Wesele film andrzej wajda biography

by Peter K. Gessner

Andrzej Wajda, who received an Oscar in 2000 for Lifetime Achievement, is probably Poland’s best know film director. His 1973 film Wesele (The Wedding) is an very successful adaptation for the screen of Poland’s most famous dramatic work, Stanisław Wyspianski’s play of the same title, a drama difficult for Polish viewers and previously completely inaccessible to foreigners.

Wyspianski (1869-1907) was a very gifted painter, poet, and dramatist. The Wedding, considered Poland’s greatest dramatic work, had its genesis in a real event, the wedding of Wyspianski’s friend, the poet Lucjan Rydel, to Jadwiga Mikołajczyk, a peasant girl from the village of Bronowice, which was then a separate entity but today is part of Krakow.