“What would happen, Wajda speculates, if the givens of home and work were peremptorily whisked away? What if - and here is the great fear of the reasonable man - someone you loved suddenly refused to talk to you?.... On one level, Without Anesthesia is manifestly a political statement...yet what is more...universal about this film are its reflections on (its hero's) private dilemma” (Diane Jacobs, Soho Weekly News). Featured at the 1979 New York and Cannes Festivals, and winner of the Grand Prix at the Polish National Festival, Without Anesthesia (alternately titled “Rough Treatment”) deals with the cataclysmic downfall of a successful journalist who has quite suddenly outlived his usefulness to his government, his colleagues, and his wife. Too outspoken, too cosmopolitan, a “coffee house” journalist, too smug: the search for the truth behind these too-brief explanations turns Without Anesthesia into a political thriller, as the journalist wades through the difficulties of governmental suppression to the more chilling political reality of individuals who find comfort in duplicity as a way of life. (JB)