How I unleashed a Polish comedy

How I Unleashed World War II (1970)

I was recommended this movie by a friend and to be honest I was a bit worried what it will be. Though surely I was intrigued to see it, but the thing about foreign language comedies is that some of the comedy might be lost in translation if you don't understand the language. Another thing is the cultural differences, the comedy might drive from a culture that's not familiar to you and thus make you miss the point. So a Polish comedy about World War II was surely interesting, but I was worried that some, or worse yet most, of the comedy might not connect with me. Turned out my fear was for nothing, the comedy in this one was quite universal and very funny at it as well. The movie was divided into three parts, each about one hour and fifteen minutes, but as it's one big story and each part continues right where the last one left, the movie is intended as one four hour fun ride. That was yet another thing that worried me, at start I thought I'll watch one part a night at most. Well I ended up watching them all in a row in one night. So that already says something. It's a story about a Polish rifleman called Franek who probably has the worst bad good luck in the world. He starts off by falling asleep in a troop carrying train and wakes up behind the German line to see the first bombs of the war. There he's slammed into a Stalag where he eventually escapes after multiple tries only to end up as a slave worker in Austria where he escapes into Yugoslavia only to end up in trouble again. And that's just the start of it, he goes through most European countries and even Africa in the French Foreign Legion in his attempt to return home to fight the Germans. So the long run time of the movie is well justified in the variety of the adventure and even though I must say it could have been a bit shorter I certainly didn't get bored at any point. Credit from that must go to the nice feel good mood of it and Marian Kociniak who carried the movie quite well. Also I have to give some credit for the cinematography. Even though the transfer on the DVD wasn't the best, some of the scenes looked quite brilliant. Even though some of the themes and comedy was "borrowed" from movies like The Great Escape (1963), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and such, there still were enough of quite fresh and innovative parts as well, so it's not a ripoff in any means either despite the familiar themes. It's not perfect by any means and it could have been a bit shorter, but still it was truly funny and well entertaining to make that four hours more than worth it.
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