"Szkice Weglem" (The Charcoal Sketches) is an adaptation of a short story by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Before he struck a patriotic and bombastic tone, the young Sienkiewicz wrote a whole series of realistic stories about the Polish countryside. The plot is about the peasant family Rzepa. In order to protect her husband (Wieslaw Golas) from being taken into the Russian army for many years, which would threaten to ruin the farm, the wife Marysia Rzepa (Barbara Walkowna) gives herself to the local clerk, Zolzikiewicz (Jozef Zbirog), who has promised to help her husband, but does not keep his promise. The film is a grim picture of Polish countryside in the second half of the 19th century. I watched this movie with interest because I do not come from nobility but from peasants, and even my grandfather served in the Tsarist army. But I don't think that anyone who wasn't interested in the situation of the lower classes of society in old Poland would be as interested in "The Charcoal Sketches" as I was. The story was told in a pretty straightforward way, and at some moments the film looked dated.
