The Doll (1968)

Original title

Lalka

Directed by

Wojciech Jerzy Has

Genre

drama film

Country

Poland

Runtime

2h 31m

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 22 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A wealthy merchant in 1870s Warsaw falls in love with a woman from the aristocracy. The story follows his struggles with love and social class against a backdrop of political and social change.

melancholicpoeticslow-burnatmosphericcerebraltragicsocially observantromantic

What happens

The Doll (Polish: Lalka) is a 1968 Polish film directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The film is an adaptation of the novel The Doll by Bolesław Prus, which is regarded by many as one of the finest Polish novels ever written. The influence of Émile Zola is evident, and some have compared the novel to Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert; both were Prus's contemporaries. The movie, however, may be more compared to Stendhal's The Red and the Black. The Doll constitutes a panorama of life in Warsaw between 1878 and 1879, and at the same time is a subtle story of three generations of Polish idealists, their psychological complications, their involvement in the history of the nineteenth century, social dramas, moral problems and the experience of tragic existence. At the same time this story describes the disintegration of social relationships and the growing separation of a society whose aristocratic elite spreads the models of vanity and idleness. In the bad air of a backward country, antisemitic ideas are born, valuable individuals meet obstacles on their way, and scoundrels are successful. This poetic love story follows a nouveau riche merchant, Stanisław Wokulski (played by Mariusz Dmochowski), through a series of trials and tribulations occasioned by his obsessive passion for an aristocratic beauty, Izabela Łęcka (played by Beata Tyszkiewicz). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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