Cast

Barbara Krafftówna, Zbigniew Cybulski, Artur Młodnicki, Wieńczysław Gliński, Wiesław Gołas, Wiesława Kwaśniewska, Zdzisław Maklakiewicz, Tadeusz Kalinowski, Alicja Bobrowska, Bogusław Danielewski, Nina Grudnik, Andrzej Hrydzewicz, Zofia Jamry, Kalina Jędrusik, Mirosława Krajewska, Jadwiga Krawczyk

awards

IFF San Francisco 1963 - Golden Gates, Best Actress (Barbara Krafftówna), Best Screenplay (Kazimierz Brandys), IFF Edinburgh 1963 - Diploma, IFF Cork 1963 - Diploma, IFF Beirut 1964 - FIPRESCI Award

Film description

Felicja (Barbara Krafftówna) is an actress and plays in a popular radio series. Twenty years after the war she is flying from Warsaw to Paris. The situation we see the main character in is just a pretext for another journey.

In flashbacks, we gradually discover Felicja’s personal story, set against the times of occupation. The main character saves a famous actor, Wiktor Rawicz (Zbigniew Cybulski) from the Gestapo and risks her life to hide him. Driven by a desperate (and unrequited) love, she builds a kind of emotional cocoon around Wiktor, who has no power to escape from it. Twisting events and emotions the characters are involved in result in tragic consequences after the war... The main theme of How to be loved  is memory defined basically as an act which constitutes the foundations of the individual’s identity, but also as a common experience of those who have survived occupation and the dark time of Stalinism. Everything that happens to us, we call “life” at the beginning. Only later it turns out it is a country – the main character says.

Excellent performance by Barbara Krafftówna and Zbigniew Cybulski in the film Has himself described as the most intimate of all his works.

Marcin Maron