Jerzy Skolimowski

Skolimowski enrolled in the Łódź Film School with the intention of avoiding the long apprenticeship required before graduating to feature film direction. With the advice of Andrzej Munk, Skolimowski shot his student films over the course of several years in such a way that he could later re-edit them into a feature-length film. While scoring poorly in actual coursework, Skolimowski had completed his first film, Rysopis by the time he graduated. Aside from writing, directing, and editing Rysopis, Skolimowski also starred as Andrzej Leszczyc, a character sometimes described as his alter ego and the first film in his "Polish Sextet". He reprised the role in his second film, Walkover, which earned Skolimowski early praise from Jean-Luc Godard. Skolimowski's third film, Barrier, contained similar autobiographical elements, but starred his wife, Joanna Szczerbic, and Jan Nowicki. It also marked his first collaboration with his old friend, Krzystof Komeda, and won the Grand Prix at Bergamo International Film Festival. Skolimowski's early success allowed him to travel to Belgium to make Le Départ, a French-language comedy starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and again featuring a score by Komeda. Skolimowski described Le Départ as a light film rather than a comedy, stating that it "does not have the serious layers that I like in my work." Nevertheless, Skolimowski won the Golden Bear for the film at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival, and the film was selected as Belgium's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 40th Academy Awards. Skolimowski then travelled to Czechoslovakia where he contributed a segment to a Czech-produced portmanteau film, Dialóg 20-40-60, in which three different directors (with Zbyněk Brynych and Peter Solan) each devised their own story using identical dialogue even though the central characters in each section are separated in age by twenty years. His segment reunited him with his wife Szczerbic and Léaud. Following his critical acclaim abroad, Skolimowski returned to Poland to make Ręce do góry (Hands Up!), the third film in which he played his alter-ego Andrzej Leszczyc, his third film scored by Komeda, and the fourth entry in his Polish sextet. The anti-Stalinist themes of Hands Up! led the government to ban the film and effectively expel Skolimowski from then-communist Poland. Gene Gutowski, the Polish émigré producer who had produced Knife in the Water, hired Skolimowski to direct The Adventures of Gerard, an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories starring Claudia Cardinale and Peter McEnery in the title role. The film was a financial failure, and Skolimowski later called it "my worst movie". During post-production, Skolimowski resettled in London, where Jimi Hendrix was a neighbor in the same building. There he wrote Deep End, his second non-Polish feature based on his original screenplay. Deep End was critically well-received, and it introduced him to a new, English-language audience. Its success led producer David L. Wolper to hire Skolimowski to adapt King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov. The Film reunited Skolimowski with Deep End's star, John Moulder-Brown, and starred David Niven and Gina Lollobrigida, but it did not replicate the earlier film's success. Skolimowski would not make another film until 1978, when producer Jeremy Thomas hired him to direct The Shout. The Shout, based on a short story by Robert Graves and starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, and John Hurt, was initially met with a mixed critical reception. However, it has since come to be regarded as one of Skolimowski's finest achievements and in 2026 was re-released on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection. Afterwards, Skolimowski gave his first performance in more than a decade when the German director Volker Schlondorff hired him to play a supporting role in Circle of Deceit. The film was shot on location in Lebanon amidst the Lebanese Civil War, and Skolimowski won the Deutscher Filmpreis for best supporting actor. Following a period of economic unrest and political agitation, the Polish government allowed Skolimowski to release Hands Up! after 14 years of suppression. Skolimowski removed around a third of the film and replaced it with a 25-minute prologue in which Skolimowski described the conditions of the film's production and eventual completion and showed footage of his paintings and his time in Lebanon. After 14 years, the film finally made its debut at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, only for its Polish release to be delayed for four years by the implementation of Martial Law in Poland. In response, Skolimowski hurriedly wrote and directed Moonlighting, which was inspired by his real experiences with Polish citizens stranded in London and starred Jeremy Irons as a character based on himself. Moonlighting was the fifth of Skolimowski's Polish sextet, and it was critically and commercially his most successful film. This inspired him to make what would become the final and most autobiographical film in his Polish sextet, Success Is the Best Revenge. In the film, Michael York plays an exiled Polish director based on Skolimowski, whose real family played the wife and sons of the character. However, the film's financiers chose not to distribute the film so they could write it off on their taxes, bankrupting Skolimowski and causing him to relocate to Los Angeles.