The Polish Musical Film of the 1930s: From the Musicals to Film Adaptations of Stanisław Moniuszko’s Operas

The author focuses on one of the most striking phenomena of European cinema of the interwar period, a musical film and musical comedy in particular, which vividly declared itself in Poland in 1930 (almost simultaneously with the advent of sound cinema). The new film genre was developing rapidly, but the achievements of Polish cinema in this area are little known in Russia. Despite the fact that the technical capabilities were more than modest, the music of Polish composers performed by new Polish film stars shone on the screen — those artists (and often musicians) to whom the new genre brought fantastic success and left in the memory of the audience for many decades. Moreover, the creators were interested not only in musicals, but also in more “serious” musical genres, as well as various national and socio-cultural contexts. The article offers an introduction to the history and peculiarities of the development of the musical film genre in Poland during the interwar twentieth century, special emphasis is placed on film adaptations of Polish opera classics — S. Moniuszko’s operas Halka and The Enchanted Castle. Based on the historical and cultural approach and the study of film materials (as well as the press and a few scientific papers), various aspects of the work of composers and artists, as well as attitudes towards a new genre of criticism, are presented. The author emphasizes that since the creation of sound film in Poland, it has been considered a synthetic art form, where music has specific relationships with images and other acoustic elements. Musicals occupied an important place in Polish cinema of the interwar period, however, in addition to this direction, interesting works in the genre of short feature films using music, as well as opera films can be noted. The most famous film adaptation of the national opera was Halka directed by J. Gardan (1937), who invited outstanding Polish authors to cooperate (the music was adapted and completed by R. Palester, the dialogues by J. Iwaszkiewicz, and the script was created by L. Schiller). Numerous musical films have become valuable evidence of the era, capturing its socio-cultural landmarks, as well as artistic preferences and peculiarities of the existence of the musical art’s works.