A film in Polish about a historic event
933604
Since, without warning, I discovered that this film is totally in Polish with no English subtitles, it was useless to me.  Too bad, because what I saw of it appeared well done and thought-provoking.  The seller offered an immediate refund.
3395995
I was lucky enough to see this in a theater about 5 years ago when it played for only one day in Minneapolis, at a Polish film festival.  Ogniem i Mieczem is every bit as good as Braveheart and Branagh's Henry V (both of which I also liked).  It is such a shame that hardly anyone in the USA even knows that this movie exists.  I hadn't even known it existed until I happened to stumble across a writeup in the paper that morning.  They were selling VHS copies in the lobby but I didn't have enough cash on me so I got the soundtrack CD instead.

Not having seen it since that first time, I was really excited to receive my DVD in the mail today.  I was a little concerned because I have read some bad reviews of the quality of the DVD versions.  But I thought a bad copy is better than no copy at all.  Well, I just finished watching it (all 176 minutes of it).  No need to worry.  The version I have is in widescreen from someplace called ITI Home Video and was released in 2004 or 2005 (depending on what source you read).  Whoever did it must have read the complaints about the previous versions because this one is just fine.  Of course, like most of the great epics (Lawrence of Arabia, et. al.) you can never get the full impact on the small screen, but the picture and sound quality are still great.  The case has a one paragraph English-language description and a short note about the subtitle choices (Polish, English, French, Russian, Ukrainian and Spanish).  The rest of the "liner notes" are in Polish, as are the chapter titles.  There's not much in the way of extras, primarily short written bios (in English) and filmographies of the director and principle cast.  There's no "Making of..." or "Director's commentary."  It does contain the music video for "Dumka Na Dwa Serca" which never appears in the movie but is on the original soundtrack CD.  (By the way, this is one of the most haunting scores I've ever heard.  If you can find a copy of the CD, get it.)

All the superlatives have already been applied to this movie by other reviewers so I don't know what more I can add.  Jerzy Hoffman turned one of my favorite books into one of my favorite movies.  Now we've gotten the DVD that we've been waiting for.

Addendum 9-30-05
I do have a question I'd like to see if someone has the answer to.  A friend who also saw this in a theater has a recollection of some scenes being in Ukrainian and is wondering if the Ukrainian is retained in the DVD.  Unfortunately he lives too far away to borrow my copy and I don't understand either Polish or Ukrainian so I can't tell the difference.

It does not appear that there is any dubbing going on (eg, Polish over Ukrainian).  However, I don't know if they filmed 2 versions of some scenes, Polish and Ukrainian, and used a Polish language version for the DVD.  Since I understand neither, they would sound the same to me.

Does anyone know if this DVD version retains the Ukrainian language scenes?  If you do, can you let me know or post a response?  Thanks
2534507
This was a great film for any history buff.
2880212
Yes, Adrian's acting was a bit dry in this film, but maybe that was Wladyslaw Szpilman for you.  The movie is about him, and if his demeanor was that way so be it; but no one can deny that the ordeal and pain this man endured for approximately 5 years of his life is not intriguing and worthy of a film.  This person managed to survive the impossible, lost his family, his home, was in the warsaw ghetto (very low survival rate) and managed to escape, his profession and ultimate love (that of the piano) was stripped away from him, and even without these things to keep him going, he SURVIVED?  This movie was amazing, and the fact that it was a true story is absolutely incredible.
This film also brings to light the struggles of non-jewish Poles in Nazi occupied territories.  The resistance of the warsaw ghetto and the poles, the Russian army.  It's an excellent movie for history buffs.  I own the DVD and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical films.

UPDATE: Just saw Schindler's List - Both movies are tied in my book.
510015
If you don`t believe in my title? - you must see it!
Masterpiece of documentary movie. Very beautiful pictures and music.
Highest state of recommendation and very special personal reference!
Best regards from Poland!
Miro
2912680
Sadly this film is often unappreciated or misunderstood.  It is an epic tale of patriotism, bravery, and cunning in the fight against worldwide oppression and communism.
3567730
This movie deepened my appreciation of the freedoms we take for granted in this country. The struggles of the Polish people under an atheistic government should be a warning to us to never be complacent about our freedom.
I miss Pope John Paul II and wish there were more truly great leaders in the world today.
915324
Good movie with accurate history.  Would have liked to have seen more detail on the Vienna citizens counter-tunneling.  On September 11th, the citizens managed to diffuse an already lit mine by counter-tunneling.  If it had detonated, it would have completely obliterated the Lobel bastion.  This would have allowed the Turks to successfully take the city and given them an excellent defensive position against the allied forces. The attack by the Duke of Lorraine and Jan Sobieski literally arrived just in time.  This is an important historical victory which has not gotten nearly the coverage it deserves.  The movie did a good job on a great event.
4242516
Enthusiasm, much less well-known than Dziga Vertov's other major works Kino-Eye and The Man With a Movie Camera, is nevertheless well worth a look.
The movie is subtitled Sinfonia of the Donbass and portrays the implementation of the first five year plan in the industrial regions of Ukraine. If that sounds un-exciting, don't be put off - this is an amazing movie that places sound - the sounds of pulleys and railway wagons, steel plants, the brass bands of the Young Pioneers and the Army, of tractors in the Kolkhoz - at the forefront of everything. Framed by close-up shots of a young women (later shown to be an artist making the finishing touches to a bust of Lenin) listening to the radio via earphones, the soundtrack of the film takes on a life of its own. Its synchronization with the visual content of the film creates a highly atmospheric portrayal of work and of constant, excessive noise - not just the noise of the work itself but of the streets, with their endless parades and ubiquitous brass bands.
Made in 1931, the film includes more overtly propagandistic content than The Man With a Movie Camera, made in the marginally more liberal (or at least less rigidly controlled) Soviet Union of 1929. However, for me the propaganda element is rendered almost irrelevant by the highly original soundtrack. The ponderous narrative interventions ("Here come the enthusiasts") are ultimately subsumed in the clatter of machine hammers and coal conveyors, brass music and public announcements, simultaneously distancing you from the "enthusiasm" on display and drawing you in to a kind of hyper-real portrayal of physical life (hard work, the streets, demonstrations) that makes you suddenly aware of the slighly un-real nature of everyday urban sound when you leave the cinema.
468449
You never know what to expect from a foreign film. Most of "Made in USA" flicks are quite predictable. Here you'd expect that at least the name of it will give you some idea what it is all about. Not so.
There are practically no sex, no nudity at all, and definitely no pornography in this movie. It is extremely slow and extremely beautiful. Have a drink and some quality slow food with it (not popcorn or chips - say, frozen raspberries and very bitter chocolate). It is mesmerizing watching all these sounds and visions of Polish countryside, Polish old farts drinking and smoking and talking (not much) and drinking again. There are some beautiful young bodies but they are clean and decent and underexposed and made more desirable this way. Somewhere after long watching I got bored of meditation and lost interest and as soon as it happened - the show came to a fast and (literally) bloody end.
They have a holocaust parallel theme but it is not "into your face" so it is wouldn't overkill as many films do with it now.
Take your time and try to watch it in one piece (remember, it is more than 2 hours).
789674
I've watched this movie in both Polish and English, and loved it in both languages. Yes, sometimes the movie doesn't flow well, but this is supposed to follow Chopin's life--which history doesn't give us a complete, hole-free account of. Overall, this movie is one that I will re-watch and never get bored of.
952824
Based on true events which took place in the Polish city of Luvov in WW2, this gruelling arthouse film revisits the emotional and factual territory familiar from Anne Frank's diary and Schindler's List. It seeks out rare fragments of human integrity and benevolence which have been all but extinguished under the Nazi boot in occupied territory. It is not a nice film, and the story is frighteningly familiar.
When the Jewish ghetto in the city is liquidated, and the people are either shot on the spot or shipped to a labour camp, a group of Jews flee into the city's sewers. A neer-do-well sewer worker (who moonlights as a looter) discovers them and strikes a bargain: he'll feed and find a safe haven in the rat-infested, stinking hellhole for a dozen of them. And they must pay him to stay alive.
So begins an appalling underground incarceration which lasts for over a year and which rasps away every aspect of sophistication from the disparate group. At first the sight of a rat is enough to cause shrieking hysterics. Later, the children pluck the animals from their shoulders without a second thought. Yet despite the relentless tension and misery, the majority of the refugees retain their better qualities: on the whole they seek to protect, to nurture and to survive as a group. They may indeed be starving in darkness, but their lives are not without light.

Although `In Darkness' makes for stressful and occasionally grim viewing, it is not without its lighter moments of humour and blackly comic insight. In particular the scenes between Socha, the sewer worker who turns out to be the Jews' saviour, and his wife are entirely life-affirming. Acts of momentous bravery pass become almost unnoticed, when the most basic act of procuring food might reveal the secret and condemn another dozen lives.
There are also some heart-stopping segments where the Ukrainian occupying force or Nazi officers come close to discovering the truth. And the film throughout is punctuated with explicit violence, nudity, death and sex, handled in an entirely matter of fact manner. Anyone could be killed at any time: that's exactly how it was. And the film's portrayal of that fact shockingly stark.

This isn't a comfortable film to kick back and watch for relaxation. It reflects the grim determination of the protagonists to keep on living against all odds and inhuman cruelty. The filming and acting are so accomplished that they scarcely intruded into the audience's consciousness, we were so wrapped up with the fate of the hidden and their protector.
You're guaranteed an emotionally-charged encounter, if not an exactly enjoyable evening.
9/10
2740181
Just before Christmas, I came across this Spanish film from Gerardo Herrero, adapted from one of Ignacio del Valle's books. The action takes place on the Russian front in 1943 within the Azul division made up of 18000 Spanish volunteers, mostly supporters of Franco, whom the Spanish dictator had sent out as a display of his commitment to the fight against communism and to reciprocate the support that he had received from Hitler during the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939.

One fine frozen morning, one of their patrols discovers the body of a Spanish soldier whose throat has been cut with a cryptic sentence carved out on his chest. The Spanish command selects Arturo Andrade, a Spanish soldier who happens to be a police inspector, to investigate this crime, believing that the murder might be inspired by Communists. Other similar murders will follow and, when Andrade gets to the bottom of it, the truth is rather surprising.

Despite being in Spanish (with English subtitles), I very much enjoyed this film, one of the bets thrillers that I have been given to see in a very long time. The suspense is quite breath taking. The atmosphere - a mixture of suspicion and despair, including between supposed German and Spanish allies - is very well captured. The whole film "feels and sounds" realistic and it is easy to imagine how it could have been inspired by a true story. You empathize with the main character (or at least I did) who is no super hero but just an ordinary soldier who, because of his qualifications as a civilian, gets handed a rather impossible task.

There are some rather superb scenes and fantastic pictures, including one of horses that have frozen to death in a lake, where the first body is discovered. An air raid from Russian aircraft and a ground assault by the Red Army against elements of the Azul Division are also among the best scenes, although there are about half a dozen others that I can think about. There is no "happy ending" here, something which is hardly surprising given the context. Early 1943 (probably in January), that is about the time when the Russians counter-attacked and trapped the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. I will however stop here to avoid any spoilers.

Well worth five stars
1081419
This is a German made WWII movie filmed in Poland.  The historical accuracy is second to none.  Even the location of where the bodies where found is accurate along with Hitler being a vegetarian.  Subtitled in English.
1129307
This movie is filmed very well telling a powerful story. It portrays a powerful message of history thats seldom talked about. I really enjoyed it and in my opinion its one of best films produce in 2016.
159126
In 1940 Stalin had the NKVD murder some 15,000 Polish officers who fell into Soviet hands when the USSR belatedly joined in the German invasion of Poland. This is not just the story of the crime itself, which is brutally portrayed on the screen, but of the lies told to cover it up, necessary lies if Poland was to exist as a Soviet satellite.

In the movie four officers and their families are portayed. At first the officers are treated as POWs and many cannot believe that the Russians will harm them, believing as they do that their skills will be needed by the Communist occupiers or that they will be given a chance to continue the fight against the Nazis. They do not reckon with Stalin's paranoia or Beria's (his secret police chief) rather simple solution to those who oppose the regime.

Aside from the murders of the Poles, many of whom had their hands tied with barbed wire and were shot in the back of the head, the director shows the lies which began immediately after the war. The Nazis murdered the officers in 1941 they claimed, following their invasion of the USSR. Anyone who contradicted this idea in the new puppet state, whether student or soldier, would pay a price. The Soviets were liberators. To say otherwise was politically incorrect.

Great direction in this and the acting was superb. Well worth watching.
1728248
Another historical film about a very important modern 3 day period.