Abstract
Comedy has played an important role in Polish national cinema since 1949. Despite this, very little attention has so far been given to the comic within international reception of Polish cinema. This chapter focuses on Zbigniew Preisner’s collaboration with Krzysztof Kieślowski for Three Colours: White (1994), whilst exploring similarities between the film and the tenth episode of Dekalog (1988). Kieślowski's approach to these dark comedies was marked by an aim to provoke contemplation through humour, rather than laughter. This chapter will explore the ways in which music contributes to this form of sad comedy, touching on the relationship between tragedy and comedy. Preisner favoured a concept-led approach to filmmaking, using music to add interpretive layers to the films. This results in a degree of reflexivity that in the case studies in this chapter, is used for comic purposes.
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Notes
- 1.
“Behind the Scenes of White” DVD extra on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors”: The Exclusive Collection (Miramax)
- 2.
Edward Zajiček, “Kinematografia,” in Zajiček, Encyklopedia kultury polskiej XX wieku, 91.
- 3.
The ‘Cinema of Moral Anxiety’ or ‘Cinema of Distrust’, was a film movement that emerged in the late 1970s and ended with the introduction of martial law in 1981. The emphasis of these films was on the failings of the Communist regime (see Haltof 2002/2008, pp. 146-156).
- 4.
Reyland identifies this as the ‘harmonic minor mode’ from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Practical Manual of Harmony (see Reyland 2012, p. 66).
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Carter, L. (2023). Tormented by Pigeons. Music, Satire, and Smutna Comedy in the Zbigniew Preisner–Krzysztof Kieślowski Collaborations. In: Audissino, E., Wennekes, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33422-1_35
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