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Through and Through
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th August 2025). |
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The Film
 Josef von Sternberg Award: Grzegorz Królikiewicz (winner) and Interfilm Award: Grzegorz Królikiewicz (winner) - Mannheim-Heidelberg International Filmfestival, 1973 Tossed from the flophouse of his older, alcoholic lover (Killing Auntie's Ewa Zdzieszynska) and fired from his job in a photo salon for coming in late and unkempt, aspiring artist Jan (Man of Iron's Franciszek Trzeciak) finds companionship with prostitute Maria (Anna Nieborowska) and the pair make an attempt at respectability by getting married. In spite of their union, they are still living hand-to-mouth enduring abuse from his younger brother (Camera Buff's Jerzy Stuhr) who conveys to them the disappointment and embarrassment of their mother and her social circle over her older son having married a prostitute. Jan's portfolio gets rejected by architecture firms and he gets fired for impudence in trying to exert his frustrated creativity at a drafting firm. Degraded beyond all hope, Jan antagonizes Maria and tries to chase her away. When he attempts to commit suicide, Maria literally drags him from the brink, fortifying their total devotion to one another. Deciding that it is them against the rest of the world, they hatch a plan but their first sojourn into a life of crime goes horribly awry in one of the most notorious Polish murder cases of the early twentieth century. The feature debut of Grzegorz Królikiewicz (Permanent Objections) after a near decade of shorts and television projects, Through and Through creates a very distinctive cinematic language to depict not the subjective view of two crazy people but of two people breaking down under the weight of social constraints and their own unrealized ambitions, two people who (as Jan says during his trial) never found a "method" for living like the people around them. Although in the aftermath of the true crime that inspired the film, Jan's paintings that were worthless when he was alive went up astronomically in value after his death, the film's sympathies lie with the protagonists without asking the audience to see Jan as anything but a mediocre artist struggling to find his footing – he is seen trying to guilty photo salon owner (Mother Joan of the Angels's Lucyna Winnicka) into keeping him on even though it becomes evident that despite the romantic composition he was actually a pity hire who has managed to disappoint her realistically low expectations – and being worn down and Maria never as anything but a woman who has "fallen" into prostitution and genuinely trying to make something of their marriage not for upward social mobility but just to have a normal life. The film is told in a series of elliptical episodes that constantly challenge the viewer to fill in the gaps like Jan's first job interview in the company of Maria in which the camera follows Jan and his employer to an elevator and gets in the elevator on the opposite side of the lobby, following the other one up to the top floor and moves in one unbroken take to the other elevator and comes back down to catch up with Jan as he is being escorted out by the same man. The job he actually does land elsewhere is introduced to the viewer as his boss (Death of a President's Janusz Sykutera) dressing him down for his "impudence" in the presence of his wife and further emasculating him by giving Maria his pity for being married to a hopeless talent. The scene featuring Jan's brother is the most substantive plot-related scene in the film flanked by other odd episodes in which Jan ruins a picnic lunch by antagonizing Maria with a dove whose neck he has wrung and a scene where he barges in on a group of bell ringers and takes part with a sense of revelry that has him tearing the armpit seams of his jacket without noticing. The crime starts in medias res and entirely offscreen heard in a dark room through a closed door culminating in a gunshot and then first person point-of-view shots of Jan, Maria, and their victims (Irena Ladosiówna and Pharaoh's Jerzy Block) in a frenetic sequence that one wonders might have inspired the likes of early, experimental David Lynch and Shin'ya Tsukamoto. The trial sequence feels less elliptical structured around long monologues by Jan and Maria but the minimalist feel becomes more apparent with the lack of an audience, jury, or even an onscreen judge, just the accused flanked by officers in a dock surrounded by blackness. The camerawork embodies both documentary and expressionistic styles with low-key lighting and viewing scenes from unconventional angles or using handheld camera to get right up in the faces of its protagonists while the sound design is exaggerated ramping up some sound effects like hair combing and chewing to The Evil Dead levels of oddball sound design as if to signify the deadening aspect of even the most mundane acts to protagonists ground down into day-to-day routines of self-care that no longer comfort. The resolution unfolds through narration and Maria's reaction to being told she has been pardoned has a context only those familiar with the case will understand while every other viewer can only surmise in a film that is manages to be simultaneously distanced and intimate and anything but a typical "true crime" film. 
Video
Although Through and Through had festival play and making most retrospective critic lists of the best Polish films, it is one of the more obscure sixities Polish films on the international stage with Królikiewicz becoming a prolific filmmaker yet never joining the ranks of Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimoski and Andrzej Wajda or even Jerzy Kawalerowicz and Andrzej Zulawski. Radiance Films' dual-territory 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.37:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray – simultaneously available in the U.K. although do note that the bird scene has been reframed "to remove the sight of a bird being cruelly mistreated that was in contravention of BBFC policy" – comes from a 2K restoration supervised by cinematographer Bogdan Dziworski of deep blacks and bright whites of sixties monochrome with little in between in the high contrast lighting set-ups with long and medium shots sporting a healthy layer of grain and and some extreme close-ups startling in their rendering of facial features and textures. The shutter flickering during some slow motion shots is presumably a stylistic choice rather than a technical error. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Polish LPCM 2.0 mono track in which all of the actors are post-dubbed. Dialogue and the exaggerated sound effects are cleanly rendered while the scoring of composer/animator Janusz Hajdun and Henryk Kuzniak has the prickly presence of avant garde Polish composers of the period. Optional English subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
Extras start off with an interview with critic Michał Oleszczyk (37:49) who is honored to introduce Polish cinema's "best kept secret" Królikiewicz to the West here and does not disappoint, discussing comparisons stylistically to Godard and thematically to Dostoyevsky as well as drawing from a book-length interview with the director. Oleszczyk also provides background on the case – revealing details that were changed by the director and some that might inform one's understanding if in the know – and its notoriety at the time while also revealing that Królikiewicz only learned of it from a colleague while planning his feature debut. Oleszczyk discusses Królikiewicz's moral approach to storytelling and the necessity of finding a film language to communicate it along with distinguishing the film from its "true crime" contemporaries involving couples like Bonnie and Clyde or The Honeymoon Killers before returning to that Dostoyevsky comparison as addressed and refuted by the director himself. Oleszczyk also makes some tantalizing mentions of the director's other works including transcriptions of his masterclasses, his book-length studies of other films, the film The Dancing Hawk which is his "response" to Citizen Kane which he admired, and The Case of Bronek Pekosinski at the Polish Film Festival where filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (If...) was on the panel and instrumental in the film's award win. The disc also includes three short films by Królikiewicz: Everyone Gets What They Don’t Need (1966, 11:38) which is ostensibly the investigation by a television crew of the drowning death of a competitive swimmer, Brothers (1971, 6:53) on the training of two Olympic athletes with an emphasis on the spotter rather than the performer, and Don't Cry (1972, 9:51) covering the last night of freedom of several men going into mandated military service. 
Packaging
The limited edition first pressing of two thousand copies comes in full-height Scanavo packaging – the standard edition will come in a standard keep case – with a reversible sleeve featuring originally and newly-commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, a removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings, and an essential nineteen-page booklet featuring new writing by Ela Bittencourt that cites the description of Królikiewicz's style as "proletarian Baroque" in its combination of naturalism and stylization as well as expanding on the notion Oleszczyk also touched upon of "off-camera space" both physically and in the narrative ellipses. 
Overall
Grzegorz Królikiewicz's debut feature Through and Through manages to be simultaneously distanced and intimate and anything but a typical "true crime" film.
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