Song in the Polish Film of the Socialist Era

Marek Hendrykowski

Abstract

A singing citizen – provided that he sang on screen something “right” – enjoyed the unwritten socialist-realist cinema licentia vocalica, granted on a non-contractual concession by the government. The central idea of Hendrykowski’s article is the hypothesis of duality of aesthetic sources of songs in Polish socialist realist films. On the one hand the songs are modelled on the Soviet style song, on the other hand they are made according to the local model, based on the songs of the interwar period. Ideologically (in terms of poetics assumed), the models contradict each other. In terms of the aesthetic (the poetics realised), subjected to socialist realist treatment they appear to be similar. The melange obtained is a paradox of poetics of film song and certain aspects of the poetics of socialist cinema. Since the days of the popular, Western influenced, comedy Moscow Laughs (1934), there existed a consent, criticised by the political orthodoxy, for not following the strict demands of the socialist realist ideology. What mattered was the general rule, and that remained simple and unchanged. The question of whether a song will be granted to a hero was decided not by its melody, but by the rhetoric of the lyrics. Its ideological dimension was guarded with tireless vigilance by the government. Everything else could be more or less arbitrary and conventional.