The Coal Mine/Kopalnia (1948)
By Natalia Brzozowska
Dedicated to the courage and tireless perseverance of the workingmen, unlike other titles that at the time were highly commended by Communist critics, The Coal Mine doesn’t contain any voice-over commentary. Even though its original editing technique somewhat resembles Soviet films by Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) and Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970), neither Brzozowska’s stylised imagery nor her tragic portrayal of destructive industrialisation could appeal to the Communist Party leaders at the end of the 1940s when they bet on socialist realism. In the film, silent shots of human figures seemingly dissolving into the black, bottomless chasm of the mine rhythmically play to the sound of music composed by Kazimierz Serocki (1922-1981). The dynamically cut, dark and underlit images show miners getting ready for work and then performing their daily underground tasks. The film culminates with the stillness of their wives desperately waiting for the husbands to come out after an underground accident. The mine turns into a deadly abyss. Nature wins over human effort. Many shots with dimming lights in horror-like corridors are intercut with observational images of women standing over ground n…
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