THE SHADOW-LINE - CLASSICS

Original title: Smuga Cienia

Directed by: Andrzej Wajda

Length: 100 min.

Year: 1976

Country: Poland, UK

Premiere: /

Availability: Blu-ray (Region Free) 

Synopsis: a young polish captain in the British East Indies gains his first naval command, in a voyage ridden by difficulties.

RATING: 4.5/5 (RECOMMENDED)

CROSSING A LINE

Much like the title of Joseph Conrad's novel The Shadow-Line, which references the line between youth and adulthood that the protagonist crosses, this film finds its placement at a sort of crossroads in Wajda's filmography: his next film, that same year, will be Man of Marble, which will signify a completely new direction for his career, a completely different, more contemporary sensibility, and a more engaged narration. It is no wonder that his small adaptation of  the Conrad novella was entirely overshadowed by the other surrounding works by Wajda. The film also has another unspoken merit: it is Tom Wilkinson's first on screen role, in none other than Ransom's character, easily one of the more fascinating ones in the film.

ADAPTING CONRAD

If one was to rank the most difficult novels to adapt to the screen, right after Don Quixote and Dune, Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the first ones: only successfully adapted through referentialism and with great alterations in films like Apocalypse Now or Ad Astra, Conrad's pre-modernist, labyrinthic prose is somehow impenetrable. The Shadow-Line is a novel that predates Conrad's masterpiece but that shares partially its challenges. Wajda himself stated that his difficulties were so great that he vowed to not adapt literature again after this film - vow he eventually broke decades later, but that probably had a partial responsibility in making him seek the innovations to his filmmaking that can be felt in Man of Marble.

POLISH HERITAGE

While Conrad is best known as a british author, he was polish, raised in current Ukraine, who reached the British Empire only as an adult, in fact as a seamariner. It is no secret that most of his literary works have an autobiographical element, especially in the case of The Shadow-Line - much like in the novel, Conrad's first (and only) naval command has been ridden by an infection on board. While the novel does not explicitly identify Conrad in the nameless protagonist, Wajda's film does so, and adds a few passages from letters Conrad wrote in polish to his relatives in a scene of the film.

COLONIALISM

The Shadow-Line takes place in the colonial setting of South-East Asia, between Bangkok and Singapore. Even though he is seen as a precursor of the post-colonial discourse, Conrad is a man of his age, and this is evident in some passages of this source novel aswell. Wajda's sensibilities are different, therefore the adaptation adds a scene that features Conrad (the character) witness and disapprove a british merchant's ill-treatment of a south-asian servant child. A small addition, but definitely required to introduce a discourse about imperialism that is entirely absent in the original novel (but is not in Conrad's latter works, like Heart of Darkness).

STILL WATER

What makes Wajda's film a truly remarkable piece of cinema is its aesthetics: few films managed to bring on screen with such grace the late-victorian romantic visuals of sea travel. The still waters, the silhouette of the ship on the horizon, The Shadow-Line is simply put, beautiful to look at - and perhaps one of the most stunning films in Wajda's filmography aswell. It is definitely not an action movie, but a slow burn, focusing on a ship that is blocked by the lack of wind, with a crew getting progressively sick. Despite Wajda's dissatisfaction with the process, it is a film that manages to transpose masterfully in a visual form the meaning and feelings of the written form, without verbosities.