival. But maybe some arthouse film library does have it. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
