Czyżewska, Elżbieta

(1938-)

   Czyżewska belonged to the most popular Polish actresses of the 1960s. In 1965 she won a popular plebiscite done by the Warsaw daily the Evening Express (Express Wieczorny), and she was second in 1963 and 1964. Since 1967 she has been living in the United States, where she moved with her husband, David Halberstam, an American journalist expelled from Poland for criticizing the Communist leader Władysław Gomułka.

   After graduating from the acting school in Warsaw (PWST) in 1960, Czyżewska played her first major role in Stanisław Bareja's comedy The Husband (1961). Later she starred in several popular comedies, including Bareja's The Wife for an Australian (1964) and Marriage of Convenience (1966) and Tadeusz Chmielewski's Where Is the General? (1964). She won acclaim mostly playing contemporary young women who were unpretentious, slightly naive, and often resolute. Critics in Poland often stressed Czyzewska's Slavic beauty, her youthful energy, and captivating smile. For example, in Where Is the General? she played Marusia, a steadfast Russian female soldier; in The Wife for an Australian she starred as Hanka, a singer of the Polish folk ensemble Mazowsze. Czyżewska also starred in films directed by Stanisław Lenartowicz (Giuseppe in Warsaw, 1964), Leonard Buczkowski (An Interrupted Flight, 1964), Kazimierz Kutz (Silence, 1963), and Tadeusz Konwicki (All Souls' Day, 1961). In the latter, she played a beautiful and fragile female lieutenant, Listek, who dies an absurd death despite being protected by the whole partisan unit. In Janusz Nasfeter's Unloved (1966), she portrayed a young Jewish woman, Noemi, whose love for a Polish student destroys her life. Czyżewska became internationally known for her appearances in Wojciech Has's The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), Jerzy Skolimowski's (her then husband's) diploma film, Identification Marks: None (1965), and Andrzej Wajda's self-reflexive Everything for Sale (1969). She did not have a successful transition from the Polish film industry to Hollywood. Since immigrating to America, she has appeared in a few supporting and episodic roles in the films by Sidney Lumet (Running on Empty, 1988), Roger Donaldson (Cadillac Man, 1990), Costa-Gavras (Music Box, 1990), and Billy Hopkins (I Love You, I Love You Not, 1996). Yurek Bogayewicz's American film Anna (1987) is loosely based on Czyżewska's experiences.

   Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof