The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has

By the time he made his first feature The Noose, Wojciech Has had already been making his own films for a decade. Made when still in his early twenties, Birch Street
is a poetic documentary study of a war-ravaged Warsaw street being painstakingly returned to civilisation, while Harmonia was his fiction debut, the story of an impoverished boy’s dream of obtaining an accordion – and both films already reveal Has’s characteristic preoccupation with objects and ornate decoration and the conflict between dream and reality in embryonic form. 

Thereafter, Has worked as a documentary director for WFD, albeit entirely during the period of compulsory Socialist Realism. After falling foul of the authorities with My Town (a portrait of his native Kraków that was considered too personal), Has was on his best career-preserving behaviour with the later films, but they still nonetheless occasionally show a personal touch, on top of their inherent historical fascination as vivid snapshots of a particular historical and ideological period. The most ambitious is Our Ensemble, Has’s first film in colour, a nearly 40-minute portrait of a traditional folk ensemble studded with musical numbers staged imaginatively enough to confirm that Has was ready to move into feature films.

Accordion, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1947
Steam Engine PT-47, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1949
My City, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1950
First Harvest, dir. Wojciech Has and Jan Zelnik, Poland 1950
Centralized Control of the Production Process, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1951
Herbalists of the Stone Valley, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1952
Johnny’s Bird Feeder, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1952
Scouts At The Rally, dir. Wojciech Has and Stanisław Urbanowicz, Poland 1952
Cultural Review No. 2/53, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1953
Our Ensemble, dir. Wojciech Has, Poland 1955