In 1956, the Western countries were mostly making War movies that celebrated the various glorious victories of the decade before. Poland had been severely ravaged by the German occupation, losing millions to battle and mass murder and its having capital practically razed to the ground. Under the circumstances, a movie saying how swell it all was wouldn't have been appropriate. Wajda's battle epic is an up-close and dirty look at doomed fighters in their final agonies.

It's easy to draw analogies about a story where idealistic fighters are forced into an underground hell; after a fairly conventional opening battle, Kanal becomes a haunted trek through a stinking catacomb. We can't share the fighters' discomfort but we can feel their claustrophobia. For the wounded, feverish Jacek, the underworld becomes a surreal and disorienting limbo. He only has Daisy to help him struggle through the filth to some hoped-for exit.

The attitudes of the fighters are unconventional. Even though they're the remnants of an official unit they function like partisans, with only Lt. Zadra and his sargent Kula (Tadeusz Gwiazdowski) observing proper protocol. Some of the fighters have paired off and are sleeping together. One member of the unit is a pianist with no fighting experience. He stays because he can't rejoin his family across the city, and plays piano for his comrades. He tries to play classical - they want to hear tunes like La Cumparsita.

Wajda's direction starts with a long trucking shot and then stays fairly conventional as the fighters make camp in some ruined houses. The city around them has been utterly demolished and provides no end of surreal settings, with further enhancement unnecessary. Once the story moves to the sewers the image becomes a nightmare of half-lit tunnels, where it's difficult to know what one hears or sees.

I saw Kanal once in the early 70s, I think on PBS television, and was blown away by its struggling people caught in a hopeless situation. The story embellishes nothing and makes no attempt to glamorize the fighters or otherwise transform them into valiant martyrs. The group breaks up into smaller groups and pairs, and their fates are cruel but logical. The commander actually seems to make it into the clear, but ... it wouldn't be fair at all to explain further, except to say it's genuinely gripping.

We wince while watching beautiful blonde Teresa Izewska slug her way through the sewers, dragging handsome Tadeusz behind her. The disoriented composer-pianist is played by familiar actor Vladek Sheybal, who later parlayed his melancholy stare into memorable parts in films like From Russia with Love, Casino Royale and the soon-to-be-released The Wind and the Lion. He plays a sensitive hero here.

Facets video's DVD of Kanal is a disappointment. It appears that a Polish distribution company called Polart is responsible for the transfer, which is from a dark and contrasty print with a number of disturbing splices up front. Twenty years ago on early VHS with this quality would have been all we could expect, but sparkling DVDs of some of the rarest foreign films are now available. I should think that a taped copy from cable television would be the equal of this disc, unfortunately.

The hardest thing to report is that the darkness of the print actually makes it difficult to follow some of the action in the sewers. Several of our main characters come to ends I couldn't make out, and I couldn't even see what happened to Vladek Sheybal. The disc comes under Savant's 'research quality' category: it's what you watch while waiting for a better copy to come along.

The disc has removable subs and a couple of galleries with a few photos and posters. A short bio on Andrzej Wajda tells us almost nothing about him. It's possible that the disc, menus and all, is a reformatted Polish original.

It doesn't feel good basically slamming a disc by a filmmaker who needs to be seen more and not less. I can report that Facet Video's disc of Ashes and Diamonds has much better quality.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Kanal rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Fair
Sound: Fair
Supplements: photos, posters, bio
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: December 7, 2003