The Wedding (1972 film)


Wesele is a 1972 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It was adapted from the 1901 play by the same name by Stanisław Wyspiański.
The plot is set at the wedding of a member of Kraków intelligentsia, and his peasant Bride. Their class-blurring union follows a fashionable trend among friends of the playwright from the modernist Young Poland movement. The play by Wyspiański was based on a real-life event: the wedding of Lucjan Rydel at the St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków and his wedding reception in the village of Bronowice. It was inspired in part also by the modernist painting of Jacek Malczewski and Maksymilian Gierymski. Wajda also directed Wesele for the theatre.

Plot

A poet marries a peasant girl in Kraków. Their wedding reception follows. The celebration of the new marriage moves on from the city to the villager's house. In the rooms adjoining that of the wedding party, guests continually burst into arguments, make love, or simply rest from their merriment, dancing and feasting. Interspersed with the real guests are the well-known figures of Polish history and culture, who represent the guilty consciences of the characters. The two groups gradually begin a series of dialogues. The Poet is visited successively by the Black Knight, a symbol of the nation's past military glory; the Journalist, then by the court jester and conservative political sage Stańczyk; and the Ghost of Wernyhora, a paradigm of leadership for Poland. Wernyhora presents the Host with a golden horn symbolizing the national mission, and calls the Polish people to a revolt. One of the farm hands is dispatched to sound the horn at each corner of Poland, but he loses the horn soon after.

Cast

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