Secret Agents, Informers, and Traitors: Agnieszka Holland’s Fever (Gorączka, 1980)

Abstract

The article examines Agnieszka Holland’s film Fever (Gorączka, 1980) depicting the 1905 revolution in Russian Poland. While situating it in various socio-political and cultural contexts, the author examines the significance of the historical event and its parallels to the Solidarity movement. Special attention is given to the fact that both movements were infiltrated and surveilled by the state security apparatuses. Close analysis of the figures of secret agents featured in Fever focuses on their political significance and meanings to reveal how these expressed scepticism and distrust in the possibility of political change. As the author demonstrates, Fever questions the possibility of genuine revolutionary change, yet most importantly it presents the failure as a ‘national defeat’ rather than a crash of political aspirations of the working class and peasantry. Likewise, the Solidarity movement was also appropriated by the national discourse, while class-related political aspirations were marginalized and eventually corrupted. The article concludes with the claim that the figure of a secret agent proves paradoxically crucial in mobilizing and stabilizing national discourse as represented subtly, yet persistently in Fever.

Keywords:

• Polish cinema
• security apparatus
• revolution
• Agnieszka Holland
• Solidarity movement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Fredric S. Zuckerman comments on the Okhrana’s significance in the institution of Tsarist police: ‘A crucial link in the development of the tsarist police network was the creation of the Okhrannye Otdeleniia or Security Divisions’ (2003, 79).

2 Interestingly, the theme of the 1905 revolution proved relatively popular in Polish cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, which may seem symptomatic compared to the virtual absence of the topic in the previous decades. The following films were made: In Broad Light (W biały dzień, dir. Edward Żebrowski, 1980), Knave (Kanalia, dir. Wojciech Wiszniewski, 1990), and Provocateur (Prowokator, dir. Krzysztof Lang, 1995) and all of them feature an ambivalent figure of a double agent or spy. Similarly to Holland’s Fever, these films problematize the question of political collaboration and treason, which by many was interpreted as indirectly related to the issue of cooperation with the communist regime.

3 In her elucidating essay on the political treasons during the 1905 revolution, Magdalena Micińska mentions several cases of the political activists who decided to collaborate with the Okhrana. She also notes that the collaboration with the Tsarist secret police was a thematic motif of several literary works whose action took place during the 1905 revolution, such as Marian Gawalewicz’s Wir or Andrzej Strug’s Z ręki przyjaciela (see Micińska 2005). In contrast, Bohdan Cywiński in his famous book Rodowody niepokornych that traced out the origins of Polish postwar democratic impulses in the socio-political discourse created at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century, claimed that ‘A surprisingly low number of people engaged in the revolutionary activities in Poland, decided to collaborate with Okhrana.’ As he further claims, ‘Genuine activists were able to develop such a high moral discipline that any promises of freedom presented to them during interrogations were in vein’ (Cywiński 2010, 142). Arguably, the number of Polish collaborators is adjusted to fit a specific ideological agenda and the vision of the Polish nation. Micińska is taking a critical perspective on the nationalistic narrative, whereas Cywiński is strengthening its heroic aspect.

4 For detailed discussion of these disappointments see: Ost (2005).

5 In his book The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, Timothy Garton Ash mentions his meeting with Bohdan Cywiński ‘who developed a striking comparison with the 1905 revolution in Russian Poland (…) But when the time came, in 1905, the intellectuals were amazed by the scale of the workers’ demands, and swept away by their actions’ (2002, 56).

6 As Andrzej Paczkowski reports: ‘When SB Research Office specialists were preparing activities designed to discredit Wałęsa, they secretly recorded a conversation between Wałęsa and his brother Stanisław, who visited him on September 30^th. In that conversation, during which the brothers indulged in alcoholic beverages, their topics of conversation included family financial matters’ (Paczkowski 2015, 213).

7 In his review of Fever, Jan F. Lewandowski suggested that the film was to be linked with Holland’s experience of the Prague Spring (1981, 34).

8 In her insightful essay on Fever, Maria Janion identifies the bomb as a fetish (Janion 1981, 9)

9 The infamous Okhrana department exceled in provocations aimed at revolutionary movements. Instead of repressions, they invested in disinformation and provocation as the most efficient methods of political struggle. Thus, they would infiltrate various revolutionary groups to divide their members by means of false accusations and information. These methods were later transplanted to the post-revolutionary Soviet Russia and used by the communist secret police (Siemiątkowski 2017, 16–17).

10 The scene of the unsuccessful terrorist attack is also important because it mobilizes contradictory emotional structures. As Tadeusz Sobolewski claims, the viewers may feel relief that the attack failed (1981, 13). Yet, after ‘re-processing’ of the event, they may reconsider their initial response. After all, the survivors are the oppressors and ruthless persecutors of the revolutionaries and Polish people.

11 For example, Maria Malatyńska called the film ‘cold’ and claimed that it is impossible for the viewer to emotionally respond to it (Malatyńska 1981, 2).

12 In fact, 245 000 viewers watched the film in 1981, which was an average number for the box-office.

13 One of the reviewers writes that in her speech at the Gdańsk Film Festival, Holland said that it was not her intention to make a film about the Polish Solidarity revolution but more about the Prague Spring (I.S 1981).

14 When before his execution Kiełza clumsily shouts ‘Away with the Tsar,’ it sounds like a slogan he repeats without really understanding it and it is unclear whether this is a call to end the economic exploitation of tsarist autocracy or Russian oppression of the Polish nation, or both.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 nr 2020/37/K/HS2/02327.

Notes on contributors

Elżbieta Ostrowska

Elżbieta Ostrowska, in 2005-2021 Lecturer in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. Currently, she realizes the research project “Transnational Cinema of Agnieszka Holland” at the Department of Media and Audiovisual Culture, UŁ. Her publications include The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia, co-edited with Ewa Mazierska and Matilda Mroz (Edinburgh University Press 2016), Women in Polish Cinema, co-authored with Ewa Mazierska (Berghahn Books, 2006), The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World, co-edited with John Orr (Wallflower, 2006), The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance, co-edited with John Orr (Wallflower, 2003), Gender in Film and the Media: East-West Dialogues, co-edited with Elzbieta Oleksy and Michael Stevenson (Peter Lang, 2000). Her articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Studies in European Cinema, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.