Like Cannes, Venice established a section for historical films several years ago. “Venice Classics” shows restored works from past decades and highlights the fact that one should know the history of cinema in order to understand its present. The series is complemented by documentaries about prominent directors, actors, authors and other creative figures from the world of film. Among others, there was a portrait of Hollywood actress Kim Novak, who was honoured with a Golden Lion this year.
Two films from the 1980s were particularly exciting. ‘Przypadek’ (Blind Chance, 1981/1987) is considered a masterpiece by the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski and is renowned for its experimental narrative structure. Medical student Witek (Bogusław Linda) runs breathlessly through the train station in Łodz to catch the train to Warsaw. What happens next is told in three different versions. In version 1, he manages to jump onto the moving train and meets the old communist Werner (Tadeusz Łomnicki). Werner was imprisoned during the Stalinist purges and rehabilitated in 1956 after years in detention. The idealistic communist becomes a father figure to Witek, whose own father has just died. Witek joins the party and is promoted as a promising young talent until he realises that he is being used as an informer to spy on and arrest members of the opposition.
In the second version, he misses the train, gets into a fight with a station policeman and is sentenced to community service. This brings him into contact with a Catholic priest and an opposition group associated with the Solidarnosc trade union. Everything is going well until he is suspected of passing information about a clandestine printing press to the secret police.
In version 3, he also misses the train and concentrates on his medical studies. He pursues an academic career and marries the dean's daughter. Keen to stay out of politics, he refuses to join the Communist Party or sign a critical statement. His dean offers to let him represent him at a lecture in Libya. At the airport, Witek encounters Werner and other characters from the other versions.
As we know from the opening scene, the plane explodes shortly after take-off. None of the three scenarios has a happy ending. In a fundamental way, ‘Blind Chance’ expresses Kieślowski's view of human existence and refutes all attempts to align him with a religious worldview, as some interpreters have tried to do in connection with ‘Dekalog’, his magnum opus.
In an interview, he said the following about the final scene: ‘The plane is waiting for all three of them. All three lives come to an end on the plane. The plane is constantly waiting for him. Actually, it is waiting for all of us.’
The director Agnieszka Holland, who was a friend of Kiéslowski’s, called ‘Przypadek’ ‘one of Krzysztof’s best films, perhaps even the best and most original’. After martial law was imposed in December 1981, the film was banned and could not be shown abroad either. It was not released until 1987 and was shown in Cannes in the ‘Un certain regard’ series. The new, restored version contains the scenes that were removed by the censors.
Pedro Almodóvar's film ‘Matador’ would probably also have fallen victim to censorship if it had been made 10 years earlier. At that time, Almodóvar had just started making short films. ‘Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón’ (1980) was his first feature film, followed six years later by ‘Matador’ (1986). Nacho Martinez plays the bullfighter Diego, who has to give up his career due to an injury and now runs a bullfighting school. One of his students is the uptight Angel, Antonio Banderas in his younger years, who is plagued by dizziness and nightmares. Afraid of being considered gay, he tries in vain to rape Diego's girlfriend Eva (Eva Cobo) and then turns himself in. Assumpta Serna plays his lawyer Maria Cardenal, who invites men to have sex with her and then stabs them with her hairpin at the height of their pleasure. Much like a torero in a bullfight.
'Matador' was made during the exciting years of cultural awakening after Franco's death. Democracy brought with it the sexual liberation that Almodóvar celebrates in his films. The stories are often hair-raising, characterised by irreverent humour and wild sex. Almodóvar himself makes a small appearance as a gay fashion designer. You can feel the spirit of radical freedom that goes right up to the point of death. ‘Matador’ is a very Spanish mixture of Catholic morality – Angel's mother is a follower of the fundamentalist movement Opus Dei and sends him to confession – suppressed lust and unbridled eroticism. A cinematic reminder of Spain's wild 1980s.