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Simply A Masterpiece

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Excellent but underrated film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I didn't like this film at all. It's way too long and has nothing interesting to say other than Germans bad, Poland good, but it does it over 2 hours 46 minutes.I doubt many people would sympathize with the Teutonic Order to begin with - if some action film presented someone dressed as a Teutonic knight, viewers would say it's cheesy and over-the-top. This movie doesn't take chances and makes sure that you know who the good ones are and who the baddies are. There is no subtlety whatsoever. It's good-vs-evil. There are no doubts. Everyone has their team and a job to do. No ulterior motives, no double-agents, no deep game, no sacrifice a battle to win the war. It's just black and white.There are the goofs that others mentioned (the watch, the cars), but I didn't care for those either way. The film is boring. The music is boring. The dialogues are really poor.The acting is theatrical. It looks like a color version of Alexander Nevsky (1939) with a bigger budget but not with more experience. It doesn't add anything new, doesn't advance cinema, doesn't bring anything new to the table. It is propaganda (just like Alexander Nevsky) but at a time when it wasn't really necessary. What was the point in telling people that Germany was bad in 1960? Propaganda doesn't age well in either case.The final scene is epic and amazing on its own. It must be watched, just for that. It's a shame that it's wasted on this film that has nothing interesting to say.

This history film is about the events before the famous Grunwald battle between Teutonic knights and the joint Polish-Lithuanian forces. It depicts Polish sufferings under the grasp of the greedy Order. I think this is a very weak film even by the standards of the 60-s which produced lots of poor historical films. But for a modern viewer it becomes practically unwatchable. The story line is quite simple and predictable, the characters are depicted in a primitive black and white fashion. The script leaves no places for acting and psychological development of the characters. The costumes are very rudimentary as well, all identical and as if cut from paper. Finally the history is altered and dumbed down to become a boring patriotic poster.

I saw that movie one afternoon on the French TV in the early Seventies. I was a little boy and I absolutely loved it. It was a small. black and white screen but I was stunned by this Medieval movie that had nothing to do, in terms of atmosphere or filming, with the classics from Hollywood (Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Robin Hood... that I loved so much and still do). And then... it disappeared for 40 years!!! I bought it on DVD in 2010 and fell in love with it all over again.I did not remember the plot at all but I had kept in my mind images of the dark corridors of the Teutonics' castle and of the malevolent knights in black and white slowly haunting it.There is a specific mood in this movie and this is probably why some reviewers did not like it. There is a real attempt at recreating a long gone world. I found strange to accuse the characters of naming God every ten seconds. This is the Middle Age, for God's sake, and HE is everywhere. OK, the plot goes in a lot of directions but it remains easy to follow and it reinforce the epic aspect of the story, how big events are affecting individuals. What is striking is that the movie tries to put you in the shoes of the people who lived at that time. Unlike Hollywood which still loves today to show the past through a politically correct and contemporary revision.The cinematography is beautiful and I particularly loved the long, lateral tracking shots which are numerous. On some aspects, Krzyzacy reminds me of silent movies (notably the shot of Jurand on the devastate, snowy scenery covered with gallows. Never black on white has been more gloomy). Also, in a lot of scenes, the actors are literally positioned as elements of the sets, like some sorts of architectural items. Eisenstein would have been proud.Forget the propaganda: the movie was made in 1960. Aleksander Ford had no choice but to show the Teutonics as proto-Nazis. But if you do some research about the Teutonic Order, you see that they manage to share a a lot with the Nazis on a lot of aspects. When I watch this movie, I know why Braveheart and all sanitized attempts of that kind make me fume.

I made myself some dinner and decided to sit down and watch something subtitled since Dad was out of the house. I pulled Knights of the Teutonic and sat down to watch a three hour knights in armor epic from Poland. Almost instantly I almost choked to death on my food...where is MST3K when you need them? I was awe struck and giggling from the get go. This tale of the Teutonic knights battling with a Lord who didn't like the idea of bowing down to them is the sort of thing that would have been badly dubbed into English and run at 3am on the late show. What is this? The editing is disjointed, the plot jumps around and while there is a very real sense of seriousness it plays almost like a kids film. Classic of Polish cinema? oh please no. Who are these people and what are they doing? I don't know. To be certain it all looks spectacular but after 45 minutes I really didn't know what was going on. Actually I had the feeling I was watching the cliff notes version.Two more hours of this? I think not. I turned it off. I'll try it again down the road but unless I can find something that makes the movie click I think my second attempt is going to be much like this first one- short and sweet.