Landscape After Battle, a 1970 masterpiece by internationally acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda (Man of Marble, Man of Iron), is quite possibly the definitive Polish film on the psychic ravages of World War II. Set in Auschwitz after its liberation by the Allies, the film is an unlikely but completely successful blend of beautiful color images, dark humor and documentary recreations of the painful transition from captivity to the “freedom” of Displaced Persons centers where thousands of Poles were held and “processed.” Daniel Olbrychski gives a brilliant performance as a bookish young man who escapes the DP camp with his Jewish girlfriend and who decides to return to Poland when their love ends in absurd tragedy.
Wajda based Landscape After Battle on the autobiographical stories of Tadeusz Borowski, who, having survived Auschwitz and the DP camps, committed suicide in 1951 at the age of 29.