Sztandar wolnosci Review: Grainy, Loud, and Weirdly Fascinating

If you love dusty archival footage and early European history, Sztandar wolnosci is a weirdly captivating watch today. But if you hate scratchy, silent-era montages with lots of marching, you will probably find it incredibly boring. 🥱

Honestly, I didn't expect to sit through the whole thing.

It was put together by Ryszard Ordynski back in 1935, mostly to celebrate Poland's independence and Józef Piłsudski. It plays like a massive, national scrapbook that someone found in an attic and decided to set to music.

The footage is so grainy in some scenes that the soldiers look like ghosts moving through the mud.

There is this one incredibly specific shot where a military horse looks directly into the camera lens and just blinks. It felt so modern and out of place, like the horse was asking me what I was doing watching this in the modern era. 🐴

It has that same shaky, frantic energy you find in early silent dramas like Trifling Women, but without the fake theatrical acting. Here, the dirt and the sweat are completely real.

I found myself wondering how they even managed to keep some of these heavy cameras running during the actual fighting. The camera operators must have been absolutely terrified half the time.

Compared to mainstream entertainment of the era, like Queen Christina, this is pure raw history, even if it's heavily biased. There are no movie stars here, just real people staring awkwardly at a relatively new invention.

Sometimes the editing gets incredibly chaotic.

It jumps from political meetings to muddy trenches so fast your head spins. It's definitely not as lighthearted or easy to digest as something like Hurdy Gurdy or Where Was I?.

There is a sequence near the middle with crowds waving flags that goes on for way too long. I think I counted three different people in the background who didn't seem to know where to look. 😂

The musical score is just endless brass instruments blowing at maximum volume.

By the end, my ears were actually ringing a little bit.

Still, there is something very honest about these old compilation films. They show us a world that was just starting to figure out how to record itself on film.

If you have an hour to spare and want to see history without the modern CGI polish, give it a look. Just don't expect a smooth ride.