French Revolution as a Site of Memory in Polish Culture: "Danton" by Andrzej Wajda

The purpose of this work is an attempt to highlight one of the examples of the appeal to the theme of the French Revolution in Polish culture on the example of the Polish-French film by Andrzej Wajda "Danton" (1983) analyzing the peculiarities of the representation of the revolutionary events of 1793–1794 in Polish and French collective memory. In the first part of the work (Chapter 1. The play of Przybyszewska and Wajda's film: accents), the text of the play by Stanislava Przybyszewska “The Danton Case” which became the basis for the film and the narrative of Andrzej Wajda's film are compared in order to answer the question why the scriptwriter and director needed to add significant changes to it. The second part of the work (Chapter 2. Reading "Danton" in the West and in the East") examines the reactions to the film as well as various interpretations of its text both in the Western world (primarily in France) and in Eastern Europe (in Poland).