Synopsis:
The life of a beautiful, young and pious woman is thrown into chaos when her parents takes in a dashingly handsome lodger. Having embarked on a torrid affair, the lodger goes off to Rome to seek a divorce from his estranged wife.

Unable to live apart from her beloved, our hero leaves home only to fall prey to the infatuations and lusts of a band of noble admirers, unsavoury criminals and utopian do-gooders…

Review:
The late Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk has two very different reputations. First, he is considered one of the most influential and acclaimed animators of the post-war era, spoken of in similarly reverential tones to the likes of Jan Svankmajer. Second, and most notable, he is considered a director of softcore pornographic films with artistic ambitions. Borowczyk’s career perhaps changed forever in 1975, the year he directed ‘The Story of Sin’ but also his most notorious film ‘The Beast’. These two films could not be any more different. ‘The Story of Sin’ has adult themes and features nudity, but with reason and justification. ‘The Beast’ on the other hand aspires to be a Bunuelian satire on class vanity and ambition, but this is a pretty specious definition at best. Its crude simulation of bestiality is more comic than erotic but nevertheless the censors took action. Borowczyk’s career sharply declined, culminating in the indignity of making the fifth instalment of the Emmanuelle franchise. Reassessing earlier films such as ‘The Story of Sin’ would rehabilitate Borowczyk’s reputation; despite being made in the same year as ‘The Beast’, it is a significantly more interesting film.

‘The Story of Sin’, based on a novel that was banned by the Catholic church (and filmed twice previously) is a tale of a woman who suffers for love much like ‘Madame Bovary’ or ‘Anna Karenina’. Eva is, in her own words, ‘a victim of circumstance’, whose love for Lukash, constantly thwarted by both fate and society is the cause of her downfall. Borowczyk’s fidelity to the literary tradition is one of the film’s strengths; making Eva’s rise and fall the central feature of the film rather than the more salacious subject matter. The adult content, involving two lovemaking scenes are never over-elaborated, completely the opposite from the path Borowczyk would later take. His earlier films had the reputation of being filmed through a fetishist’s eye and the early scenes in ‘The Story of Sin’ between Eva and Lukash positively crackle with sexual tension. Conversations occur with the focus purely on the eyes though the talk is flirting in nature. Memories blur with real life. Just look at how Borowczyk directs the seemingly casual tossing of items of clothing; hats, gloves, coats with the camera following with great interest. Busts and vases are placed in the centre of the frame. It is a unique and sensual approach to filmmaking, done with great subtlety.

‘The Story of Sin’ also contains a number of satirical barbs, not something that the film is renowned for. Eva’s initial piety, dedicated to avoiding sin and impure thoughts, does not seem to be shared by the other members of her family or local society. Whilst she covers ‘sinful’ works of art and books, others cheerfully avoid attending confession. When Eva falls in love with Lukash, she is cast out by her family as a slut and a whore, despite their own lack of piety. Borowczyk hints at the moral corruption at the heart of this society. Eva is exploited and taken advantage of by everyone she meets; no matter how much she searches for Lukash or attempts to create a life for them both together, society moves to prevent it. Conmen use her body as a means of committing murder; her motives to kill Szczerbic are noble of sorts but the conmen seem purely motivated by greed. Exploited and rejected by all, Eva’s fate is sealed. The satirical elements of Borowczyk’s work, when subtle and not over the top, remains underrated, obscured by the more sexually frank reputation he has.

Nominated for the Palme D’Or and the only film of his shot in his native Poland, ‘The Story of Sin’ is an impressive contrast to ‘The Beast’, the other Borowczyk film of 1975. Unfortunately, not much of his earlier work (or later work for this matter) remains currently available. Certainly one considers that the director has a career of two halves; one half mature and subtle, the other sensationalist and wilfully provocative. Whatever the reasons behind Borowczyk’s decline, which mirrors the heroine of this film (both victims of a sexually prudish society?), there is enough here to warrant rediscovery and rehabilitation.

Walerian Borowczyk - (1975) The Story of Sin.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2h 10mn
Size: 	2.65 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x576 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 648 Kbps
BPP: 	0.200
Audio
#1:  	Polish 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC @ 61.8 Kbps (Commentary by Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger)

https://nitro.download/view/B350884A2F950C5/Walerian_Borowczyk_-_(1975)_The_Story_of_Sin.mkv

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Walerian Borowczyk – Dzieje Grzechu AKA The Story of Sin (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s long gestated film adaptation of Bolesław Prus’ historical novel PHARAOH is an ambitious endeavor, dazzles in its epic scale and formalist gravitas with an exclusive Polish cast, which leads to one prescribed proviso: for purists, it is beggar belief to watch a movie about ancient Egyptians where everyone sports Polish through and through; but other than that, the film is a marvel orchestrated with vigor, mettle and pathos.

The story centers around the story of an apocryphal pharaoh Ramses XIII (a 20-year-old Zelnik graced with haughty handsomeness and solemness), whose hellbent effort to seize power and pecuniary autonomy over an ever-increasingly theocratic clutches of the clergy in the Ancient Egypt.

The movie opens with a static close-up of two scarabs, competing for their trophy, then reveals a throng of Egyptian soldiers marching in an expansive desert, and directly points out the strife between the young Ramses XIII and the High Priest Herhor (Pawlowski), in order to show reverence to the sacred scarabs, Herhor commands the troops to take a devious route which causes damage to the newly-built water channels, and a resultant suicide of the channel digger. The incident enrages Ramses XIII, and he vows to take down the clergy when he assumes the regalia.

That day would not be too long in waiting, but what also awaits him is an Egypt sapping in wealth and sway, the priests arrange unfavorable treaties with the neighboring Assyrians in order to keep warfare at bay, which ostensibly seems like a well-intentioned strategy to save the hoi polloi from the scourge of war, but the truth is, there is large amount of gold and other fortunes being squirreled away in the labyrinth of the priests’ temple, nominally can be only appropriated when in exigency, which the High Priests would never grant in favor of feathering their own nests. This is the touch paper which Ramses XIII deploys to foment the masses against the clergy, in an attempt to take the latter down once for all. Sadly he is still wet in his ears, and the priests are not ready to back down without a fight.

As a historical saga, PHARAOH is unusually lean on action pieces and subdued in its chromatic approach, one could imagine if the story were to be transposed as a Hollywood tentpole in a post-BEN-HUR (1959) era, all the glittering and grandiose would suffuse its majestic set, and battleground bedlam pumped up by polished fighting competence. Here, in a much less ostentatious and more internalised style (costumes are astonishingly designed in its originally exotic verisimilitude), what comes about is a tragic tale of one young man’s over-confidence in his prowess against something far more sinister, deceptive and ruthless than he has ever imagined, with a sideswipe to the benighted mob, when an eclipse crops up, all hell broke loose and burrowing a hole in the ground is their knee-jerking reaction.

Performance-wise, the cast rounds out a mostly po-faced dourness even for those who are laughing in the end (with Pawlowski emanating the highest voltage), sometimes emotes a ghost of urgency but none-too ravishing to be brutally frank. Yet, it is Kawalerowicz’s arduous effort to minutely visualize a mythical epoch when primitivity and obtuseness overlay the world, yet through a tall-tale where a spate of human frailties abound and speak volumes of what one can assimilate into today’s circumstances, it galvanizes new audience with its ritualistic posture and beguiling aesthetic attributes.

Review by Cinema Omnivore

Faraon.AKA.Pharaoh.1966.RERiP.720p.BluRay.DDP5.1.x264-SPiRiT.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 31 min
Size: 	5.71 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1280x544 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 736 kb/s
BPP: 	0.283
Audio
#1:  	Polish 5.1ch E-AC-3 @ 640 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/FBF505589D7A16B/Faraon.AKA.Pharaoh.1966.RERiP.720p.BluRay.DDP5.1.x264-SPiRiT.mkv

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English, French

The post Jerzy Kawalerowicz – Faraon AKA Pharaoh (1966) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Based on the story by Stanislaw Lem, Layer Cake is about a racing car driver who undergoes so many transplants that it can no longer be determined which people have contributed to his make-up.

576MB | 36 min 44 s | 765×574 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3E0AB9BF2435512/Layer.Cake.1968.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language:Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Andrzej Wajda – Przekladaniec AKA Layer Cake (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Suspenseful for most of its length, though a letdown at the end, this psychic thriller is about four very different people who are drawn to one particular place in the town of Sopot, a resort on the Baltic Sea. The time is 1933, and it so happens that 50 years earlier, a foul murder was committed here. Involved in that offense were four people who are dead-ringers for the four now gathering in Sopot. The modern versions of the four dead people are a police commissioner, a schoolteacher, a hunchback, and someone who just happens to be visiting from Berlin. As the police commissioner begins to gather evidence, he comes to the conclusion that this murder might just be a cyclical occurrence.

It’s one of the first Polish movie that is fully devoted to occult and parapsychology. It’s pretty difficult in reception and it’s definitely one of these forgotten movies. Action takes place in Sopot, where Wagner who is some kind of fortuneteller and his sister who is a medium. They detect presence of a few people which are guided by insanely powerful medium. Those people meet in Sopot (where there is famous Polish pier shown later) but while controlled they are unaware what they did or what are they doing in that location. Later, an investigation carried out by detective and his deputy that sworn his loyalty to Nazis results in conclusion that this is repetition of a cycle in which… The movie is accompanied by excellent music which enhances the atmosphere of the mystery. Interestingly, casual dialogs are without any background music. In addition to that we got some historical background when Hitler started to rule in Germany along with the party of the Nazis (NSDAP). To summarize, we receive a very original Polish production, however it will be difficult to examine for those who don’t like movies concerning psychological things rather that gore and action. A must see for Polish horror lovers.

https://nitro.download/view/F335D3ADE4BD8AE/Jacek_Koprowicz_-_(1985)_Medium.mkv
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/E582060A9EC38A6/Medium_%281985%29.srt

https://rapidgator.net/file/41515f7e951b6abcde8275f64cec5280/Jacek_Koprowicz_-_(1985)_Medium.mkv
https://rapidgator.net/file/6dfea3dcd22e1f23a955722a4ac5b3ba/Medium_(1985).srt

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Jacek Koprowicz – Medium (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.