International Awards
SELECTED
Academy Award Nomination
Best Foreign Language Film 1977
Nights and Days
The story is set at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The series is an epic saga centering on two families—the Niechcics and the Ostrzeńskis—and, through their example, serves as a chronicle of the Polish landed gentry in the aftermath of the January Uprising of 1863. The central figures are Barbara (née Ostrzeńska) Niechcic and her husband, Bogumił Niechcic, whom she married out of practical necessity. Romantic and sensitive by nature, Barbara moves with her husband to the countryside, where Bogumił manages landed estates. Barbara finds this transition deeply distressing, as she had harbored very different dreams and aspirations. Bogumił, for his part, is a good, honest man who is madly in love with her; yet, his wife does not always appreciate him.
The series is an adaptation of Maria Dąbrowska’s four-volume novel of the same title, widely regarded as the finest epic novel of the interwar period. In the first episode, Józef Toliboski—played by Karol Strasburger—gathers water lilies growing in a lake for the protagonist, Barbara Ostrzeńska. Today, this scene is a classic; however, adapting over 1,200 pages of source material was no easy feat and posed a considerable challenge for the cinema of that era. As the director recalls, the series owes its commercial success to Jadwiga Barańska, who delivered a superb performance as Barbara.