Page 63 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.
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ination and makes the audience fill in the gaps in the
                                      audial and visual aspects of the film. The authors did
                                      not employ conventional realistic representation and in-
                                      stead used deformed images and sounds in order to
                                      evoke the feeling of alienation and dread and subjec-
                                      tively picture the reality into which the young characters
                                      were plunged. ‘One has an impression that those tiny,
                                      lunatic beings were crawling out into the light from some
                                      dungeons, from subterranean darkness. Dread and ter-
                                      ror permeate the air. We sense that something is going
                                      to happen, although it is nothing we can specify. We
                                      pass from reality to a world of nightmares. The unnatu-
                                      rally pale faces of the children, their slow movements
                                      and shining eyes resemble a procession of ghosts or ap-
                                      paritions known from paintings or expressionist films”
                               8 —    – wrote Janusz Skwara in his review published shortly
               Janusz Skwara, Tragedia i wizja
                                                               8
             plastyczna, „Kino” 1971, no. 7, p.5  after the film was  completed .
                                         In this film, we are dealing with fiction, so we can re-
                                      construct the sequence of events quite accurately, but
                                      the way the narrative is constructed through the use of
                                      large close-ups, strictly graphic composition of shots,
                                      high  contrast  lighting  and  expressive  non-realistic
                                      sounds – activates a very engaging type of reception.
                                      We do not watch the world shown in the film from a safe
                                      distance from outside; on the contrary, we are forced to
                                      take on a perspective which constitutes a part of that
                                      world and was imposed on the children incarcerated in
                                      the universe of a concentration camp.
                                         The making of The Face of an Angel was triggered
                                      by  Report  from  an  Empty  Field,  a  book  by  Wiesław
                                      Jażdżyński.  Stanisław  Loth,  cinematographer  of  The
                                      Face of an Angel, came across the name and memories
                                      of Tadeusz Raźniewski, the basis for Tadek’s character,
                                      while  reading  that  book.  Loth  made  friends  with
                                      Raźniewski and corresponded with him while Raźniew-
                                      ski was working on his book, Chcę żyć [I Want to Live],
                                      a recollection of his and Polish childrens’  traumatic ex-
                                      periences in the camp in Litzmannstadt. A reportage on
                               9 —    the making of the film gives an account of how the in-
              The camp for Polish children was  formation about the camp for Polish children in Łódź
               located by the Nazis within the
              ghetto, which was strictly isolated  was gradually gathered and reconstructed. After the lib-
                from the city and could not be   eration in 1945, only a few adults believed that Raź-
                                                                                 9
            accessed by the Poles. That is most  niewski had really been imprisoned in a Nazi camp . ‘It
             probably why the knowledge about
              the camp was scarce both during  was only after several years had passed and the little
                       and after the war.  prisoners were in a state to reconstruct the past that

                             Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto  61
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