Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 4/4/2019)

There will also be a chance to catch up with Pawel Pawlikowski's Oscar-nominated Cold War and Olga Chajdas's Nina (which have previously been reviewed in this column), as well as take in an advance screening of Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek's My Friend the Polish Girl, which will go on general release later in the year. In addition to Jerzy Skolimowski's Hands Up! (1967), Wojciech Has's The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) and Andrzej Zulawski's The Third Part of the Night (1971) and On the Silver Globe (1988), the oldies strand also includes a tribute to sci-fi pioneer Stanislas Lem that comprises Lidiya Ishimbaeva and Boris Nirenburg's Solyaris (1968), Marek Piestrak's The Interrogation of Pilot Pirx (1979), and a pair of rarely seen shorts: Andrzej Wajda's Roly Poly (1968) and Mask (2010), by the Brothers Quay. 

Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the programme is the chance to contrast films from Krzysztof Zanussi's past and present, as Family Life (1971) screens alongside Ether (2018). Born in Warsaw in 1939, Zanussi started making amateur shorts in the 1950s before graduating from the prestigious Lodz Film School. Making innovative use of language, drama and cinematic technique, he has frequently explored the clash between personal morality and public duty, as well as humanity's attempts to escape the constraints of social and biological determinism. 

Having won a prize at Venice for his diploma film, The Death of a Provincial (1966), Zanussi confirmed his reputation with The Structure of Crystals (1969) and Illumination (1973) before making The Catamount Killing (1974) in the United States. Returning to Poland for Camouflage (1976), he joined Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Agnieszka Holland in shaping a Cinema of Moral Anxiety that reflected the tumultuous events that followed the rise of the Solidarity Trade Union. 

However, The Constant Factor and Contract (both 1980) proved so contentious that Zanussi was forced into exile. He returned home to lead the Tor film unit and won the Golden Lion at Venice with The Year of the Quiet Sun (1984). Since the collapse of Communism, he has continued to comment on the contemporary scene with pictures like At Full Gallop (1996), Life As a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease (2000), Persona Non Grata (2004) and Foreign Body (2014).

Made in 1970, Family Life was Zanussi's second feature and has a decidedly Chekhovian feel, as engineer Daniel Olbyrchski returns to home for the first time in six years because sister Maja Komorowska and aunt Halina Mikolajska have convinced him that his father is dying. When he arrives with friend, Jan Nowicka, however, he discovers that Jan Kreczmar has merely had an accident with an illicit still, as he seeks to drown his sorrows and forget the fact that his wife has left him and that his fortune has dwindled away since the government took over the family's glass factory.

In keeping with Zanussi's tendency to examine moral and philosophical themes, the density of the dialogue means that this sometimes resembles a stage play. But Witold Sobocinski's camera prowls the overgrown grounds of the ramshackle mansion that production designer Tadeusz Wybult adroitly contrasts with the gleaming office in which Olbyrchski works before being duped into the claustrophobic nightmare that he is forced to escape all over again. 

Set in 1912, Ether allows Zanussi to return to another pet theme, the benefits and abuse of science. At its heart is Jacek Poniedzialek, a doctor who is convinced that ether will allow him to control the minds of his patients. Although he is an atheist, patient Maria Ryaboshapka prays for his salvation, but Poniedzialek uses ether to sedate her with the intention of raping her. He exceeds the dosage, however, and is sentenced to death. As there is a shortage of medics on the border between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, Poniedzialek is transferred and is pleased to discover that his military masters are blithely unconcerned by his reckless experiments, even when he turns a promising wrestler into a violent maniac. 

But, while Zanussi gives Poniedzialek a devout peasant assistant (Ostap Vakulyuk) to challenge his Frankensteinian theories, he also reveals that the doctor has entered into a Faustian pact with the Devil, whose identity is revealed as `The Known Story' passes into `The Secret Story'. This sleight of hand might well have been more deftly executed, as it's somewhat signposted by the opening close-up of Flemish artist Hans Memling's `The Last Judgment' (1467-71). But Zanussi's has never been averse to risk when it comes to the intellectual nature of his content or the more melodramatic aspects of his storytelling. He is abetted here by Poniedzialek's bold performance, Joanna Macha's meticulously atmospheric production design and cinematographer Piotr Niemyjski's captivating use of light and colour. 

Another director with two films on show in Kinoteka 17 is Jagoda Szelc, whose Tower. A Bright Day (2017) is joined on the slate by Monument, which is a diploma film for the acting class at the Lodz Film School. While the former is a domestic drama that turns around the tensions that arise when prodigal Malgorzata Szczerbowska angers older sister Anna Zubrzycki by returning for niece Anna Krotoska's First Communion, the latter is a more episodic and escalatory, as a group of interns at a coastal hotel find themselves being requested to undertake increasingly bizarre and gruesome tasks.

First seen as strangers on a bus travelling through the night to their new place of work, the various boys and girls say little to each other. But they are disconcerted to discover that one of their number has mysteriously disappeared en route and that domineering supervisor Dorota Lukasiewicz-Kwietniewska isn't in the slightest bit concerned. They are soon too busy to investigate, however, as some are assigned jobs in the kitchen, laundry and dining-room, while others are required to remove the extreme amounts of rubbish and work on a concrete edifice in the nearby woods. Nevertheless, factions soon emerge, as the ambitious take it upon themselves to expose the failings of those they feel aren't pulling their weight. But Lukasiewicz-Kwietniewska is only interested in obedience, as the chores become ever more disgusting and the methods of customer care turn decidedly nasty. 

It's hard to know where to start with a film that is easier to experience than explain. Led by Paulina Walendziak, the ensemble of unknowns acquit themselves admirably, as Szelc subjects them to indignities and oddities that become ever more unsettling as the action develops. At times, it feels as though Szelc is testing the audience's endurance, as the scene switches from the claustrophobic bus to the soulless resort and the twisting catacombs. Moreover, it isn't always obvious what Szelc is trying to say about contemporary Poland or human nature, as viewers are left to reach their own conclusions. What is clear, however, is that the spirit of subversion that sustained Polish cinema during the Communist era is insistently alive and menacing. 

One might suggest that the picture would have appealed to the subject of critic Kuba Mikurda's debut documentary, Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk. Few will recall Parky at the Pictures devoting an entire DVD column to Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection when it was released by Arrow Academy in 2014. But this 10-disc set included The Beast (1975), which was frequently screened in Oxford during the heyday of irrepressible maverick Bill Heine's Penultimate Picture Palace. So, it's somewhat apt that this Borowczyk profile should appear at the end of such a poignant week. 

This isn't the first study of the onetime poster designer and animator, as Bertrand Mandico released a 40-minute study, Boro in the Box, in 2011. Mandico is also one of many talking heads reflecting here on Borowczyk's oeuvre. But Mikurda seems more afraid of affronting fellow critics like Peter Bradshaw, Mark Cousins and Slavoj Žižek and such film-making luminaries as Terry Gilliam, Patrice Leconte, Neil Jordan and Bertrand Bonello by failing to afford them copious close-ups that he leaves too little room for the clips they discuss. He also wastes Andrzej Wajda by limiting him to reminiscences about being Borowczyk's classmate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Crakow. 

Dotting the discourse with extracts from a mid-70s Frence tele-tribute, Mikurda devotes generous time to seminal works like Goto, Island of Love (1968), Immoral Tales (1974), The Beast and La Marge (1976), But he lingers overlong on Emmanuelle V (1986), for which the exiled Borowczyk directed the film-within-the-film, Love Express, before handing this Sylvia Kristel vehicle over to Thierry Bazin. Surely, this segment might have been more profitably used to consider Jan Lenica collaborations like Once Upon a Time (1957) and House (1958), a genuine classic like Blanche (1971), or such cult favourites as Mr and Mrs Kabal's Theatre (1967), Behind Convent Walls (1978) or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)? 

At one point, Bradshaw mentions that Borowczyk made very male films and there's something regrettably boys' clubbish about this exercise, as only critic Cherry Porter and Danish actress Lisbeth Hummel (who starred in The Beast) have been invited to provide the female perspective. Nevertheless, this haphazard affair makes a reasonable starting point for those new to this determinedly independent talent and will prompt his admirers to revisit their DVD collections or seek out Borowczyk's principal works online.  

Showing as part of the Stanislaw Lem retrospective, Kurt Maetzig's Silent Star (1960) offers audiences the chance to sample a rare example of East German science-fiction cinema. Also known under the English titles First Spaceship on Venus, Planet of the Dead and Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply, this adaptation of The Astronauts (1951) frustrated the author, who felt its effects were cheap and its message trite. However, some have suggested that this DEFA co-production prompted Gene Roddenberry to develop Star Trek, while Omega the robot was a possible influence on the Star Wars character, R2-D2. Indeed, it's even possible to equate the mysterious Venusian spool with the monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Spacy Odyssey (1968). 

The reel in question turns up in the Gobi Desert in 1985 and its constituent substance challenges the ingenuity of a group of international scientists gathered to examine it. Eventually, they decide it hails from Venus and a team is recruited to travel through outer space to determine its origin. Skippered by American academic Oldrich Lukes and piloted by German Günther Simon, the spaceship Kosmokrator includes among its crew members Japanese medical officer Yoko Tani, Polish engineer Ignacy Machowski, nuclear physicist Eduard von Winterstein, African communications officer Julius Ongewe, Indian mathematician Kurt Rackelmann, Chinese linguist Tang Hua-Ta, television reporter Lucinda Winnicka, and Russia cosmonaut Michail N. Postnikow and his wife, Ruth Maria Kubitschek. 

This line-up alone makes the Star Trek comparison seem eminently plausible, but the discovery that the creators of the spool had killed themselves in a bid to build a weapon to destroy Earth places too much emphasis on the kind of pacifist message that had informed countless Hollywood sci-fi B movies during the first decade of the Cold War. However, there is much to intrigue about the team behind the scenes. The visual effects were produced by Ernst Kunstmann, whose 40-year career saw him work on such landmark productions as Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919), FW Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926), Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), and Josef von Baky's Munchhausen (1943). Composer Andrzej Markowski created the electronic soundtrack with the aid of experimental sound engineer Krzysztof Szlifirski, while cinematographer Joachim Hasler went on to direct Ostalgie classic, Hot Summer (1968), a `beach party' romp that is regarded as the East German Grease. 

Then there's, Maetzig, whose Jewish ancestry had excluded him from the Nazi film industry that had trained editor Lena Neumann. However, he survived the Third Reich to found Filmaktiv, which became a cornerstone of DEFA, for whom he made landmark films like Marriage in the Shadows (1947), Council of the Cross (1950), Story of a Young Couple (1952) and The Rabbit Is Me (1965). Living to be 101, Maetzig remains the godfather of East German sci-fi, with this cult gem inspiring the likes of Gottfried Kolditz's Signals: An Outer Space Adventure (1970) and In the Dust of the Stars (1976), and Herrmann Zschoche's Eolomea (1972).

Completing the programme are Stanislaw Jedryka's Journey For One Smile (1972), Pawel Maslona's Panic Attack, Piotr Domalewski's Silent Night, Kinga Debska's Playing Hard, Marek Koterski's 7 Emotions, Filip Bajon's The Butler, John Bruce and Pawel Wojtasik's End of Life, Agnieszka Smoczynska's Fugue, Ewa Bukowska's 53 Wars, Klara Kochanska and Kasper Bajon's Via Carpathia, and Ewa Podgórska's Diagnosis.