Cybulski, Zbigniew

(1927-1967)

   Charismatic generational Polish actor who started his career playing a supporting role in Andrzej Wajda's debut, A Generation (1955). Cybulski owes his star status to his role in the Polish School classic, Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds (1958), in which he starred as the doomed Home Army (AK) fighter Maciek Chełmicki. Wearing blue jeans, dark glasses, and acting in a spontaneous, almost neurotic manner, Cybulski became an exemplary hero of the late 1950s, frequently compared by Polish critics to James Dean. Although he tried to free himself from the character of Maciek, his role in Ashes and Diamonds overshadowed his other films. In 1958 he also appeared in Kazimierz Kutz's The Cross of Valor and Aleksander Ford's Eighth Day of the Week, which premiered in 1983. In 1959 he played a strong supporting role in Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Night Train.

   In the 1960s, Cybulski appeared in a variety of genres, usually with good results. Certainly important are his roles in three films debunking Polish war mythology and Cybulski's own screen persona: Wojciech J. Has's How to be Loved (1963), where he played a self-centered, cowardly actor hiding during the occupation; Tadeusz Konwicki's Somersault (1965), with him as Polish everyman Kowalski-Malinowski; and another film by Has, Cyphers (1966), which dealt with war reminiscences. Cybulski also starred in Has's cult classic The Saragossa Manuscript (1965); a war comedy by Stanisław Lenartowicz, Giuseppe in Warsaw (1964); and popular crime films such as The Criminal and the Maiden (1963) by Janusz Nasfeter, where he was again paired with Ewa Krzyżewska, his love interest from Ashes and Diamonds, and The Murderer Leaves a Trail (1967) by Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski. The latter became Cybulski's last film. He died tragically at the Wrocław train station while trying to board a moving train. Two years after his death Wajda released his most personal film, Everything for Sale, dealing with Cybulski's legend—the enactment of his life and death with Cybulski's friends who appeared under their own names. Also in 1969, Jan Laskowski produced a film devoted to Cybulski, Zbyszek, which incorporated fragments of his filmic roles and tried to uncover the sources of Cybulski's myth.

   Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof