The decade of the 1970s in Poland was to be a time of escape into technological progress, modernity and improvement of the quality of life. It was accompanied by great social changes. Even if this attempt was unsuccessful, it changed society permanently. Two excellent TV series:"Czter 30olatek" and "07 report" tell about Poles of those times.
Maciej Gdula, a sociologist, draws attention to the topicality of the "forty-year-old".
I have the feeling that I am watching a series that could be produced today . Already the first episodes bring you topics typical of middle-class societies - quitting smoking, sports, diet, impotence, i.e. how men face the passage of time, marital infidelity . This shows that some radical change had already taken place in the People's Republic of Poland (...).
It is a series about the middle class at the time, fulfilling the aspirations that a little later in the song "Nie cry Ewka" sang by Perfect:"TV, furniture, small Fiat, here is the top of dreams". She is represented by the Karwowski family:Stefan (Andrzej Kopiczyński), a civil engineer, his wife Magda (Anna Seniuk) and two children.
One can get into the middle class, for example, through education. Karwowski's subordinate - technician Maliniak (Roman Kłosowski), whose character today could even lead him to the office of president - despite strenuous attempts, he cannot break through to her. Generally, in the series, construction site workers are presented as not very bright or hardworking people . This procedure is nothing but the erasure of the workers' ethos (it will reappear in the times of Solidarity).
The series is firmly rooted in the era. Gierek's decade was supposed to be a step forward, a step to improve the quality of life thanks to technocratic progress Therefore, it is no coincidence that the main character is a construction worker. It is a time of great investments in the country and foreign delegations:Poles are building motorways and power plants in Iraq or Libya.
Read also:What did Edward Gierek do in retirement?
A little manor, a little big world
Stefan Karwowski, who feels best on a construction site, succumbs to changes with a certain reluctance. At least until the computer lists him as the best candidate for the CEO of the enterprise. The old director from social promotion is to be replaced by a technocrat. It is also a sign of the times:the world of the upper class is opening up for the Karwowski family.
An excellent reviewer of this milieu is the serial engineer Gajny (Wojciech Pokora), Karwowska's superior. He mocks them a bit, but also does not hide his jealousy. The new upper class tries to find itself in the existing reality. He does it as best he can:copying old manor traditions and elements of the modern, "western" world.
Karwowski, there is nothing else to do but to follow this road, which is why, for example, they buy a portrait of their ancestor (a nobleman). The main character feels extremely uncomfortable in this world, so much so that during a departmental hunt he almost shot the deputy minister .
A mural showing Maliniak and Karwowski
There would be no "forty-year-old" without Irena Kwiatkowska - "a working woman who is not afraid of any work". It combines wisdom from numerous life experiences, openness to the world and up-to-date knowledge of scientific and cultural topics. He is a figure that perfectly reflects the aspirations of the time.
Fans of the series probably remember the scene when Karwowski asks his brother-in-law - the owner of a chicken farm (played by Janusz Gajos) - for a loan to buy a plot of land. The man shakes his head, but when he hears the amount, he replies:- That's it, I have it in my pocket - and pulls out a bundle of banknotes.
So business appears in the series. This rural one, fueled by subsidies and loans for modern agriculture . Its representatives are wealthy, they drive Western cars on vacation in Greece. Therefore, with some simplification, it can be said that capitalism appeared in Poland around 1972, when the ban on employing workers by the private sector was lifted.
Homemade James Bond
Fans of the series "07 come in" probably remember this sentence very well:
A militia officer, for vodka in broad daylight, during working hours ... with the utmost pleasure.
This is how lieutenant Sławomir Borewicz (Bronisław Cieślak) responds to a friend of the attorney at the invitation. And how can you not like the main character? Borewicz does not fit the stereotype of a policeman at all. He is intelligent, witty, well-read, has broad horizons and is critical of the surrounding reality . The old order in the series is represented by Lieutenant Zubek, mentally stuck in the Gomułka era.
The very opening sequence of the series, and especially the great musical theme composed by Włodzimierz Korcz, clearly indicate that this is not a typical Polish crime series. In 1976, when the first episodes were made, people didn't want to watch movies like that anymore.
Borewicz does not fit the stereotype of a policeman at all. He is intelligent, witty, well-read, has broad horizons, is critical of the surrounding reality.
More important than the crimes is the background of the series, the characters - even the third ones - who also today tell us in an interesting and multi-layered manner about Polish society at the end of the PRL and the changes that took place in it. The scenery of the series is not, as in "Czter 30olatek", a great construction site, but the entire communist glamurosis:the Victoria hotel and the Intraco office building in Warsaw, the Grand Hotel in Sopot, the Agip station, villas of people from the so-called private initiative.
The series shows an environment to which the PRL did not necessarily want to admit, but which it tolerated from the beginning of the Gierek decade . Production also reflects a society in which the desire for a comfortable, prosperous and original life could not be killed by any system. Sometimes this desire was so great that it led to a crime.
Joanna Jędrusik, a columnist for "Krytyka Polityczna", pointed out the interesting, feminine aspect of the series:
I don't know of any other series from that time that would show an equally interesting range of female characters and emphasize their individuality and subjectivity so strongly. In "07 report", instead of the house hens gallery, we see active, strong women who speak openly about emancipation .
Getting into various relationships Borewicz is abandoned and treated instrumentally by women almost all the time . They use it, not the other way around - this is also new.
Bibliography:
- "Forty Years", directed by Jerzy Gruza, screenplay by Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz, Jerzy Gruza. Polish Television 1974–77.
- "07 report", directed by Krzysztof Szmagier, Kadr Film Studio, 1976–1989.
- Maciej Gdula: June 4, 1989. How the nation didn't overthrow the commune , Krytyka Polityczna, 4/06/2014.
- Joanna Jędrusik: "Married? It's to put to sleep! " The series about Borewicz was not as old-fashioned as we remember it . Krytyka Polityczna, 14/05/2021.