Das Leben noch einmal

"Zycie raz jeszcze" (Life once again) was one of the first films to deal with the Stalinist period in Poland. The audience did not see it, because it was banned by the censors and stayed on the shelves for 20 years. The plot begins in the Lublin region, in the first months after liberation. The communist secretary (Tadeusz Lomnicki) defends a former RAF officer, Piotr Grajewski (Andrzej Lapicki), accused of alleged contacts with underground units. The innocent pilot is sentenced to 10 years in prison. For me, this film was distinguished by both great acting and psychological credibility, a lack of easy generalizations or pathos. I was also personally touched because a character played by Andrzej Lapicki reminded me of my uncle-in-law, who during WW2 was a Polish officer in the units attached to the British army. He had a similar constructive attitude and was open-minded like Piotr Grajewski. He decided to stay in England, where he died in 1984, and this decision might have saved him from the Stalinist prison. But his story is not tragic, because my uncle was happy in England and remained a loyal British citizen. Since the 1960s, both the Polish and English branches of the family have been visiting each other regularly, and at present I have almost as large family in England as in Poland.