„A Storm over Fields”: Bright Fields (1947) in the light of „Film” magazine

Abstract

This article approximates, on a characteristic example of  Eugeniusz Cękalski’s Bright Fields (1947), the process of elevating socialistic culture in „New Poland” that took place after the World War II. Slogans of „spreading the culture”, bringing it closer to „the working masses” professed by pre-war leftist intellectuals were fully supported by communist authorities during the first years after the war. Both of these groups took up an effort to estabilish principles and forms of the new culture: literature, poetry and film, which ended in their „institutionalization” as a „socialistic realism” during series of artists’ conventions. Bright Fields tried to fulfill this prime principle before said conventions. While fulfilling constructional instructions, they were however harshly criticised for being a primitive picture and exaggerated in propaganda. The movie couldn’t effectively take part in elevating the new culture „for masses”. Except for few individuals, only the „Film” magazine tried to defend the E. Cękalski’s picture. The magazine however, published by a producer of Bright Fields, was on a hiding to nothing and gradually resigned from its first, positive verdict.