Starring: Stanisław Tym, Krzysztof Kowalewski, Wojciech Pokora
Directed by: Stanisław Bareja
Ask any Pole to name the most underrated filmmaker of the People’s Republic of Poland and most will probably bring up Stanisław Bareja. Even though Krzysztof Zanussi once unsuccessfully attempted to co-opt Bareja into his film unit, the prince of Polish comedy was largely unappreciated by the highbrow and the party-aligned film critics and producers of the time. His supposedly plebeian tastes led his detractors to coin the pejorative term ‘Barejzm,’ which, as is often the way with pejorative terms, later took on a positive tone in reference to Bareja’s crackerjack anti-intellectualism.
Miś (Teddy Bear) benefited hugely from the caliber of the comedian Stanisław Tym, who also contributed to the brilliant script. Tym takes the role of Ryszard ‘Miś’ Ochódzki, an unscrupulous sausage fan and manager of a fictitious sports club who is obsessed with keeping his greedy wife away from their joint bank account in London. Bareja’s characters are all two-faced chancers ready to sell their mothers for a bunch of Christmas pines and frankfurters but, as cynical as this sounds, Bareja proved to be perfectly in tune with a Polish audience that was acutely aware of its status as a pawn in the hands of the red big brother.
The titanic teddy bear of straw featured in the film can be seen as a symbol of Poland at the time, as well as a perishable monument to human stupidity. The wider international distribution of Bareja’s entire oeuvre is greatly deserved.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on November 12, 2011