Jerzy Skolimowski

Early life

Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland, the son of Maria (née Postnikoff) and Stanisław Skolimowski, an architect. He often recognized indications in his work to a childhood ineradicably scarred by the war. His early childhood was dominated by the Nazi occupation of Poland; at one point he was rescued from the rubble of a bombed-out house in Warsaw. His father, a member of the Polish Resistance, was executed by the Nazis. His mother hid a Polish Jewish family in the house, and Skolimowski recalls being required to take candy from German soldiers to maintain appearances.

After the war, his mother became the cultural attaché of the Polish embassy in Prague. His fellow pupils at school in Poděbrady, a spa town near Prague, included future film-makers Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer, as well as Václav Havel.

Skolimowski was considered a troublemaker in school for his frequent pranks. In college he studied ethnography, history, and literature and took up boxing, which later became the subject of his first film, Identification Marks: None. Skolimowski's interest in jazz and association with composer Krzysztof Komeda brought him into contact with actor Zbigniew Cybulski and directors Andrzej Munk and Roman Polanski.

Career

Writing and acting

In his early twenties Skolimowski had already a written several books of poems, short stories, and a play. During this period Skolimowski met Andrzej Wajda, the leading director of the then dominant 'Polish school' and twelve years his senior. Wajda showed him a script for a film about youth written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, the author of Ashes and Diamonds. Skolimowski was not impressed and dismissed the script. However, in response to a challenge by Wajda, he produced his own version which became a basis for the finished film, Innocent Sorcerers (1960), directed by Wajda with Skolimowski playing a boxer. Skolimowski then collaborated with Polański, writing the dialogue for the script of Knife in the Water (1962).

Film transition

Skolimowski enrolled in the Łódź Film School with the intention of avoiding the long apprenticeship required before graduating to feature film direction. With the advice of Andrzej Munk, Skolimowski shot his student films over the course of several years in such a way that he could later re-edit them into a feature-length film. While scoring poorly in actual coursework, Skolimowski had completed his first film, Rysopis by the time he graduated.

Aside from writing, directing, and editing Rysopis, Skolimowski also starred as Andrzej Leszczyc, a character sometimes described as his alter ego and the first film in his "Polish Sextet". He reprised the role in his second film, Walkover, which earned Skolimowski early praise from Jean-Luc Godard. Skolimowski's third film, Barrier, contained similar autobiographical elements, but starred his wife, Joanna Szczerbic, and Jan Nowicki. It also marked his first collaboration with his old friend, Krzystof Komeda, and won the Grand Prix at Bergamo International Film Festival.

Skolimowski's early success allowed him to travel to Belgium to make Le Départ, a French-language comedy starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and again featuring a score by Komeda. Skolimowski described Le Départ as a light film rather than a comedy, stating that it "does not have the serious layers that I like in my work." Nevertheless, Skolimowski won the Golden Bear for the film at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival, and the film was selected as Belgium's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 40th Academy Awards. Skolimowski then travelled to Czechoslovakia where he contributed a segment to a Czech-produced portmanteau film, Dialóg 20-40-60, in which three different directors (with Zbyněk Brynych and Peter Solan) each devised their own story using identical dialogue even though the central characters in each section are separated in age by twenty years. His segment reunited him with his wife Szczerbic and Léaud.

Following his critical acclaim abroad, Skolimowski returned to Poland to make Ręce do góry (Hands Up!), the third film in which he played his alter-ego Andrzej Leszczyc, his third film scored by Komeda, and the fourth entry in his Polish sextet. The anti-Stalinist themes of Hands Up! led the government to ban the film and effectively expel Skolimowski from then-communist Poland. Gene Gutowski, the Polish émigré producer who had produced Knife in the Water, hired Skolimowski to direct The Adventures of Gerard, an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories starring Claudia Cardinale and Peter McEnery in the title role. The film was a financial failure, and Skolimowski later called it "my worst movie".

American cinema

Skolimowski's Hollywood career seemed to begin strongly when Robert Duvall and Klaus Maria Brandauer chose to star in his first American film, The Lightship, and the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 42nd Venice International Film Festival. However, the film's production company, CBS Theatrical Films, went out of business, which negatively impacted its distribution and The Lightship would prove to be their final film. Skolimowski also gave villainous supporting turns in White Nights and Big Shots. He wrote and directed two more literary adaptations; Torrents of Spring, adapted from the novel by Ivan Turgenev, and 30 Door Key, adapted from Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. Neither film was well-received, and Skolimowski came to regard it as a mistake to adapt Gombrowicz's "untranslatable" Polish novel into an English-language "Euro-pudding", so he chose to retire from directing films.

In the following decades, Skolimowski occasionally continued to act. He played supporting roles in Mars Attacks!, L.A. Without a Map, Before Night Falls, The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683, and The Stolen Caravaggio. He received critical acclaim in 2007 for playing Uncle Stepan, a Russian expatriate, in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. In 2012, he appeared in The Avengers, as a villain interrogating Black Widow.

Later career

In 2008, he directed his first film after his return from the US Cztery noce z Anną ("Four Nights with Anna").

In 2010, he directed Essential Killing starring Vincent Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner. The film won multiple awards including Special Jury Prize at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, Golden Ástor Award at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival and the Golden Lions Award for Best Film at the Gdynia Film Festival. In 2011, he became the recipient of the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In 2015, he directed thriller film 11 Minutes starring Richard Dormer and Andrzej Chyra. It was selected as the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards.

In July 2016, at the Venice International Film Festival, Skolimowski was honoured with the Golden Lion for "lifetime achievement".

His film EO premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize. The Polish-Italian co-production is a contemporary interpretation of the 1966 drama film Au hasard Balthazar directed by Robert Bresson. Submitted by Poland, EO was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards. In 2022, he co-wrote Roman Polański's drama film The Palace.