The phases of the post-war film theory have been an open issue for a long time. One may assume that the history of Polish film theory can be divided into two clearly distinct periods:

The first texts concerning cinema authored by a Pole appeared in 1898. Two works in French by Boleslaw Matuszewski were published in Paris as La photographie anim‚e and Une nouvelle source de l'histoire - the texts can be regarded as innovative not only for Poles but in film theory as such.

Matuszewski, who was a photographer and a cameraman, focused primarily on the origins of the specific nature of the filmic medium, regarding "living photographs" as capable of a truthful documentation of reality. For him, film was a realistic eyewitness of history, supplying it not only with materials ("direct vision") but also providing new research methods. Matuszewski championed for the creation of a film archive, a "storehouse of historical cinematography," in which catalogued and edited tapes would be a "new source of history."

At that time, the emerging Polish-language literature on film was shaped by the prevailing modernistic model of culture. Cinema was perceived and analyzed in the context of cultural transformations, with heavy stress on the appearance of a mass audience. Unlike in the West, where cinema was discussed by people associated with the cinematographic industry and involved in actual film-making (i.e. people interested in technical problems), in Poland film attracted primarily the interest of writers, literary critics, and academic teachers. They all acknowledged the complexity and multiformity of the film phenomenon; they went beyond its function as a medium of entertainment and emphasized its documentary, cultural, and They noted the fundamental opposition between images representing "reality" and fantastic creations, the opposition which only later came to be recognized as the fundamental mechanism of development in the history of cinema.

Many authors active at that time, such as Leon Trystan, Anatol Stern, Tadeusz Peiper published their views in periodicals; however, they never attempted at creating foundations of cinema theory in the strict sense. This was only Karol Irzykowski, an original and independent author who, in the book X Muza. Zagadnienia estetyczne kina [The Tenth Muse. Aesthetic Problems of Cinema] published in 1924, presented a new cohesive theory of cinema which was open in character and allowed for modifications justified by the development of cinema. The book was favorably received, albeit without deep understanding, and it was only in the post-war period, after three new editions (1957, 1977, 1982) and a wave of discussions and commentaries that the significance and pioneering nature of Irzykowski's conceptions came to be fully appreciated. Today his book is viewed as the exquisite achievement of Polish film theory.

The X Muza foreshadowed a new style of thinking about art, linked to transformations of 20th century culture, which in many areas considerably pre-dating statements of later-day theoreticians of mass culture. For Irzykowski, cinema was not just a new kind of art but also a way of cognizing reality free from the constraints of the abstract network of concepts. He noted the universal character of cinema which did not limit its field of operation to physical reality alone. Irzykowski agreed with Bergson that cinema imitates not only the mechanisms of perception but also those of human memory, conscience and imagination, thus making the penetration of man's inner world possible. He treated film as a new means of communication, which shaped the perception of its audience. What made film unique was its visibility or, strictly speaking, the visibility of movement, which was not an abstract phenomenon but a movement of tangible forms illustrating man's struggle with matter.

Film does not have to be art to perform its function. By capturing a reality that was not processed artistically ("naked nature, not covered by the network of human concepts"), film found itself outside all contemporary aesthetics. A concession to the viewpoint of such aesthetics was the cartoon--an illustration of reality fully controlled by an artist.

By the 1930s the scientific foundations of film theory were already clearly evident. The main inspiration for scientifically leaning film studies was provided by Roman Ingarden who discussed film-related issues in his celebrated book, On the Literary Work of Art (first published in 1931 in German as Das literarische Kunstwerk) and also at the seminars he held at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lvov. Ingarden's ideas were later elaborated on by his students.

Ingarden ennobled film as an object of study, ascribing to it all the basic properties which are commonly ascribed to art "products". He treated film as a structure of many layers, one of which can be defined as the layer of reconstructed appearances, whereas the other, as a layer of represented objects. Besides, he granted it an intentional status of existence. According to Ingarden, the film spectacle consists of a polyphony of heterogeneous elements and corresponding value qualities.

Ingarden's phenomenological conception was developed by Boleslaw Lewicki in his Budowa utworu filmowego [Structure of a Films Work], published in 1935, who added a third filmic "layer" or - cinematic language. For Lewicki, film provided a new kind of language; he based his ideas on technical, semantic and structural premises.

The musicologist Zofia Lissa used Ingarden's conception of layers in her book devoted to the connections between the visual and audial spheres (Muzyka i film [Music and Film], Lvov, 1937). This was one of the first books on the subject strictly following scientific guidelines. Lissa pointed out that motion provides the ontological ties between image and sound, as it is the factor of variability in time.

Phenomenology also inspired the psychologist Leopold Blau- stein, who embraced in his works the conception of layered struc- ture of works of art and of the intentionality of their existence. Blaustein explored the aesthetic and extra-aesthetic feelings accompanying film reception when he formulated the basic tenets of the theory of identification which many years later became tremendously popular in film science worldwide.

The works devoted to film formed an original and interesting domain of thought in inter-war culture in Poland, not limited to a transposition of ideas coming from abroad, but proposing its own solutions and values. For many years they went largely unnoticed and unappreciated. Postwar film criticism and film science announced a break with tradition, exploiting progressive concepts included in the writings by members of the "Start" association. In fact, this break with tradition did not take place immediately after 1945 but in the beginning of the 1950s when the cultural ideas advanced by socialist realists took root.

The position of cinema in culture was determined largely by its official elevation to the rank of "most important of the arts," this having obvious bearings also on film studies which were now definitely recognized in the sphere of high art. Therefore, it was no accident that the most important texts from that period were authored by the luminaries of Polish humanities: Kazimierz Wyka, Roman Ingarden, Jan Bialostocki, Mieczyslaw Wallis, Waclaw Kubacki and Stefan Szuman.

Kazimierz Wyka's essay Podroz do krainy nieprawdopodobieďstwa was a piece of particular importance [Journey to the Land of Improbability] (Tworczosc, 1947, No. 9; published in book form with glosses by the author in Cracow in 1964). This work was at least a decade or two ahead of its time, and it was quite some time before it came to be appreciated by the film critics.

Wyka incorporated film into an analysis of the 20th century culture transformations, and created one of the first descriptions of mass art characterized by phenomena of technical nature and civilization changes. Inj the 20th century film took over the functions ascribed in the 19th century to literature - film became the art strictly linked with life, it enabled direct experiencing of reality and satisfied the needs of the most numerous audience. More than literature, film removed the conviction of an artificiality from the viewer's consciousness and guaranteed a unique illusion of presenting a reality. By this, film became a new art (which introduced the technical intermediary between reality and the process of creation); besides, film provided a new language typical of the future cultural formation.

Wyka`s style of writing and the issues he had raised were elaborated on no sooner than in the 1960s. Similarly, Ingarden's book: Kilka uwag o sztuce filmowej [Several Remarks on the Film Art], although published in France in 1947 and available in Poland in 1958, was discovered by film theoreticians twenty years after its first edition.

The transformation of Polish film theory into a scientific discipline took place in the early 1960s, though the results of this process became evident only after several years. Similar transformations could be observed in many film studies` centres all over the world which was primarily inspired by the concepts provided by the advocates of structuralism and semiotics. The aim was to inscribe film studies into contemporary framework of humanistic science.

In Poland the first source of inspiration was Ingarden's phenomenological aesthetics, cultivated by his pupils and embraced by the younger generation of researchers. What made Ingarden's work an attractive proposition was the con- viction that the philosopher had failed to make full use of the possibilities offered by phenomenological aesthetics in film theory. His successors either developed film ontology on the grounds of his ideas or elaborated on the layer structure theory in search of an analytical technique different from the existing "grammatical parsing" which consisted in isolating various individual practical techniques.

The foundations of film theory in Poland were laid down in two academic centres, in Warsaw and Lod. Each of the "schools" presented a unique view on film studies. The Warsaw school was organized by Aleksander Jackiewicz in the Institute of Art, and the œ˘d school was created by Boleslaw Lewicki at the œ˘d University. The Warsaw school treated film as an autonomous phenomenon and strove to create a model of multi-methodological studies of this phenomenon, while the Lodx school favoured the interpretation of film in connection to literary art and treated film science as a kind of "philology".

One cannot describe the Warsaw school's orientation as definitely semiotic-structuralist, although these trends were extremely influential there. Phenomenological inspirations were still atractive together with other new studies, the example of which may be the analysis of popular culture originating from Walter Benjamin's thought. There appeared other comparative studies which combined various methodologies.

The findings of the Warsaw school have been published in the series Studia z teorii filmu [Studies in Film Theory], edi- ted by Aleksander Jackiewicz. The first volume, Wstîp do badania dziela filmowego [Introduction to the Study of a Filmic Work], was published in 1966, with subsequent works edited at various intervals to the present day.

The Lodz center's output has not been presented to the wide audience, and hence its erroneous interpretation as a program of humanistic studies emphasizing its "literary" character. Lewicki wanted film science to be not only a research discipline but also an academic discipline taught at university. Film studies were supposed both to formulate research and analysis programs and stake out the paths for its development.

The development of a academically-oriented film theory in Poland coincided with a flourish and dominance of documentary tendencies in world cinema. In those days researchers were fascinated anew with the recording potentials of the camera; they were also extremely with the unique relations between the object and the subject that no other form of man`s creativity could provide. Theoreticians became convinced that it was possible to investigate and describe all objective factors affecting film, (objective in the sense that they were independent of the artist, as strictly determined by the physical laws of the world and by the technical mechanisms involved in the relation between the photographed object and its image on the screen).

The above conviction can be traced in the theoretical works by Alicja Helman (O dziele filmowym [On the Film Work of Art], Krakow 1970), Aleksander Kumor (Telewizja. Teoria, percepcja, wychowanie [Television. Theory, Perception, Upbringing], Warszawa 1973), Zofia Woxnicka (Problemy kreacji i reprodukcji w filmie [Problems of Creation and Reproduction in Film], Wroclaw 1983), as well as in numerous collective works and analyses.

The young Polish film theoreticians were primarily inspired by semiotics. This line of study was initiated in the early 1960s when the team (Ewa Sieminska, Barbara Mruklik, Maria Bystrzycka) led by Boleslaw Lewicki started off with a series of works dealing with the linguistic character of film message. The initiative was taken up by the Warsaw centre (collective work Z zagadnien semiotyki sztuk masowych - On Problems of Mass Art Semiotics edited by Alicja Helman, Maryla Hopfinger and Hanna Ksiazek-Konicka who were also responsible for the fundamental chapters in this book: Semiotyka i film - [Semiotics and Film] by Hanna Ksiazek-Konicka) and then by the Silesian and Cracow centres.

The original character of Polish semiotics was distinctively pronounced in the following spheres:

Hanna Ksiazek-Konicka was the first to lay down semiotic foundation with her study of neuropsychological conditioning of iconic sign perception. In the days when Konicka wrote her book and the articles preceding it, the idea of marrying semiotics and psychology seemed almost heretical.

In her Semiotyka i film [Semiotics and Film] Hanna Ksiazek-Konicka started with the assumption that the semantic sphere was the basic aspect of film structure, and that the film sign matter wasparticularly diverse since all that can be recorded in the image layer and on the sound track may become a vehicle of meaning.

Konicka began with an analysis of psychological bases of iconic identificational codes constituting the most rudimentary level of semiotic studies. The author referred to neoassociacio- nistic conceptions of Jerzy Konorski in order to discover the laws and properties of visual perception, and to determine the relations between visual stimuli and models of perception. This justified her thesis that the properties of the perception process guarantee the iconic sign a generalizing and classifying character without restricting its role to a re- presentation of that which is concrete, unrepeated and singular. We recognize a visual notion of the object in the image. This object cannot be reconstructed visually but only designated.

According to Konicka, the more recent concepts regarding lan- guage as a set of subsystems enabled the iconic and audiovisual languages to be understood as sets of subsystems which could provide the articulation of a thought without resorting to verbal signs.

The author concludes that the nonverbal meaningful systems can be characterized by the fact that the text formulated within these systems appear to be primary to signs.This means that theory of texts should precede theory of systems.

Logical semiotics is another distinct branch of Polish semiotics based on selected theoretical and methodological ideas of Poznan philosophers of culture. Lukasz Plesnar and Eugeniusz Wilk are two authors who have focused on this field of research. They have tried to define fundamental principles governing the methodology of semiotics in order to create a coherent and cohesive theory. According to Wilk and Plesnar, another important task is to modernize the language a theory uses. The authors` ideas are fairly genuine and original when they try to create a new type of film semiotics.

Lukasz Plesnar began with an article Jezyk filmu a jezyk logiki [The Language of Film vs. the Language of Logic, 1980]. The results and findings of his research one can find in a significant book entitled Semiotyka filmu [Semiotics of Film, 1990].

In his book, Plesnar outlines his original concept which has been inspired by sources not linked with film theory at all. He turns to the apparatus of logical semiotics when he wants to find out whether film may be treated as a linguistic object in the logical sense. Plesnar follows Ingarden`s distinction and distinguishes four layers of film - the representing, the recorded, the represented, and the communicated. He seems to be particularly interested in the analysis of visual aspects of the representing layer.

Plesnar assumes that not all communication systems are languages. A communication system which can be described as a language, has an infinite number of signs and an infinite number of interpretations corresponding to those signs. Communication systems which lack this feature are not languages but codes. According to Plesnar, the language of film consists of

The number of sentences is limited when one considers a single film, but it becomes infinite when all existing and possible films are taken into account. The representing layer, or a set of film sentences, is a semantically interpreted structure, i.e. the one that must have a semantic model (a system of objects ascribed to its expressions and rules governing this ascribing).

The concept of semantic model refers to the concept of truthfulness, and in the case of film sentences it coincidences with the concept of satisfaction. The representing layer has at least two semantic models: the recorded reality (layer) and the represented reality (layer). Plesnar describes the rules governing ascribing in the two domains as representing. Both divide into two classes: the rules of extensional and intensional reference, and the rules of denoting and connoting.

Furthermore, the author distinguishes the set of direct derivability relations and the relation of consequence in the film communication. The latter, as he believes, results from the structure of film language as such, or, to be precise, from its deductive nature.

Eugeniusz Wilk also employs the apparatus of logical semantics in his works and refers to the methodological assumptions worked out in the Poznan scientific centre. The fundamental research task pursued by Wilk is the elaboration of a number of notions which form a model of analytic procedure applicable to film. Wilk ascribes the hierarchized nature to film which eventually leads to the distinction between the situation described mainly in the representing structure (the style) and that described in the represented structure. This provides a basic for elaborate typologies of the systems of the representing structure, and those of the represented structure ("semantized codes").

Wilk's next book - Kompetencja audiowizualna [Audiovisual competence] - deals with the issues previously raised by film theoreticians (John Carroll, Michel Colin); however, generative grammar is not the only source of inspiration for Wilk. The is strictly theoretical and provides explanatory description of film messages and the ways of their generation and interpretation by the viewer. Wilk does not intend to present any directly empirical application for his concepts. The author's purpose was to detect the logical structure of assumptions underlying possible descriptions.

Wilk presents a concept of audiovisual film communication based on an earlier assumption of the quasi-linguistic character of a synchronously treated segment of a film message and the specific nature of a combinations of these segments in a diachronic process. He formulates a topology of a synchronous film message (expanding Wlodzimierz Lawniczak's topology). The theory combines the topological syntax of representing states of affairs and the structure of represented states of affairs corresponding to it semantically, and described various types of diachronic combinations of these states.

Another distinct branch of Polish semiotics is the analysis of sound components of the film message. Issues connected with sound communication have often been raised by Polish theoreticians. Sometimes they were even ahead of their colleagues from other countries. Semiotic works regard sound components as crucial for film theory. There have been numerous articles published on this matter to mention those written by Alicja Helman and Wojciech Chyla (see for example Z zagadnieď semiotyki sztuk masowych [Problems of Mass Arts Semiotics] 1977).

The essence of Helman's semantic works boils down to the attempts at sketching a tentative model of intercode relations in a film work and at formulating fundamental laws which govern these relations. She assumes that in film we have to do with a destruction of the primary homogeneous systems manifesting themselves in verbal, musical and visual matter (with only selected subcodes retained) and with the construction of new gestalt qualities. The organization of the selected subcodes into a new meaningful entity may take two forms. Either the material which serves as a vehicle for a specific group of subcodes is eliminated, or the action of some subcode group is weakened so as to make it merely a background for the code organizing the main message. The subcode group may also be reduced to a kind of noise accompanying the basic message, or it may take a form of an additional and unimportant message.

This type of code manipulation, chosen by an artist, is not entirely arbitrary but remains subordinated to certain rules obeyed deliberately or intuitively by a film director.

Helman formulates the law of structures permeability saying that the stronger of two organizational orders will dominate the weaker. Another principle Helman distinguishes is called the commutation of functions. According to Helman, a new relation of subcodes within a film work makes some of them cease to perform functions characteristic of the originally assumed systems, and become vehicles of meanings organized by other subcodes or by the message as a whole.

These laws determine three types of intercode relations: 1. domination (annihilation in extreme circumstances); 2. parity and 3.neutrality.

A particularly significant question that arises here concerns the relations between elements in a system. Helman divides the film matter into four levels, refers to the notion of relation system and the theory of sets. What is more, she makes use of various types of density of couplings between the elements of the system. She enumerates five basic types of relations between elements in a film.

Chyla points to the following aspects of contemporary sound film: the audial material which emerged with the development of electric transmission; the unformalized type of music semiotics; the informal treatment of speech semiotics introducing rich onomatopoeic systems.

The author considers a situation in which communication structures of auditive character are enriched by the fact that the medium of their transmission begins to be a message, and in which the infinite density of audial stimuli in ti- me requires a new - "open" - attitude of the listener.

Andrzej Gwozdz in his Kultura - Komunikacja - Film [Culture - Communication - Film, Cracow, 1992] constructs an ontological hypothesis of a film discourse when he assumes four initial theses:

The author distinguishes three semantic levels in film discourse: the phonophotographic image, the iconic text and the narrative text. He describes the images as a synchronous bundle of iconic senses, i.e. the ways in which objects represented in the iconic text appear to us in unitary acts of perception. The image, as an intratextual invariant, belongs to film discourse but remains, as if outside the message itself, and forms a kind of iconic non-discoursive modulation. Iconic texts, on the other hand, constitute the first semantic authority bestowing quasi-filmic meaning fragments on sequences of film utterances. Being prototext of the narrative text they make it possible to distinguish formal-prei-conographic relations in the time-space continuum of the chiaroscuro-motional-coloristic-auditory scale.

The productivity of a discoursive icon, initiating the process of transformation of the iconic prototext into the narrative text serves as the foundation of the film story and becomes particulary intense on this level. The author goes on analyzing the filmic text in terms of "text-forming activity", by which he means the viewer's work on the discourse, thanks to which the iconic text is transformed into the narrative text. This, in turn, is the source of the story. Thus, this activity involves textuality understood as a process of text production, or text-producing ‚criture. This enables the author to analyze two basic principles of the text-producing mechanisms of reading-writing discourse (the intratextual transformation and narration). Finally, Gwozdz considers incoherence as a specific program of text-producing discourse proposed in intratextual transformation (i.e. a convention which is to be identified and transformed into another convention in order to make the text appear as coherent).

The basic objective of Wieslaw Godzic's Film i metafora. Pojecie metafory w historii mysli filmowej [Film and Metaphor. The Notion of Metaphor in the History of Film Studies, Katowice, 1984] is to present the development of metaphor in film studies, and to consider whether it is possible to find an element common to the majority of utterances.

According to Godzic, one may distinguish three coherent phases of development of the notion in the history of film theory:

In his subsequent works Godzic attempts to combine two points of view - two types of pragmatics: the intratextual one and the external one. He concentrates on the concept of a rhetorical strategy by which he means a kind of currently accepted knowledge, internalized by all participants in film communication. This strategy is the consequence of two intentions on the part of the sender, namely to articulate and manifest his judgement, and to indirectly shape (by means of the text) the wiever`s reaction to this judgement. The reader or the viewer is not a passive and "non-reactive" element since he may employ a different kind of strategy in reading the text.

Godzic aims at a global concept of film viewer, one that does not shun the issue of "meeting" with a represented world. Such a concept would explain how the meanings, which often reveal subconscious desires, are created during the perception of the screen world.

In her book Adaptacje filmowe utwor˘w literackich. Problemy teorii i interpretacji [Film Adaptations of Literary Works. Problems of Theory and Interpretation, Wroclaw, 1974] Maryla Hopfinger employs semiotic categories to describe "adaptation" as a cultural phenomenon, and to interpret film and adaptation within the intersemiotic mechanisms of culture functioning.

The sign systems of culture, both verbal and nonverbal, are interrelated in some ways. The three fundamental types of relations are those of distinctness, interchangeability and accompaniment. The criteria for their distinction are linked to the spheres of human activity, to modelling the behaviors, to relevant aspects of the human situation, and what corresponds to them are semantic-verbal capabilities of the systems.

The distinctness of systems arises from their links to dif- ferent scopes of activity, from different dimensions of the hu- man situation and, consequently, from different semantic-verbal possibilities of the systems which remain mutually untransla- table. Interchangeability, on the other hand, is possible when the activity scopes, dimensions of the human situation and semantic- verbal capabilities of the systems are less distant. Such proxi- mity enables the formulation of "interchangeagable" mes- sages in the languages of the two systems.

We can speak of the accompaniment relation when the activity scopes, dimensions of the human situation and the semantic verbal possibilities of the given systems are complementary. The intersystemic accompaniment relations lead to the creation of complementary signs and mixed utterances, and also to the emergence of new mixed systems. Those mixed utterances and systems are created through coexistence of different and heterogeneous signs which form new entities. This denotes the way in which the signs of modern cinema were shaped.

The problem of intersystemic relations of interchangeability and distinctness forces us to ask whether translatability of systems or intersemiotic translation are possible. This, of course, is particularly relevant in film adaptations of literary works.

Waclaw Osadnik is a linguist and semiotician interested in theoretical and comparative linguistics. The main problem he studies is the application of linguistic methods outside lin- guistics. Is his book Metody lingwistyczne w filmoznawstwie [Linguistic Methods in Film Theory] he gives a critical analysis of the linguistic approach to film studies.

Each of the paths of Polish film theory has provided significant insights into the domain of film, thereby opening the perspective for further studies. What is more, they have proved that other scientific disciplines can be successfully matched with film theory as such. In this way, new projects come back to classical concepts presented by pioneers of film theory. Lewicki's suggestion to seek the basic mechanisms of film message with the help of generative grammar, becomes the main source of inspiration for Eugeniusz Wilk and Waclaw Osadnik. Jackiewicz's concept of departure from semiotics towards anthropology was elaborated on in three books: Film: tekst i kontekst [Film: Text and Context] edited by Helman and Godzic, Film i kontekst [Film and Context] edited by Palczewska and Benedyktowicz and Kino: cialo, gest, ruch [Cinema: Body, Gesture, Motion] edited by Gwozdz.

The first to appear was Film: tekst i kontekst [Film: Text and Context, 1982] prepared by the Silesian Team whose members decided that semiotic research, the main area of their interest, ought to find "a natural and necessary continuation in the form of studies of anthropological, psychological and sociological aspects of audiovisual communication" (p.7).

Six years later Film i kontekst (1988) was published. The volume contained the texts written by postgraduate students in the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw under the guidance and in cooperation with the staff of the Department of Film History and Theory. In contrast to their Silesian colleagues, the authors of Film i kontekst refer to the very matter of film, analyzing motifs characteristic of cinema in a series of analyses.The authors` basic intention was to locate the filmic motifs within general tradition and to reveal the mechanisms of cultural transformations.

The last publication in this series, Kino: gest - cialo - ruch [Cinema: Gesture - Body - Movement, 1989] was the effect of a more comprehensive project, an interdisciplinary initiative taken up by literature and mass media theoreticians, psychologists and film researchers. The anthropological inspiration made the authors view film - and the audiovisuality phenomenon in general - from the perspective of nonverbal communication systems. The problem was thoroughly analyzed at various angles.

At present, the most distinctive area of semiotic research is undoubtedly the logical semiotics of film which has emerged from other disciplines. The other streams of semiotics show evident influences of anthropology of culture (in the majority of cases), or those of psychoanalysis.

Methodology seems to be very atractive to Polish theoreticians. The first project, crowned with the book Wspolczesne problemy metodologii filmu [Contemporary Problems of Film Methodology] edited by Helman and Malczewska (1977), was a recording of the status quo coupled with an exchange of experiences between the separate research centres. A subsequent initiative was a collective work Z badan porownawczych nad filmem [From Comparative Studies of Film] edited by Helman and Gwoxdx presented considerations of the methodological bases of comparatistics. An attempt to apply these bases to particular problems pertaining to the relation of Polish film to other arts was the book Film polski wobec innych sztuk [Polish Film vs. Other Arts] edited by Helman and Madej.

A book by Alicja Helman, Przedmiot i metody filmoznawstwa [The Object and Methods of Film Science], intended as a handbook presenting the entire methodology connected with the development of film science was published at the end of 1985.

Helman describes the birth and formation of film science as a discipline, its separation from film journalism and criticism, the emergence of various disciplines from the omnibus "film study". Helman starts with the fundamental fields - history and theory - ; at the same time, she refers to the most recent ones - semiotics, anthropology and others.

Helman attempts to identify and describe the sphere of methodological inspirations of film science, both the modern and the old one. The author looks at film science from the world perspective and considers the relevant phenomena in matching scale. However, Helman also points out the specific nature of Polish studies when she analyzes the important role of phenomenology (Ingarden's school), formalism and structuralism (the long and original tradition of Polish literature studies). She stresses the rich experience of Polish analysts and the quick respond to new trends in science.

The author considers three aspects of methodology:

Helman favours pluralism of methods and is not afraid to face the accusation of eclectic writing. She is convinced that the complexity of the object of film study must be reflected in the complexity of the system of the studies as such.

Helman perceives film science as a "law-discovering" science but does not ascribe this law with qualities resembling the laws which govern natural and mathematical sciences.

The analysis of film work has always been a crucial problem in the history of film studies all over the world. Analytics, the study of which was launched by Lvov scientists already in the pre-war years, developed on the one hand, as a sui generis theoretical discipline but, on the other, through numerous new attempts at studying particular film phenomena. These issues were the domain of interest for Boleslaw Lewicki, the author of many works on the subject. He proposed the so called score notation of a film work which would serve analytical purposes.

In recent years the problems of analysis have dominated the research in the main university centres. Film science has often been accused of being hermetic and highly abstract. In their latest publications, the researchers have presented the results of a different type of research which departs from the study of systems and strains towards poetics, hermeneutics and the art of interpretation.

The volume Studia z poetyki historycznej filmu [Studies on Historical Poetics of Film] edited by Helman and Lubelski, presents several research strategies as applied to selected representative examples. Poetics may live on a single piece of art, on the work of one film director or on selected aspects thereof; besides, it may refer to a genre or relations between the components of a work. The book by Helman and Lubelski is a collection of articles which explore these possibilities. It includes a study of the poetics of western, presents analyses of Louis Bu¤uel`s and John Cassavettes` films, or focuses on poetics of constructivism and others.

Another two-volume work entitled Analizy i interpretacje [Analyses and Interpretations] edited by Helman, Miczka and Wilde, is devoted to Polish cinema and world classics and brings film analyses written from various viewpoints and with the use of various methods. Although the particular tools used by interpreters are diverse, the analyses have one fundamental feature in common; they reject the tradition of film interpretation which related the particularwork to a paradigm of reality and then verified this procedure by referring to every-day and common-sense knowledge about the world. On the contrary, the authors reveal the tools by means of which a film deludes us that it respects the laws of reality, whereas in fact it is controlled by the laws of its own. The authors are interested in a precise description of the laws which can be identified within the filmic text.

The options taken by Polish film theory in the post structural age, (which was the reaction to systemic studies), were not clear-cut and obvious, probably because of the short period of time that passed from structural to poststructural approach. It is hard to indicate well-formed Polish equivalents of the successive phases of development of theory in the world. The sole representative of the psychoanalytical approach is Wieslaw Godzic.

Wieslaw Godzic's preoccupation with psychoanalysis and its applicability to film theory, as well as his analyses of selected concepts (such as that of the film viewer) make him a unique figure in Polish film studies. What is more, the psychoanalytical "thinking about art" (which is the title of the only Polish book on the subject, by Zofia Rosinska) is rare in Poland and rather unpopular. It is usually misunderstood and lashed by unsympathetic and prejudiced criticism. This does not make the stiuation easier, especially for a young scholar, but Godzic has managed to achieve fine results in his research.

The type of reflection embraced by Wieslaw Godzic resembles the film science practised in France and two more recent variants thereof: the Anglo-Saxon and the Italian. These have been the main sources of inspiration for Godzic.

His Film i psychoanaliza: problem widza [Film and Psychoanalysis: The Problem of the Viewer] is an attempt at providing a synthesis of the methodological and theoretical achievements of psychoanalysis (Lacan's variant in particular) which had had the greatest impact on film theory. The book is metatheoretical, since the author often makes use of a dialogue when he wants to confront the views of various theoreticians, or add his own suggestions and arguments. Godzic explicates the major topics of psychoanalysis and verifies the analytical efficiency of the tools proposed by this discipline in the context of selected individual films and genres (eg musical).

According to Godzic, the problem of the viewer in psychoanalytical approach is beyond the sphere of empirical research; similarly, he cannot be fully grasped by sociology (which considers the viewer as a particular element of the audience or cinema-going public), or psychology which investigates objectively conditioned viewing phenomena. The "viewer," as understood by Godzic, is a research structure, an abstract set of features making him a viewer rather than a particular person who can be characterized by some physical and psychic features. Godzic rejects the Cartesian self-conscious subject and follows Lacanian understanding of the notion, according to which the subject is dissociated and oscillates between being and meaning; in other words, it is strictly linked with the uncounscious and pre-conscious.

In his discourse, Godzic successfully avoids confusing the notion of the subject with the concepts of the author, the viewer, or even the protagonist. The subject becomes a consequence of structural games which involve entanglement in discourse. Thus, it is in constant motion, it is reconstructed and annihilated. The subject "controlled" by the text is also the subject to ideology. It even becomes ideology due to the process of interpelation which in filmic context implies a specific distribution of "addresses".

Godzic analyzes two basic variants of the viewer functioning: the subject in the text, and the subject with respect to the text. The former, simpler variant, refers to the idea of "desire in the text," and makes use of the principal psychoanalytical themes (with the most prominent of them - ie the Oedipus complex) which appear throughout the plot and narration. The latter, is much more complex and refers to the idea of "desire of the text," which implies the mechanisms determining the "passage" of a viewer through a set of films revealing the "work" of cinema.

Wieslaw Godzic does not represent the "orthodox psychoanalysis," which is strongly criticized by otherwise devoted advocates of psychoanalysis. They claim that the approach is much too prone to reductionism, to creation of closed sys- tems and to a certain doctrinal stubbornness. Paradoxically, Godzic seems to be able to find these aspects of psychoanalysis which emphasize its open character and the ability to merge with other disciplines of science.

In my opinion, Film i psychoanaliza will play an important role in discussions about the future development of film theory in Poland, apart from its scientific value. The book initiates a new direction of study in Polish film science, and its author's erudition, profound knowledge of the subject matter, and the courage and brilliance evident in his analysis - all deserve the highest praise.

Ernest Wilde deals with fundamental problems of film theo- ry, namely, its validity. Philosophy of deconstruction formulated by Jacques Derrida and elaborated on by his followers in France and the US is the most important inspiration for Wilde.Wilde treats film theory primarily as a certain practice of writing. That is why, Wilde concentrates on the theoretical works by S. Eisenstein, E. Morin, Ch. Metz who are the perfect representatives of the rhetoric rooted in the tradition of European metaphysical thought.

Wilde is particularly interested in revealing the logocentric assumptions which accompany the notions of film image and editing, both in traditional and postmodern film theory. Despite other differences, all aproaches agree that film image is a peculiar game of presence and absence, and that the understanding of editing is subordinated to the above definition of image (assuming that editing is a sum or a limited entity of images). Wilde tries to go beyond this dualism of image and reality popular in film theory. That is why he rejects the thesis about the representation of an absent event by a present image of this event. Instead, he states that filmic reality is not a point of reference to the image antecedent to the film but, on the contrary, it becomes its own image. Thus, the filmic event is not identical to itself from the very beginning, it only "resembles" itself. In consequence, such assumption reverses the traditional figure of thought, according to which the fictitious image is opposed to the real world; now, thanks to cinema, it is the world which seems to be more "unreal" of the two.

The historical works produced by the Silesian centre con- centrate on two issues: (i) the history of film studies - the subject matter of Proby nowej interpretacji historii mysli filmowej [Attempts at a New Interpretation of the History of Film Studies] edited by Helman and Godzic and published in 1978, and of two more works: Autor - film - odbiorca [Author - Film - Viewer] edited by Helman and Rewizje i rewindykacje [Re- visions and Revindications] edited by Gwozdz.

In the theoretical-historical field, the characteristic style of research in Poland is represented by Rafal Marszalek's books (Polska wojna w filmie obcym [Polish War in Foreign Films, Wroclaw, 1976]; Filmowa pop-historia [Filmic Pop-History, Krakow 1984] which straddle the border between history of film and history of ideas, making use of sociological methods of describing and interpreting the phenomena. The author attaches equal importance to historical facts considered from the researcher's viewpoint, and to the structures of consciousness. His goal was to provide a rich documentation of social judgments, convictions and emotions connected with film on the one hand, and on the other, to describe the forms of entertainment and the mechanisms of propaganda which are inherent to film. Marszalek treats film not just as a document but also as a blueprint of social awareness. Not only does he focuse on the public reception of a work of art but also on the reactions intended by the film maker.

Marszalek's interest in historical films stems from the pe- culiar status of the genre and the specific expectations of its viewers who demand a true depiction of history, either confirming universal convictions, or providing novel viewpoints.

Historical film is a narrative form, and its director (whose social role Marszalek compares to that of the bards in the old days) communicates with the viewers on the grounds of fiction, through narrative conventions. The various types of transformations of the object give rise to various types of historical films, ranging from those marked by realism close to a documentary form, through stylized depiction of events, up to purest fiction. The message conveyed by such films gives the knowledge of the world that cannot aspire to the status of truth, being confined to the realm of mythology.

The myth, interpreted as a specific type of tale, unites the audience not only through its textual content but also through the structure of representation. Treating film mythology as a form of social mythology, Marszalek stresses the coexistence of film myths with stereotypes which together contribute (by means of conceptual collocations and standard symbolic representations) to the emergence of synthetic images, unique ready-made forms which facilitate the identification of reality. The author interprets popular film depictions of history, stressing their functions rather than their formal-generic markers. He distinguishes two basic types of references to history: the popularizing one in which the description of the past is meant to entertain, and the interventionist one in which the actualization of the past has political and ideological goals which are intended to influence the viewer`s attitude and behaviour.

Theoreticians who deal exclusively with the Polish cinema have also presented original and unique concepts. In his Inspiracje plastyczne w tworczosci filmowej i telewizyjnej Andrzeja Wajdy [Plastic Inspirations in Filmic and Television Work of Andrzej Wajda] Tadeusz Miczka starts from the assumption that the fundamental ideas of the artist, whose importance for Polish culture is undeniable, can be traced in diverse works belonging to quite different regions of artistic cognition. Miczka elaborates on the thesis he had already put forth in his earlier works on comparatistics, and proves that the relations between filmic arts and plastic arts are based on two ways of shaping the film material : on a dependence on cultural mechanisms of adaptation (i.e. the plastic elements being external and added elements) and on dependence on the laws of literary adaptation (i.e. the material adapted for the screen contains as if a command to convey specific contents using references to plastic arts). The process of plastic art and film interference is, according to Miczka structured thanks to the phenomenon of "translatability" of semates through recording plastics art works, the quotation, the iconographic program, the allusion and the plastic title.

The theoretical and analytical-interpretative material presented in the work reveals a certain consistency in Wajda's in- tended integrity of the film work based on oscillation between "plastic", "literary" and "theatrical" spheres, and confirms the hypothesis about the mediatory role of plastic arts in the adaptation of literary works.

Miczka concludes that the ambiguity of the plastic aspect stems from the structuring of the film materials achieved by the artist himself (this being among the assumption in Wajda's program) and manifests itself in the eclecticism and pluralism of such forms as historism and iconographic gravitation, i.e. in the reception of old forms and in the visual images' tendency to resemble one another.

In her work about Andrzej Munk (Andrzej Munk, Krak§w, 1982) Nurczynska-Fidelska successfully solves the basic methodological problems of how to write the history of our times, of what method and what view- point to assume, and of what to accept as the basis of evalua- tion. Her work clearly and convincingly illustrates the diffe- rences between the approach taken by a film historian to the most re- cent history of cinema and current evaluations and descriptions of contemporary film productions.

Nurczynska-Fidelska decided to omit the incidental circumstances which in those days determined the evaluation of Munk's individual films and his oeuvre as a whole. She felt it was her duty as an historian to reveal the context which determined Munk's art, allowing his output to be shown not as an isolated phenomenon but as an element of a more general tendency which becomes observable only after some time The author assumed that literature and the literary tradition were the context in which Munk's oeuvre could be best explained. Thanks to it, many of his mysteries could be cleared up and one could observe the evolution of his work.

The literary context proved that the links of Munk's work with literature were not limited to adaptating contemporary prose or a fascination with literary tradition comparable to that of Andrzej Wajda or Wojciech Has. According to Nurczynska-Fidelska, Munk was an artist interpreting his times, analyzing the great problems of morality, politics and philosophy of history with full ethical and artistic responsibility. He experienced all the problems which challenged art in his creative period, a time which was difficult for artists. Nurczynska-Fidelska distinguished a generation group of artists including the writers such as Tadeusz Borowski, Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski and Tadeusz Rozewicz, and she inscribed Munk into this tradition too, arguing that although he had used a different medium, the similarities of themes and techniques were astonishing. This proposition, boldly overcoming the differences between various media which where till then given prominence in film literature, was a novelty which eventually became the marker of the cultural approach to film.

The book by Grazyna Stachowna is the first academic study of films made by the Polish eminent director, Roman Polanski.

The author's primary objective was to show Roman Polanski as a maker of 12 feature films and 10 short films. On the ground of theoretical assumptions concerning various concepts of an author of film works, Grazyna Stachowna proposes that the "external author" of a film is the director, a real person who has a name, a biography, a set of private opinions and a well-known public image. On the intratextual level of a film work, however, interpretative activities of the recipient reveal the existence of the "internal author", i.e. a fictitious personality of an "image presenter" and the main narrator of a film.

Consequently, in the second chapter of her book, Grazyna Stachowna presents an image of the real author - Roman Polanski. This chapter is an attempt at creating not only an official biography of the film director, who is also a widely known "biographical legend". She shows him as a "hooligan director", a "corrupt artist", a "man of success", an "accursed artist", an "immigrant artist", and a "cultural artist". Grazyna Stachowna also keeps track of the mechanisms set in motion by Polanski for the purpose of making his own biographical legend an element of a game with film viewers.

The third chapter of the book describes the internal author of films made and signed by Roman Polanski. An analysis of these works permits disclosing the existence of a transdiscoursive author showing distinct characteristics of a spiteful and cruel voyeur, who is only too pleased to manipulate the viewers' emotions, who arouses feelings of fear and anxiety, who shows a tendency to perceive reality in a grotesque manner and who is somewhat infantile and afraid of women.

The final part of the study is an analysis of the style of Roman Polanski's film works. As a result of a detailed analysis of 10 selected films by Roman Polanski, i.e. The Lamp (1959), Repulsion (1965), The Tenant (1976), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Dance of the Vampires (1967), Cul-de-sac (1966), Chinatown (1974), Tess (1979), Knife in the Water (1962) and Frantic (1988), the author of the book proposes that the main determinant of Roman Polanski's film works is the category of film genre and a means of breaking, contravening and deforming the genre's rules, which allow him to include in his films problems and themes traditionally reserved for works of the "high culture" sphere. The style of Roman Polanski's films is also characterized by the presence of the author's own self and a strong desire to enter into contact with the viewers.

The study contains a vast bibliography concerning Roman Po- lanski's film works, as well as a detailed filmography of his achievements as a film director, a script writer, a producer and an actor.

Tadeusz Lubelski presented his doctor thesis Poetyka powiesci i filmow Tadeusza Konwickiego [The Poetics of Tadeusz Konwicki's Novels and Films] in 1979; the work was published in 1984 by the Wroclaw University Press. It analyses the first period in the eminent Polish artist's work, from his debut in 1947 to the 1965 film Salto. The principal methodological problem tackled by the author was the search for a unified language, a homogeneous set of theoretical tools for the analysis of literary and film works. Lubelski discovered such language using the line of thought of the modern theory of artistic communication. The subsequent works by Konwicki were described in terms of what the sender wanted to communicate to the receiver by means of his films, which were regarded as equally important to the novels. In other words, the films became the necessary link in the process of artistic creation.

Tadeusz Lubelski has recently finished a new book entitled Strategie autorskie w powojennym filmie polskim [Author`s Strategies in Post-War Polish Film, Krakow, 1992]. This is an attempts to present an analytical description of the crucial points in the artistic evolution of Polish feature films after 1945. Once again Lubelski uses "communication optics". He describes how the ways in which authors communicate with the receivers changed (both on the intra- and extratextual level) between 1945 and 1981. He distinguished eleven "author`s strategies" employed by film makers.

Lubelski does not analyze the entire post-war period (cinematography of the Polish People's Republic seen as a certain entity) but concentrates on the period between 1945-1961, thereby maintaining an essential historical distance. This is a peculiar distance, however: Lubelski is too young to have been an active participant in what he describes, but then old enough to have a measure of personal experiences which does not condemn him to studies of source materials alone. The period he selected is flanked by two major breakthroughs in film awareness.

Lubelski is not the first author to describe this particular period. Polish cinematography has been the subject of many analyses, foremost among which is the multi-volume Historia filmu polskiego [A History of Polish Film], a collective work compiled by the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences. These ana- lyses are both of general and detailed character, and this means a great deal of challenge for a researcher.

Lubelski refrained from the currently common axiological procedure consisting in a simple reversal of heretofore accepted values. A historian who gives the lowest marks to Andrzej Wajda's Popiol i diament [Ashes and Diamonds], a film valued most highly in the past, does not write a new history of Polish cinema, no matter how much he believes in it. Lubelski's aim is not a "revision", but seeking a viewpoint and a research method which would allow an entirely novel appraisal of Polish cinema. This approach opens the way for a presentation of new facts that are often overlooked by other approaches; besides he wants to present and interpret generally known facts from a different perspective.

The concept of strategy is a fortunate solution in the quest for a mediator between the principal object of stu- dy - cinema itself - and the totality of factors conditioning cinema, usually presented as socio-political background. This brings into play the element of awareness - of both the authors and receivers of Polish films. Thus, it is the realization of Lubelski's original task: "to create the very object of study anew, to adapt it to questions posed by our times" (p. 5) while hunting for a method which would "enable the perception in the films themselves of 'networks of relations' connecting them with other arts and meaningful systems, and which, at the same time enable an accurate presentation of those other arts and meaningful systems in their relationship to cinema" (p. 6). According to Lubelski, the intertextual systems in the case of film are threefold: filmic, non-filmic (conventions of other arts) and extra-filmic (extra-aesthetic meaningful practices). In order to describe them the author selects the communicational optic (general perspective), and within it, he identifies the author's strategy. This latter concept was inspired by the writings of Edward Balcerzan.

For Lubelski, the concept of author's strategy is a "dynamic sender-receiver system", an "ordering of the sender-receiver communication by means of a work of art". According to this au- thor, strategies emerge in the sphere of actual functioning of culture, and from there pass on to works of art, affect receivers through these works, and make their way back to cul- ture in altered, rejuvenated form, offering the receivers values they previously did not suspect.

Marek Hendrykowski's book Autor jako problem poetyki filmu [The Author as a Problem of Film Poetics] sums up the problems discussed in theoretical monographs and, of course, goes beyond the summary. The work is the fruit of fully independent studies and analyses, an original monograph of the problem, the first of its kind in Polish literature. Its author is well versed in film theory all over the world and uses its findings to construct a theory of his own. This theory is neither a variant or a continuation of foreign findings. Hendrykowski is critical of the existing solutions in film science proposed by the two leading orientations in world literature - ie. by structural psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical semiotics. It is in those two approaches that the problem of the author is interpreted in a specific and narrow manner, with the author being seen mainly as a subject in the psychoanalytical sense. Hendrykowski is in search of such a concept that would do away with the reductionism inherent in the currently fashionable tendencies in film studies, and which would explain the complex problem of film authorship as comprehensively as possible, both in the extra-textual (author as concrete film maker) and intra- textual (author as symbolic construct) aspects.

Hendrykowski finds the solution in film poetics combining the descriptive and historical aspects. In five long chapters preceded by an introduction and followed by an afterward he describes an approach combining the description of the author models (i.e. a synchronic perspective) with their diachronic verification. Hendrykowski argues convincingly that the concept of the author as referred to film has been profoundly transformed. On the one hand, from the birth of film to our times, film theory has kept shifting the author label from one real person to another (a producer, a scriptwriter, a cameraman, a director) and variously depicted the functions performed by each of them. On the other hand, the roles performed by the author in the various development phases of film art evolved. Hendrykowski challenges the concept of "authorship" popularized at one point by French critics, taken over by the American ones and uncritically embraced by film theory. According to this concept, films divide into the author's and non-author's, with authorship being a gradable category. Hendrykowski is of the opinion that films cannot be author's films to a "greater" or "lesser" extent in the literal sense of the words. There is no such thing as a non-author's film. Films remain author's films even when they seem to be nothing more than autopresentations of the world, with no personality reflected in the world's image. Hendrykowski believes authorship to be a functional and multiform category subjected to evolution.

The feature characterizing Polish film theory as a whole is the evolution of a narrowly specialized autonomous discipline into an interdisciplinary science operating at the intersection of many various disciplines, with its aspirations and achievements earning it a place among culture sciences.