A Commentary on Tensions Reaching Revolutionary Power - Provincial Actors (1979)

Agnieszka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979)

I found Angieszka Holland’s Provincial Actors (1979) to be one of the most difficult films, out of the selection we have drawn from in the past, to access. There are many complex and interesting tensions at work which are somewhat lost on me, even when applying what I know about the political situation in Poland in the 1970s. Initially as I watched the film, I attempted to compare what was going on between the provincial actors, conflicted over the way “Liberation” should be performed, with the Solidarity movement.

The late 70s was a time during which struggle and pride coincided in Poland. The Solidarity movement grew out of the need for Poles to better their conditions and to assert a national pride in the midst of communist occupation. When Chris asks, as the director continues to cut his lines in the play, “What’s ‘Liberation’ without the Polish cause?” he may be commenting on the need to remember Polish history and keep the cause for freedom alive. Chris in general struck me as a character embracing high ideals of liberty and freedom, especially concerning how Poles define themselves and “their Poland.” Though Holland completed this first feature film the year before the Solidarity movement gained its most monumental following, it seems as if Chris is anticipating the need for such a widespread following; his ideals seem like they could have been the base of the movement; his main goal, to put an end to the censorship of the theatre director and to convince the others, most importantly his wife, of the importance of banding together and fighting for artistic expression, which he feels has been completely drained from “Liberation.” Part of the overall tension and conflict in Chris seems to stem from the fact that others seem to support his views but will not speak up to change anything. As we pointed out/observed in class, the bickering tension between the actors never seems to pay off; there is no end triumph.

The Solidarity movement officially began in Poland in the shipyards of Gdansk in 1980. The workers went on strike, locking themselves into the shipyards and members of the Solidarity movement rejected better personal treatment from the government until they could be assured that there comrades elsewhere were treated equally well. Shortly before the shipyard strike in Gdansk, strikers in the same city had been killed by police of the Communist regime. As the movement spread, the regime was forced into negotiations. However, in 1981 (December), martial law was declared. This was indicative of the loss of control the regime was subject to, as the only way to subdue the movement was through militaristic force.

Chris, by reciting lines that had been cut, embodies a similar spirit of rebellion and revolution, refusing to give in to censorship, apparently due to the need to please the “cultural department”, even though even his wife cannot understand why the role he plays is so important. It is as if he is setting up a revolution which nobody recognizes or responds to. This point is reinforced when the director tells Chris that he notices what he is doing, saying the cut lines, but that it does not matter because nobody else has even noticed.

Also interesting is the role of women within the film. First off, from the beginning, it seems as though Chris’s wife, Anna, does not subscribe to the same politics that he does. When he complains about the play and what it is becoming, she suggests that he quit/leave it if he does not believe in it anymore. She does not seem to be as sensitive to the political implications behind the rendering of the play that is allowed to be shown. At the same time, she is also a troubled character, ready for revolution yet trapped as a woman. Anna is often referred to as an intelligent woman, yet the only job that we see her doing (and possibly only because he husband is an actor) is playing a crow in a children’s puppet show. She is expected to obey her husband, and it goes unnoticed (or at least uncommented on) when they begin a feud and Chris slaps her on the cheek. By considering Anna’s social position as a woman, we may begin to see her in much the same light as Chris, but without the belief that liberation really exists. Perhaps her comment that “there’s no truth in it,” used to counter Chris’s frustration stems from her realization that for women, liberation is a more complex issue, as, even when liberated in the social sphere, the domestic situation for women did not reflect the same spirit of liberty.

One final point that I would like to make is that the suicide of the old neighbor is of major significance in beginning to think about the political implications of the film as a whole. I see his death as commenting on the entire system and as a representation of the end which all Poles who passively subscribe to it will face. His suicide comes directly after a scene in which he is describing the take-over of the militia in the town; symbolic of loss of liberty. He seems to embody desperation and loss of hope, whereas both Chris and Anna speak to the need to stop “towing the line” – Anna when she threatens to leave Chris and Chris both when he is finally able to reveal to her how much he loves and values her and when he refuses to abide by censorship.