Innocent Sorcerers

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda followed his great WWII trilogy—A Generation (1955), Kanal (1957), and Ashes and Diamonds (1958)—in 1960 with this comparatively light, almost frothy picture about the wayward lives of rootless twentysomethings in postwar Warsaw. Much of the running-time is devoted to a protracted, dialogue-driven game of cat-and-mouse played over the course of an evening between a skirt-chasing sports doctor who plays drums in an amateur jazz band and a coquettish young woman he accosts outside a nightclub. But their flirtation, which includes one long episode that is a variation on strip poker, is bookended by material involving the man's friends—including not only Zbigniew Cybulski (known as the Polish James Dean) but also a baby-faced Roman Polanski—and ultimately leads to a Pygmalion-like scene that suggests the central relationship might become more serious. Innocent Sorcerers (a phrase referring to a generation steeped in giddy hopelessness) is somewhat dated, but it's more than an historical artifact, and boasts some very real charms. Presented with an unfortunately mediocre transfer on an extra-less DVD, this is still recommended. (F. Swietek)