The purpose of this article is to examine the representation of Polish rock in Polish cinema and television in the 1960s and the 1970s, in other words (roughly) the first decade of the existence of Polish rock. My argument is that these films minimize their associations with youth, contemporaneity, modernity, rebellion and a western outlook — typical of rock — amplifying connotations which are not seen as central to the genre, such as its closeness to folk music and national culture. In my research I will draw on the history of Polish popular music and Polish cinema in the 1960s and its interface, and the division between pop and rock.
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Ewa Mazierska
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Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media
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Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through
Screen Media
Ewa Mazierska, University of Central Lancashire




  Abstract

   The purpose of this article is to examine the representation of Polish rock in Polish
   cinema and television in the 1960s and the 1970s, in other words (roughly) the first
   decade of the existence of Polish rock. My argument is that these films minimize
   their associations with youth, contemporaneity, modernity, rebellion and a western
   outlook — typical of rock — amplifying connotations which are not seen as
   central to the genre, such as its closeness to folk music and national culture. In my
   research I will draw on the history of Polish popular music and Polish cinema in
   the 1960s and its interface, and the division between pop and rock.

   The purpose of this article is to examine the representation of Polish rock in
Polish cinema and television in the 1960s and the 1970s, in other words (roughly)
the first decade of the existence of Polish rock. I am interested in which bands
were represented on Polish screens most often, and what aspects of their music
and artistic persona were foregrounded or suppressed. For this purpose I will
consider: two rock films produced in Poland in the 1960s, Mocne uderzenie (The
Big Beat, 1966), directed by Jerzy Passendorfer and Milion za Laurę (Million for
Laura, 1971), directed by Hieronim Przybył; two short fiction films about popular
musicians, produced in this period by state television, Kulig (Sleigh Ride, TVP,
1968) and Jak powstali Skaldowie (How Skaldowie Were Born, TVP, 1969), both
directed by Stanisław Kokesz; and a musical clip to a song by the band Breakout.
I will also examine screen representations of Czesław Niemen, the greatest Polish
rock star of the 1960s. I will cover the majority of audiovisual media devoted to
rock in this period. Hence, although I will use only a sample of material, this
sample is representative of the dominant tendencies in representation of rock
music on the Polish screen.
   My argument is that these films minimize their associations with youth,
contemporaneity, modernity, rebellion and a western outlook — typical of rock
— amplifying connotations which are not seen as central to the genre, such as its
closeness to folk music and national culture. In my research I will draw on the
history of Polish popular music and Polish cinema in the 1960s and its interface,
and the division between pop and rock.
                                                     Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIX, no. 31, Fall 2018
                                         Ewa Mazierska


     A Very Short Introduction to Polish Rock and Cinema of the 1960s

   According to historians of Polish popular music, the symbolic date of the
birth of Polish rock is the first concert of the band Rhythm and Blues, which
took place on 24 March 1959.1 The concert occurred six years after the death
of Stalin and his Polish counterpart, Bolesław Bierut, and his replacement
by Władysław Gomułka as the leader of the Polish United Workers Party
(the PZPR). This change coincided with a cultural shift in the position of
socialist realism from dominant to residual. Gomułka, who was seen as a
“nationalist communist” , gave up on many of the policies of his predecessor.
There was more political and cultural freedom under his rule, although
political censorship was by no means abolished and his style became more
authoritarian the longer he remained in office. Admittedly, artists had greater
freedom in the first years of his rule than in the 1960s, known as the period
of “small stabilization”. This term conveys hostility toward grand projects
and encouragement to focus one’s energy on everyday life, leaving politics to
professional politicians.2
   Polish rock in the 1960s, known as bigbit, big-beat or bigbeat, reflected both
its western influences, as conveyed by the foreign name of the band Rhythm and
Blues, and the conditions of “small stabilization”. Its creators and promoters,
most importantly Franciszek Walicki, the manager of several early Polish rock
bands, tried to ensure its existence and flourishing by convincing the authorities
that it was not an alien and hostile force coming from the West, but a phenomenon
which was rooted in Polish culture.3 This was important because

         Władysław Gomułka treated the Western world with suspicion and never
     understood it. The Western mass culture was seen by him as a threat to socialism,
     Polish national culture, and to formation of the young generation. He spoke
     about artists that some of them were forgetting [...] about these social duties,
     their own nation and its needs, and look only at the West, searching there for
     artistic inspiration. This wish to catch up with Paris or New York, these snobbish
     attempts to keep up with various art movements, that appeared in the West and



1
  Przemysław Zieliński, Scena rockowa w PRL-u: Historia, organizacja znaczenie (Warsaw: Trio,
2005), p. 15; Tomasz Leszkowicz, ‘Od rock and rolla nie było odwrotu’, Histman.org, 22 January
2015, <https://histmag.org/Od-rock-and-rolla-nie-bylo-odwrotu-10569> [accessed 4 November
2018].
2
  The term “small stabilization” is borrowed from Tadeusz Różewicz’s play Świadkowie albo nasza
mała stabilizacja (Witnessses or Our Small Stabilization), published in 1962. Its protagonists, He
and She, define this crucial term as the diminishing of requirements and responsibilities. During
small stabilization morality takes a back seat, as people were preoccupied with material pursuits.
However, they did not complain because they were anxious not to lose what they had gained. The
personality type described by Różewicz can be equated with ‘homo sovieticus’, also marked by
passivity and a lack of ambition.
3
  Anna Idzikowska-Czubaj, Rock w PRL-u: O paradoksach współistnienia (Poznan: Wydawnictwo
Poznańskie, 2011), p. 137.

18
         Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media


    soon disappeared, would be funny if they had not entailed concrete ideological,
    cultural, and moral damages.4

   Walicki did so by coining the slogan ‘Polish Youth Sings Polish Songs’ which
encouraged Polish rockers-to-be to switch from English (or any other language)
to Polish. Such a move also reflected a wider trend of “polonization” of state
socialism during the 1960s,5 a trend that was acknowledged by the leading
authorities of Polish rock.6 As a result, the 1960s saw a mushrooming of bands,
influenced by western rock, but singing in Polish, such as Niebiesko-Czarni,
Czerwono-Czarni, Czerwone Gitary, Skaldowie and Trubadurzy. Of them,
Niebiesko-Czarni, founded by Walicki, deserves special attention, as it was a
super-band, with a number of distinctive personalities, such as Michaj Burano,
Wojciech Korda, Czesław Niemen, Andrzej Nebeski, Helena Majdaniec and
Ada Rusowicz. The idea behind it was to create an incubator of new talents. It
was assumed that after proving their skill and getting some experience, the more
creative members would set up their own bands with their own styles, which
is precisely what happened. From the perspective of the entire history of rock
music in Poland in the state socialist period, the 1960s are regarded as a period
of success, as testified by the fact that the first Polish Golden Record, for the
highest number of records sold, was rewarded to Czesław Niemen: the greatest
bigbit star of this period. By contrast, in the 1970s such awards were dominated
by Estrada singers, such as Maryla Rodowicz and Halina Kunicka.7
   The crucial factor in the development of Polish cinema in the 1960s was a
resolution from the Central Committee of the Party, which demanded that Polish
filmmakers produce films that were popular but socialist in spirit, and avoided
vulgarity.8 This directive resulted in an increase in the production of genre films,

4
   Władysław Gomułka, quoted in Piotr Zwierzchowski, ‘Socialist Content, Hollywood Form:
Crime Films and Musicals in the Polish Cinema of the 1960s’, Panoptikum, 17 (2017), 199.
5
  Bartosz Machalica, ‘Polityka historyczna PRL-u. Tezy o zmienności i niezmienności’, in PRL
bez uprzedzeń, ed. by Jakub Majmurek and Piotr Szumlewicz (Warsaw: Książka i Prasa, 2010),
pp. 89–101.
6
  Przemysław Zieliński, Scena rockowa w PRL-u: Historia, organizacja znaczenie (Warsaw: Trio,
2005); Idzikowska-Czubaj, pp. 117–77.
7
   Jotem ‘Kilogram złota’, Magazyn Muzyczny, 1, 1989, 22. The term ’Estrada’ has multiple
meanings. Aimar Ventsel, drawing on the work of the scholar of Russian popular music David
MacFadyen, argues that in the French tradition estrada means ‘small stage,’ and defines it as ‘a wide
ranging term that includes pop music as well as modern dance, comedy, circus arts, and any other
performance not on the “big”, “classical” stage’. Estrada artists could have also performed stand
up, or as circus artists, and were often officially named so. However, in the popular understanding
of Soviet people, the term estrada was interchangeably associated with the term “popular music”
or ‘pop music’ and the term svezdy estrady (estrada stars) was generally (but not exclusively) used
to indicate successful and well-known singers. The musical output is probably not so defining
for the genre as the form: typical for estrada music was (and still is) that the singers were — as a
rule — accompanied by huge orchestras dominated by the wind instruments. See Aimar Ventsel,
‘Estonian Invasion as Western Ersatz-pop’, in Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking the Cold
War Paradigm, ed. by Ewa Mazierska (London: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 69-88.
8
  ‘Uchwała Sekretariatu KC w sprawie kinematografii’, in Syndrom konformizmu: Kino polskie lat

                                                                                                  19
                                          Ewa Mazierska


including criminal films, comedies and musicals, and a strict division between
popular and arthouse directors. This included two musical comedies made
between the beginning of the 1960s and early 1970s, which were “bigbit films”,
The Big Beat and Million for Laura. During this decade rock music was also used
in other films, such as Dwa żebra Adama (Adam’s Two Ribs, 1963), directed by
Janusz Morgenstern, which included a fragment from a rock concert.
   Cinema was not the only audiovisual medium, which tried to capitalize on
the popularity of bigbit music. The other was television, which, from the 1960s,
started to include in its schedules short films showing musicians singing not for a
live audience, but for the camera, typically against a picturesque landscape. These
short films, which can be regarded as predecessors of Polish music videos, often
featured bigbit stars. This period saw the production of two longer television
films, Sleigh Ride and How Skaldowie Were Born, which appeared simply as a
collection of clips, held together by a thin narrative.
   Many of the musicals of the 1960s were popular among viewers, but typically
lambasted by the critics, who reproached them for fragmented narrative, low-
quality humour, low production values and inability to develop its own formula
for a successful genre film. Some critics openly or tacitly assumed that it is
impossible to make a good genre Polish film; for that, Polish cinema lacked the
required tradition and budgets.9 Subsequently the focus of historians of Polish
cinema was on arthouse cinema, to the detriment of research on popular cinema
and musical films especially. For example, the seminal history of Polish cinema
written by Tadeusz Lubelski in Polish, does not mention the two bigbit films I
consider in this article.10 Similarly, the histories of Polish cinema published in
English, by Marek Haltof and Paul Coates do not examine these films.11 In the
last decade or so, this situation has been addressed, in some measure, thanks to
several articles about Polish musicals by Polish film scholars.12 Other forms of
interface between music and the audiovisual media, such as television films and
the early music clips, however, have never been studied.
   In the subsequent part of this article, I describe the character and the context
in which rock performers appeared and, consequently, the connotations of
their performances.




sześćdziesiątych, ed. by Tadeusz Miczka and Alina Madej (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu
Śląskiego, 1994), p. 33.
9
   See, for example, Mieczysław Skąpski, ‘Pierwszy polski musical’, Głos Wielkopolski, 76 (1967),
12; ZeD, ‘Pastwię się nad Laurą’, Trybuna Robotnicza, 142 (1971), 16.
10
   Tadeusz Lubelski, Historia kina polskiego: Twórcy, filmy, konteksty (Katowice: Videograf II, 2009).
11
   Marek Haltof, Polish National Cinema (Berghahn: Oxford, 2002); Paul Coates, The Red and the
White: The Cinema of People’s Poland (London: Wallflower, 2005).
12
    Piotr Fortuna, ‘Muzykol – kulturowa metafora PRL’, Kwartalnik Filmowy, 91 (2015), 121–40;
Zwierzchowski.

20
         Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media


     The Folkization and Popization of Bigbit on the Polish Screen

   The Big Beat is hailed as the first Polish rock film, and on occasions even as
the first Polish postwar musical.13 However, judging by the film’s crew, its rock
credentials were not particularly strong. The film’s scriptwriter, Ludwik Starski,
started his career before the Second World War, writing the scripts of many
Polish musical comedies of the 1930s, as well as for the first postwar musical
films, Zakazane piosenki (Forbidden Songs, 1946) and Przygoda na Mariensztacie
(An Adventure at Marienstadt, 1954), both directed by Leonard Buczkowski. He
was 63 when the film went into production, hence represented a very different
generation from the film’s target audience. The director, Jerzy Passendorfer, was
only 43 but, judging on his subsequent career — he is best known for television
series about the Polish Tatra folk hero, Janosik — he was seemingly not interested
in the genre of musicals and was known for being hostile to bigbit.14 Most likely
he was entrusted with directing the first Polish musical for a young audience
simply because he had acted as an assistant to Buczkowski, when he directed An
Adventure at Marienstadt.
   As the title The Big Beat suggests, the film was meant to capture the new
phenomenon of the fascination of young Poles with rock music. The plot
concerns a young man named Kuba who on the day of his wedding is hit by his
“girlfriend”, who accuses him of leaving her without saying goodbye. It turns out
that she had mistaken him for Johnny Tomala, a bigbit star who looks exactly like
Kuba. Inevitably, Kuba’s fiancée Majka is taken aback by this discovery and the
wedding is called off. This story of mistaken identities, typical of Polish musical
comedies from the interwar period, serves as an opportunity to present the work
of two popular bands of the 1960s, Niebiesko-Czarni and Skaldowie. Skaldowie
accompany Tomala — or rather, Kuba impersonating Tomala. Such a choice can
be explained by the simple fact that Skaldowie were very popular at the time,
winning several competitions for young bands and being awarded the “band of
the year” by the Jazz magazine, albeit less popular than Czerwone Gitary and
less associated with youth culture. Jazz, in particular, described them as ‘not
appreciated by the Polish youth’.15
   My hypothesis is that they had a privileged position on the Polish screen
in relation to all the Polish bigbit bands who started out in the 1960s because
they were, together with No To Co, most closely connected with folk music.16
The leaders of the band, brothers Andrzej and Jacek Zieliński, came from
the Tatra mountains (Podhale), where, used musical motifs from this regions

13
   Skąpski.
14
   Barbara Wachowicz, ‘Mocne udrzenie’, Ekran, 30 (1966), 16.
15
   Cfr. the description on the Polish Wikipedia page: <https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skaldowie>
[accessed 4 November 2018].
16
   Przemysław Zieliński, Scena rockowa w PRL-u, pp. 86 and 148; Timothy Ryback, Rock Around the
Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1990), pp. 95–6.

                                                                                            21
                                          Ewa Mazierska


and frequently performed in folk clothes. Being a bigbit band, they did not
play authentic folk music, but one adjusted to the taste of wider audiences,
particularly those living in the cities. One Polish historian described the result
of this approach as ‘folklorist, to differentiate it from the authentic folklore’.17
Folk music and music inspired by folklore was promoted in all state socialist
countries as an expression of the authentic ‘spirit of the people’ and an antidote
to supposedly poisonous western influences. However, Poland seemed to take the
task of preserving its musical folklore more seriously than the rest of the bloc, as
demonstrated by the nationwide collection of Polish folk music (Akcja Zbierania
Folkloru Muzycznego) in the years 1949–1954, recording songs and transcribing
their lyrics. In subsequent decades this action was scaled down and limited to
certain regions. Nevertheless, it resulted in the collection and cataloguing of
over 40,000 items. According to Ryszard Krawczyk, who was himself engaged
in this initiative, it was the most comprehensive collection in Europe.18 There
also existed numerous state institutions, including a special department of the
Ministry of Culture, devoted to folk music and art. Although such actions did not
have a direct effect on the development of Polish rock music, they sent a signal
to the musicians, their managers and the music establishment that it paid to be
“folklore-friendly”. Another sign of privileging folklore was the organization of
a youth folklore festival in Miechów from 1970.
   In The Big Beat Skaldowie do not play up their folklorist identity, but they
come across as tame. Contrary to the title of the film, they do not use “big beat”
— their clothes are neat and they sing quietly about love and everyday life, not
about youth rebellion. To employ the widely used, albeit not unproblematic
distinctions between “rock” and “pop”, according to which rock is a more
authentic and artistic sector of popular music and “pop” as its more commercial,
“inauthentic” and watered-down version designed to appeal to everyone,19
Skaldowie comes across in The Big Beat as a pop band. In fact, even though
the reviewers of this film did not use such vocabulary, they criticized this way of
using Skaldowie, depicting the band as bland and not sitting comfortably with
the concept of “bigbit”.20 The same argument can be used in relation to the
second band playing in the film, Niebiesko-Czarni, the super-band who had many
leading singers. On this occasion its pop credential manifests itself by showing
performance of the least “rock” singers of the band: Ada Rusowicz and Piotr
Janczerski. Significantly, a year after the film premiere Janczerski left Czerwone-


17
   Józef Burszta, Kultura ludowa – kultura narodowa (Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza,
1974), p. 299; Karolina Bittner, Partia z piosenką, piosenka z partią. PZPR wobec muzyki rozrywkowej
(Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2017), p. 138.
18
    Ryszard Krawczyk, ‘30 lat Ogólnopolskiej Akcji Zbierania Folkloru Muzycznego’, Ruch
Muzyczny, 14, 1980, 3–4.
19
   Simon Frith, ‘Pop Music’, and Keir Keightley, ‘Reconsidering Rock’, in The Cambridge Companion
to Pop and Rock, ed. by Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street (Cambridge: Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), resp. pp. 93–108 (p. 94–5) and pp. 109–142 (p. 109).
20
   Skąpski.

22
           Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media


Czarni to set up the band No To Co, which in an even more conspicuous way
than Skaldowie would use folk motives. The director himself described his film
as something for a ‘wide audience’, full of ‘nice songs’.21
   No To Co were cast in the second Polish rock film, Million for Laura by
Hieronim Przybył, a director who specialized in comedies and television series,
typically derided after their premiere and nowadays mostly forgotten. To a
large extent the film repeats the formula, used for the first time in The Big Beat.
There are again mistaken identities, of people and objects. Most importantly this
happens to the eponymous Laura, a baroque Italian guitar which by accident
finds itself in the house of the main character, a trader at the Różycki bazaar in
Warsaw, and eventually is offered as the main award in a competition for the
best bigbit band. The competition, however, does not take place in Warsaw, but
in the remote mountain region of Bieszczady, which forces all the characters to
travel to there, either in search of fame, of the guitar, worth million dollars, or
lost love.
   This setting can be explained by the filmmakers’ search for the best scenery
to showcase the work of the band Łobuzy, played by No To Co. Once the band
moves to Bieszczady, we hear them singing about the pleasures of rural life
while performing such tasks as raking hay, walking in the hills among the sheep
and talking to shepherds clad in traditional costumes. In dialogue, they allude
to the fact that they might exchange their repertoire with the shepherds. The
competition in which No To Co take part turns out to be a music festival, in
which all kinds of acts are welcome and where bigbit music is in minority.
   Skaldowie appeared two years later in the television film Sleigh Ride directed
by Stanisław Kokesz, which offers another example of connections between
bigbit and folk. During his career, which lasted from 1950 until his emigration
to the United States in 1981, Kokesz made a large number of short and middle-
length films, many of which were devoted to artists, mostly musicians, and some
to tourism. None of them made a lasting mark on Polish documentary cinema
and most of them are forgotten, in part because he stayed away from politics
and was perceived as a producer of “useful films”. Sleigh Ride is his best-known
production, due to repeated screenings on Polish television, usually in winter,
when its events take place. Anecdotal evidence which I collected, mostly among
people in their fifties and sixties, suggests that for this age category it was the
most important television production about Polish popular music, along with
Marek Piwowski’s film about Czesław Niemen. Sleigh Ride can be seen as a
Polish response to the Beatles films, directed by Richard Lester in the 1960s,
particularly Help! (1965). This is suggested by the similarity of certain episodes
of these two films. However, Sleigh Ride has nothing of the narrative complexity
and production values of Lester’s film — it only lasts 28 minutes, it is set in
practically just one location and it has a weak plot, concerning a professional


21
     Julian Woźniak, ‘Jerzy Passendorfer i Mocne uderzenie’, Nowiny Rzeszowskie, 304 (1966), 15.

                                                                                               23
                                   Ewa Mazierska


photographer or a tourist with a high-class camera, whose car breaks down in
the Tatra mountains during winter. The photographer is rescued when joining a
sleigh ride, in which some of the most popular performers of the time participate:
Skaldowie, Niebiesko-Czarni, Alibabki and Maryla Rodowicz, who sing their
songs while speeding through the wintry landscape and engaging in winter sports
such as skiing, until they reach a large house, where they continue performing.
The film comes across as a collection of music clips joined together by the motif
of a journey through the mountains with the photographer, the only character
who does not sing.
   On this occasion we can identify three ways through which the rock
connotations of Polish bigbit are “softened”. The first is via a blurring of the
division between rock and pop. Although Skaldowie and Niebiesko-Czarni are
normally categorized as rock, while Alibabki and Maryla Rodowicz as pop, in
the film they all take part in the same sleigh ride and their performances merge
seamlessly. This happens because most of the songs concern winter, and in the
outdoor scenes we do not see the main attributes of rockers, their guitars, as their
hands are occupied with skis or the reins of horses. The second way is by linking
rock to the mountain folk culture, which the sleigh ride epitomizes. This also
happens through the costumes of the performers, who wear traditional mountain
dress, and the depiction of a party where the attendees, also clad in traditional
costumes, dance to the songs of the rockers. The title song, Sleigh Ride, is sung
by Skaldowie and Alibabki, who begin with high-pitched voices, reminiscent of
mountain singing. Finally, stripping rock of its sense of rebellion and the present
moment happens through their association with the photographer. This character,
played by one of the greatest Polish stars of the 1960s, Bogumił Kobiela, seems to
come from a different epoch. His car is from before the Second World War; his
clothes are also typical of a gentleman from the early 20th: he wears breeches and
knee-high socks and sports a curled moustache. Although the photographer is
presented as an eccentric outsider, in line with the way Kobiela was cast in most
films, ultimately the film’s message is that rock music and the rock lifestyle are
innocuous and can coexist with different cultures: pop, folk and archaic. As well
as being influenced by these cultures, rock manages to update them, for example
rendering mountain culture folk sexier and more contemporary. Skaldowie’s ski
acrobatics brings to mind the scene in the Alps in Lester’s Help!, in which the
Beatles show their physical prowess.
   One year later Kokesz made another film about Skaldowie, How Skaldowie
Were Born, this time bringing the band to the Baltic coast. Again, this film in
some way emulates the work of Lester, who in turn followed the first film about
the Beatles with another. In the main database devoted to Polish film, filmpolski.
pl, How Skaldowie Were Born is described as documentary, but in fact it is a
mockumentary, filled mostly with music clips, presenting the most popular songs
of this band. The mockumentary part consists of a voice over belonging to the
leader of the band, Andrzej Zieliński, who presents the beginnings of the band in
a humorous way. He says that the second member was easy to find because it was

24
       Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media


his own brother, Jacek. However, the next member, a drummer, was playing in a
brass band and he was snatched during this performance, using chloroform. In
this way the film suggests that Skaldowie’s origins lie in part in Polish brass bands,
and hence a military tradition. This idea is reinforced by the use of costumes.
Skaldowie are shown in white mock military costumes with epaulettes, bringing
to mind the costumes of the Beatles from the cover of their album, Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band, released two years earlier. The drummer is shown
sporting a similar costume. In this way Kokesz shows the continuity between the
Polish military tradition and bigbit, as well as pointing to the similarity between
Polish and western (British) rock. Another member of the band is spotted when
singing ‘O Sole Mio’ in a mock opera voice, when working as a welder in the
shipyard. Andrzej Zieliński explains in the voice-over that if the guy was able to
sing with enthusiasm in such conditions, this means that he will fit into the band.
Although this is meant to be a humorous comment, it suggests that there is no
conflict between rock and this Neapolitan song. The rest of the film shows the
band performing against the background of the Baltic Sea: riding the pedalo,
sitting on a boat, jumping from a boat into the sea, juxtaposing with the image of
attractive female holidaymakers. The film thus acts as an advertisement for the
Baltic tourist industry. An exception is a clip to one of Skaldowie’s greatest hits,
Prześliczna wiolonczelistka (A Super-Beautiful Cellist) performed with a female
cellist (played by popular actress, Ewa Szykulska) and a military orchestra. Such
a performance evidently suggests that Skaldowie’s music fits into such a non-rock
context very well.
   The tendency to “soften” the image of Polish bigbit can also be observed in
the early “music clips”, produced by Polish television, the forerunners of music
videos which started to be shot in Poland in the 1980s. One of the best known
clips to Polish songs from this period is of the band Breakout, Gdybyś kochał
hej (If You Loved Me, Hey) from 1969. The lyrics for this song were written by
the previously mentioned Walicki, who inevitably tried to make the songs come
across as Polish not only by virtue of the Polish language, but also in view of the
topics, lexical choices and rhetorical figures. ‘If You Loved Me, Hey’ reads:

  If you loved me just a little bit, hey
  If you loved me as much you don’t love me,
  If you weren’t as you are,
  wanted me as much as you don’t want me...

  You would be a wind and I would be a field, hey
  You would be a sky and I would be a poplar, hey
  You would be sun and I would be a shadow
  If you just changed yourself...

  If you weren’t in my dreams at night, hey
  If you finally left me alone, hey

                                                                                    25
                                   Ewa Mazierska


     Maybe I would forgive you,
     Maybe I would forget...

   The frequent use of the word ‘hey’ and the choice of nouns which refer to
nature (wind, field, sky, poplar) renders the verse similar to a folk song, although
it is performed in a distinctly rock style. The video adds much to the rustic
character of the song. It is set somewhere in rural Poland, whose agricultural
methods and way of life look like interwar or an earlier period, rather than
pertaining to modern times. We see a windmill, a field covered with stacks of
hay and a singer, Mira Kubasińska, drawing water from a well, putting pots on
the fence to dry, and feeding chickens some grain from a bucket while sitting
on the steps of a simple farmhouse. Its doors are open, perhaps to signify the
openness and hospitality of Polish peasants. Kubasińska has her long hair plaited
in braids and wears a waistcoat made of sheepskin on a simple white shirt. She
plays a peasant woman and represents nature. In contrast to her, the three male
members of the band have a rock outlook, sporting long hair, and are playing
their instruments, standing on the stairs of the mill, rather than being engaged
in any peasant activities. The conflict and unfulfilled love, as described in the
song, is reflected in the position of the male and female members of the band.
The conflict can also be seen as reflecting the two sides or roots of Polish bigbit:
Polish folk and western rock. The lyrics suggest that it can be solved, if there was
only good will on both sides; a view that can be attributed to Walicki himself.


     Niemen and the Polish Ideals of High Art

   Czesław Niemen was the greatest Polish rock star of the 1960s and 1970s. In
the 1960s Niemen had many hits with songs about love and everyday life, but
gradually he moved to more lofty themes. Rather than relying on texts written
by authors specialising in popular songs, he increasingly used poetry, particularly
that written by Polish Romantic poets. Niemen was also among the best travelled
Polish stars, playing concerts in the socialist East, especially the Soviet Union,
where he was a major star, and the capitalist West, to countries such as Germany
and the USA, as well as performing in more exotic places, such as India and Cuba.
   Given that Niemen played such an important role in popular music, it is
natural that he and his music featured extensively in Polish films of the 1960s
and 1970s. Not only can we find numerous traces of his screen presence in this
period, but they are remarkably versatile. They include a documentary, a poetic
film centred around one of his most acclaimed songs and a full-length fiction film
where he is cast in an important role (even though he remains off-screen). On top
of that, in several films his music was used as a soundtrack. Let us examine some
of these examples. The best known of them and most controversial is Sukces
(Success, 1968), directed by Marek Piwowski, who at the time was already an
outstanding documentarist and subsequently author of the ultimate Polish cult

26
        Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media


film, Rejs (Cruise, 1969). Piwowski’s specialized in capturing on camera the gulf
between the way people see themselves and how they are seen by others. Success
is based on such a premise. The director allows Niemen to talk about himself,
but what we hear is somewhat inconsistent, pointing to two features of Niemen,
which no doubt he would like to have hidden from his fans: his conceit and his
hypocrisy. For example, he claims that he ‘feels life deeper’ than ordinary people,
therefore he tends to be misunderstood and muses on the privileges he enjoys
thanks to his fame, such as being allowed into crowded restaurants, which he
shuns because he wants to be treated like everybody else. However, the very fact
that he ponders on his fame suggests that he is not immune to its pleasures.22
At the same time as denouncing Niemen as falling short of the high moral and
aesthetic standards required of the rockers, Piwowski also underscores Niemen’s
folkishness, by showing him dressed during rehearsals in a sheep-skin waistcoat,
as worn by people living in the Tatra mountains.
   A more respectful image of Niemen is offered in Bema pamięci żałobny rapsod.
(Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem, 1969), directed by Janusz Rzeszewski,
who subsequently specialized in nostalgic musical films set in interwar Poland. The
film is a musical clip, although much longer than what Polish viewers could watch
on television at the time. The song ‘Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem’,
which lasts over sixteen minutes, is regarded by many critics as Niemen’s greatest
artistic achievement, on account of both its lyrics and music. For example, Piotr
Chlebowski, in an essay entirely devoted to ‘Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam
of Bem’, argues that recording this piece by Niemen was a breakthrough in
Polish popular music, because it ‘moved popular music from a song to artwork,
from a simple to a complex form... From 1969 in Poland a rock record became
a coherent whole, as opposed to being a collection of banal songs’.23 The song is
based on a poem by Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a Polish poet typically regarded as
a Romantic, but with a strong affinity to the Classical tradition, as demonstrated
by the fact that ‘Mournful Rhapsody’ is written partly in Latin. It concerns the
death of the Polish General Józef Bem, (1794–1850) a hero of the Polish fight for
sovereignty during the time of partitions, who was also a leader of the Hungarian
Uprising of 1848–49. Bem thus epitomized the ideal pairing of patriotism with
universalism. Apparently, it was not Niemen himself who discovered Norwid’s
poem: it was suggested to him by a popular songwriter Wojciech Młynarski.
What is more important, however, from my perspective, is that the figure of Bem
and ‘Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem’ perfectly capture the position
adopted by Gomułka in the 1960s, which was a mixture of nationalism, yet one


22
   Niemen was so unhappy with the way Piwowski portrayed him in his film, that he wanted it to be
banned, see Dariusz Michalski, Czesław Niemen: Czy go jeszcze pamiętasz? (Warsaw: MG, 2009),
pp. 99–102.
23
   Piotr Chlebowski, ‘Norwidowy Rapsod w interpretacji Niemena’, in Unisono na pomieszane języki:
O rocku, jego twórcach i dziełach (w 70-lecie Czesława Niemena), ed. by Radosław Marcinkiewicz
(Sosnowiec: Gad Records, 2010), p. 61.

                                                                                              27
                                           Ewa Mazierska


that did not denounce the ideal of internationalism, which was the official stance
of Marxism-Leninism. Choosing such a poem was also in tune with “turning
to the classics”, as was the trend in the 1960s in Poland. This turn could be
explained by the fact that the classics were popular but also seen as innocuous,
simply because they were safely embalmed in their graves.24 I am not suggesting
that Niemen used Norwid cunningly, to avoid political controversy, but this was
an outcome of his choice. The fact that television decided to produce a video
to this song confirms it. Musically, ‘Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem’
bears many similarities with the precursor of progressive rock, ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-
Vida’ (1968) by Iron Butterfly, on account of such characteristics as its excessive
length, the long passages of instrumental music, when Niemen plays the organ,
and its solemn mood. Rzeszewski’s film strengthens these connotations. Its setting
is a room filled with burning candles, which looks like a forest. Among them we
see a group of people, dressed in black and white with their heads bowed, as if
attending a funeral. Against this image we hear a chorus of female voices singing
in Latin. Only after their voices are silenced, do we see Niemen singing in Polish
and playing an electric organ, which is also decorated with burning candles. The
image brings to mind a church, with Niemen as the church organist. Later we see
him walking in this “forest of candles”. He wears something like a black military
uniform with white or silver decorations, with a large medal hanging round his
neck. Such attire can be traced back to the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s,
as in the case of Skaldowie, however, the Beatles’ costumes were playful while
Niemen’s is solemn. Progressive rock was inevitably a subgenre of rock, whose
purpose was to legitimize rock as a serious form. It can, however, be argued,
that in ‘Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem’ Niemen took it to a different
level, rendering it as the type of music which would fit school curriculums, and
Rzeszewski’s film strengthened this claim to be considered as patriotic high art.
   A similar effect is achieved by Andrzej Wajda, who cast Niemen in the role of
Chochoł (The Mulch) in his film Wesele (The Wedding, 1973), based on the 1901
play by the Polish post-Romantic author, Stanisław Wyspiański. Wyspiański’s
The Wedding is considered one of the most important works engaging with the
Polish national character, and Wajda’s film enjoys a similar reputation. Wajda
himself is lauded as the greatest master of Polish cinema and being cast in his
films was regarded as a privilege. In the last scene of the film we hear (but not
see) Chochoł, who sings the song ‘You had, Yokel, a Golden Horn’, which
accuses Poles of having lofty ideas, but not being able to implement them. This
vice has particular importance in the light of the fact that the play was written


24
  The importance attached by the state to the classics in the 1960s is well captured in Adam’s Two
Ribs, directed by Janusz Morgenstern. We find there a leader of the local council, somewhere in the
province, who proposes to name a street in his town after a local engineer, who achieved successes
working in Africa. This idea, however, is opposed by other members of the council who want the
street to be named after Adam Mickiewicz, which in this context reflects both the nationalistic bias
of Gomułka’s regime and a desire for stabilisation, for the return to a “safe”, depoliticized tradition.

28
       Softening of Polish Rock of the 1960s and Early 1970s through Screen Media


during the times of partitions, when Poland did not exist as a separate state.
Chochoł is a symbolic “soul of the nation”; his role is to make Poles realise who
they really are. Assigning Niemen such a role points to Wajda’s recognition of
the significance of Niemen in Polish contemporary culture at large, as opposed
to merely Polish popular culture.
   My final example of using Niemen’s music on screen in the 1960s is Korowód
(Pageant, 1967) by Krzysztof Trzos, a docudrama about three young men who
steal a western car and travel to the Baltic coast. Here they meet a group of
girls and enjoy themselves, swimming and sunbathing, and attending a party,
until they are caught by the police. The background of their adventure is pop-
rock music. The film begins with an episode showing the three men dancing
at a party and finishes with a large group of people dancing a conga line. Slow
motion is used during these scenes which makes the characters look ecstatic and
oblivious to the outside world. In the middle of the film we also see Niemen
singing his most popular song, Dziwny jest ten świat (‘Strange Is This World’).
The performance appears to be extradiegetic, although it is possible that the
characters see it during their stay in Sopot, where the International Festival of
Songs was held, and where Niemen performed this song the year the film was
made. At some point Niemen’s performance is cut and the camera returns to
the characters, who most likely rest in a hotel after a day full of adventure. At
this stage the song appears to be played by the radio as it stops when one of
them gets up and switches the radio off, as if he wanted to silence anybody who
might challenge his behaviour. The episode showing Niemen’s performance
is quite long, lasting over two minutes, constituting about ten per cent of the
duration of the film. Given that the subject of ‘Strange Is This World’ is the
fight between goodness and evil, and the hope that goodness will prevail, it can
be seen as a commentary about the wrong path taken by the characters and an
expression of hope that they will be redeemed. Conversely, Niemen’s song can be
regarded as part of the pop-rock culture which contributed to the moral decline
of the characters. It is also worth mentioning that what in this film stands for the
soundtrack of the characters’ criminal activities is in fact a jazzy tune rather than
proper rock music. This most likely reflects the ignorance of the director (and
scriptwriter) about the music to which his characters were most likely listening
at that time.
   The conviction that there is a link between rock music on the one hand
and delinquency and criminality on the other, was not confined to Polish or
Eastern European cultures of state socialism; such an idea also applies to the
capitalist West. However, what is characteristic of this film in particular is that
the danger of rock music is accompanied by an opposite idea: that it can be
a source of illumination and redemption or, at least, that Niemen’s song can
perform such a function.




                                                                                    29
                                        Ewa Mazierska


     Conclusions

   In conclusion, Polish screen media in the 1960s and early 1970s typically
placed Polish bigbit in a non-rock context, by associating it with a softer version
of popular music (pop), folk music and folk culture, military music, the high
culture of Polish Romantic and post-Romantic literature, tourism, and humour.
Instead, typical associations of rock with youth and rebellion, are absent in these
films. Rendering rock music as non-rock (according to western standards) in part
reflected the character of bigbit, which was not particularly rebellious or anti-
establishment, but instead affirmative, testifying to the pleasures of being young
and falling in love. It can also be seen as reflecting a higher level of censorship
and self-censorship in film and television than in popular music industry. At
live concerts Polish bands could sing and behave practically how they wanted,
because Estrada, which organized live events, was decentralized and thus
more difficult to control, and concerts were rarely visited by censors25. It was,
however, more difficult to achieve such a level of independence in cinema where
scripts were assessed by a special committee before they went into production.
Television production was even more censored, it being a more centralized
institution and hence more dependent on the government’s approval than semi-
independent film units, which decided about film production. Hence, television
had to conform even more closely to official ideology. The softening of Polish
bigbit on the way from live environment to the screen media reflects a trend
which also applies to western media, as exemplified by films with Elvis Presley,
and ‘audiovisual performances by Pat Boone, Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Bobby
Ryddel and other “teen-idols” in the late 1950s and early 1960s which were
widely perceived as inappropriate, sanitized and tamed versions of the original,
raw and rawdy rock’n’roll stars of the mid-1950s’.26
   The examples considered in this study also speak to a certain level of ignorance
and confusion about the nature of rock among Polish filmmakers, reflecting the
age gap between them and Polish rock musicians. Furthermore, one aspect of
this representation, namely accentuating the link between rock and Polish folk
and Romantic culture, reflects on the drive for “polonization”, pertaining to
Polish culture of the 1960s and, to some extent, the 1970s. The screen image
of Polish rock would considerably change in the 1980s when it would become
more rebellious and overtly political, and many filmmakers, often of the same age
as the rockers, would attempt to record it and amplify its edginess and counter-
cultural character.



25
   Raymond Patton, ‘The Communist Culture Industry: The Music Business in 1980s Poland’,
Journal of Contemporary History, 2 (2012), 433–37.
26
   Antti-Ville Kärjä, ‘Ridiculous Infantile Acrobatics, or Why They Never Made Any Rock’n’roll
Movies in Finland’, in Popular Music and Film, ed. by Ian Inglis (London: Wallflower, 2003), pp.
117–130 (p. 123).

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