Nights and Days

The film tells the marriage of Barbara and Bogumił Niechcic and how their family changes over the years. In the background stand the January Uprising of 1863 and the First World War. The rise and fall of a landowning family in Poland before the war makes up the body of the story. The account has two threads: one of social history, the other the private reckoning of two people. It is an adaptation that stays close to the novel of the same name by Maria Dąbrowska. That Barbara can never quite be reconciled to her life runs through the whole account. The two hundred and forty five minutes are used to carry that long stretch. Jadwiga Barańska and Jerzy Bińczycki appear in Jerzy Antczak’s Polish film, completed in 1975.