ASHES AND DIAMONDS (Popiol i diament) was co-written (with the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski) and directed by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda in 1958.
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On the last day of WWII in Europe, Maciek and Andrzej, two Polish Resistance fighters, are ordered to murder the new communist high commissioner Szczuka who has just arrived from the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, they kill mistakenly two employees of the local cement factory. Maciek realises this tragic mistake just after having rented a room for the night in the same hotel as Szczuka did. Maciek accepts to finish the job by murdering Szczuka during the night.
The movie describes how Maciek will change his mind after having met Krystyna, the beautiful barmaid of the hotel with whom, on the same evening, he spends a few hours in the streets of the town talking about the new life he could start in the postwar Poland and thinking about the meaning of continuing the resistance action. When he sees, in the church, the corpses of the men he killed by mistake in the afternoon, Maciek decides to talk to Andrzej. But his resistance comrade tells him he would be considered as a desertor if he refuses now to kill Szczuka.
The review of this Movie prepared by Daniel Staebler
