Page 63 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

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