Ostatni Etap (The Last Stage) [Library of Screenplays]

Octavo, 149, [3]pp. Original illustrated wrappers in grey, blue and red, with black lettering on front cover and spine. This book reproduces the entirely of the Polish-language screenplay for Wanda Jakubowska's 1948 masterpiece "Ostatni Etap" (The Last Stage). Illustrated throughout with fine b/w photogravure images, includes many still images of powerful scenes from the film, each captioned, and interleaved throughout the screenplay. Text throughout in Polish. The initial sections begin with an appraisal of the film by Polish film scholar and professor Jerzy Toeplitz (1909-1995), who was a co-founder and director of the famous Polish Film School in Lodz. This is followed by the text of the speech honoring Jakubowska and presenting her with an award at the World Peace Council in Warsaw in 1950, and the transcript of an interview conducted with the director, by film critic Jerzy Gizycki (aka 'J. Z. Terazycki', 1919-2009). These sections include a photo-portrait of director Wanda Jakubowska, and an image of her receiving the award, both printed in gravure. Following the text of the screenplay are final sections containing international reviews of the film, a list of countries where it was screened, an extensive index listing references to, and reviews of, the film - both in Polish and international publications, a full list of production credits, and finally an errata sheet tipped in. This groundbreaking Polish film is considered the first post-war feature film to portray the experiences of prisoners in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. The film primarily focuses on the experiences of a central group of women in the Auschwitz-Berkenau concentration camp. In a shocking instance of art imitating life, the film's director and co-writer Wanda Jakubowska (1907-1998) was herself a survivor of Auschwitz, and in July of 1947, began filming this powerful semi-autobiographical work at the very same location she was held as a prisoner less then 3 years earlier. Additionally, some other members of the cast and crew had been prisoners at Auschwitz and numerous local townspeople and Red Army soldiers were cast as extras. The director also utilized original uniforms and equipment from the camp as costumes and props. The content of the film is based on the director's own harrowing experiences and those of her fellow female prisoners. The film was widely seen in Poland, and received an international release in nearly 30 countries between 1948 and 1954. It was nominated for a number of international awards, winning the top prize at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Czechoslovakia) in 1948, the first year it was given. It was also nominated for the Grand International Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1948, and for a BAFTA Award in 1950. Jakubowska' film was the earliest cinematic effort to discuss the Holocaust in any detail, and the first work of its kind to be produced in the post-war period, in which the full extent of the Nazi atrocities had become widely acknowledged and understood. Although it remains somewhat obscure today, Ostatni Etap has been recognized as a powerful, groundbreaking, and significant film. In retrospect, it has been seen as being quite influential on later films about the Holocaust, and an archetype for setting certain cinematic precedents in its depiction of the subject matter. The film's frank, dark and realistic quasi-documentary style, and use of real stories and locations led its director to refer to it as a "paradocumentary". Additionally, its impassioned moral appeal and introduction of certain images of life in a concentration camp have now become familiar mainstays in portrayals of the horrors of life under Nazi oppression. The film has been visually quoted to one degree or another in many notable films since, ranging from George Stevens's 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (1959), and Alan Pakula's 'Sophie's Choice' (1982), to Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' (1993). Of particular note is the enduring and.…