Men of the Blue Cross

Men of the Blue Cross (1955)

Błękitny krzyż

The final film produced by Warsaw’s Documentary Film Studio is an epic re-enactment of a treacherous mission by the Voluntary Tatra Mountain Rescue Service to aid colleagues stranded behind enemy lines at the close of World War II (several real participants feature in the film). Based on a short story about the rescue by Adam Liberak, Munk’s final “documentary” is also arguably his first major exercise in the craft of narrative filmmaking.

Date of release
1955-10-12
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (10)
Runtime
55m
Genres
War, Drama
Director
Andrzej Munk

Casting

Interesting facts

Men of the Blue Cross is a Polish war narrative-documentary film from 1955 directed by Andrzej Munk, based on Adam Liberak's short story Journey for Life. The film reconstructs the authentic action of the Tatra Volunteer Search and Rescue, which in February 1945 evacuated a partisan mountain hospital through the German-Soviet front line during World War II. In the Men of the Blue Cross, narrated by Gustaw Holoubek, some of the participants of that action appeared, including Stanisław Gąsienica Byrcyn and Stanisław Marusarz.

Production

After the production of the documentary Stars Must Burn, Andrzej Munk attempted a creative experiment at the border between narrative and documentary film. Taking Adam Liberak's short story as the starting point for creating Men of the Blue Cross was a novelty for the director, who was an experienced documentarian.

The theme of Liberak's prose was close to the director because at the turn of 1944 and 1945, Munk worked as a laborer and a cable car stoker on Kasprowy Wierch. Munk wrote the screenplay himself based on the short story, and the commentary was entrusted to journalist and publicist Karol Małcużyński. Gustaw Holoubek, who embodied the role of the narrator, delivered the commentary with sensitivity.

Filming began in late January and early February 1955 on both the Polish and Czechoslovak (now Slovak) sides of the Tatras. The outdoor shooting process took place in harsh conditions. Some crew members were secured with ropes during the filming of the avalanche scene, which, intentionally triggered, almost cost Byrcyn his life due to the impact. An Arriflex camera was used for shooting.

In 2006, the Men of the Blue Cross was released on DVD by the Polish Audiovisual Publishers as part of the Polish School of Documentary series. The reissued version of the Men of the Blue Cross was released along with a collection of other documentaries by Andrzej Munk in 2009.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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