Ashes and Diamonds represents the height of the New Polish Cinema of the fifties, and it is a stunning example of Wajda's use of stark imagery and lighting to create a devastating, symbolic hyper-realism. Zbygniew Cybulski became an existential hero ("the Polish James Dean") for his portrayal of the young Resistance fighter, Maciek. The story is set at a crucial moment when past and future met in exhausted, pessimistic uncertainty for the Polish people: the last day of World War II, and the first day of the peace. Given his final order, to kill a Communist functionary, Maciek faces a night of procrastination, grasping at a few moments of happiness, before Wajda skillfully answers for history the question of the usefulness of Maciek's "lost generation" in postwar Poland.