Our Folks

After the war the borders moved and families forced to leave their land in the east were settled in the west. Kargul and Pawlak were neighbours before and have been quarrelling for years. The cause is a boundary in a field and a hen. Now chance puts them side by side again; the two families are in the same village, neighbours once more. The quarrel picks up where it left off. But Kargul's daughter and Pawlak's son love each other. When the two old men hear of it they are angrier still. Then a wedding, a birth, and the years pass. Sylwester Chęciński directs. Wacław Kowalski, Władysław Hańcza and Zdzisław Karczewski are in the cast. It is a Polish production, made in 1967. The film is counted a classic in Poland and is shown regularly on television; its lines passed into everyday speech. Its ground is a real historical situation; the postwar transfer of population affected millions in Poland. The narrative takes that heavy subject as comedy and puts displacement behind a story about a feud. Two sequels were made and the three became a trilogy. The humour rests on village speech; the exchanges between the two old men are at the centre. The narrative spreads over years and the characters age; the quarrel never ends. Its limit is accessibility; the jokes depend on the language and the period, and most is lost in translation. Who it is for: viewers who like Polish cinema and village comedy. Who it is not for: it is local, old, and the narrative episodic.