Story of Sin (2-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray + DVD]

It was ok but found it had to much dialogue.

The scope and social commentary of this film reminded me of Vanity Fair or Barry Lyndon, but there was also a heavy dose of mordant humor to leaven the proceedings. Borowczyk never gets his proper due as a filmmaker, but overall this is a gorgeous film and some of the individual shots are mesmerizing.

I, like that it was in great condition.

74uk Story of a sin (Dzieje grzechu) by Walerian Borowczyk (1975, 130')Some films are review minefields, but one should occasionally accept even challenges with big odds, especially if it is for some totally reception problem ridden and hence multiply misrepresented work of collective national genius like Dzieje grzechu: The only Poland-produced film by Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, after the novel by Polish novelist Stefan Zeromski (1864-1925), which had first appeared as a newspaper serial in 1908, then as movies in 1911 and 1933. The all Polish film crew is headed, in the role of Ewa, by the stupendous young Polish actress Grazyna Dlugolecka (*1951)''''. Underlying music is the Violin concerto in e minor op 64 by (oops, German) Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, performed by Konstanty Andrzej Kulka and the Polish Orkiestra Filharmonii Narodowej, conducted by Jerzy Katlewicz'.''Before killing the child she had from a married man, a young woman is forced to become the mistress of a criminal who has her work as a prostitute. She will die in the arms of he first lover. Ewa, a religious young virgin, burns from love for Lucas, who is in the process of divorce. Via the elements of melodramatic style around 1900, this becomes a stylized and tearful story of a young woman becoming a child murderess out of love. Daughter of minor land owners, Ewa leaves her familiy and travels throughout Europe in pursuit of her love, Lucas. Her violent passion lets her fall ever deeper: she kills two people, becomes a prostitute out of her own will, and loses her own life in trying to shield her lover from a bullet.Story of a sin is the only full length film Borowczyk (1923-2006), famous graphic artist, sculptor and film maker, ever turned in his native Poland. Despite its sensationalist subject matter, the relative restraint of Story of a Sin may surprise, even disappoint. There are some beautiful images, including a Warsaw park shot like an impressionist painting, and Ewa's naked body covered in red rose petals, as well as Borowczyk's near-trademark fixation with and on objects (shoes, canes, phonographs etc). Next to Dlugolecka's Ewa are some memorable performances from her co-stars (notably Roman Wilhelmi and Marek Walczewski as the larcenous debauchers Pochron and Plaza-Splawski). Being full of time-consuming melodramatic incidents and crazy coincidences, the film runs into considerable length, delivering, however, in the process, a detailed insight into Polish sentimentality.To a considerable extent, Borowczyk's own reputation - his other films - is at the origin of many misunderstandings of his Story of a sin, which in a way is a conventional story of a woman's life destroyed by love, not unlike Madame Bovary or Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu (1952). Borowczyk had moved to Paris at the beginning of the sixties, where he made a number of innovative short films, some animated, some a mixture of animation with live action. By the 1970s, he had established himself as one of Europe's leading arthouse directors, with films like Goto, Island of Love (1968) and Immoral Tales (1973), earning him the reputation as a master of artful eroticism. So in 1975, when he shot his classic moral tale, Borowczyk's career was at its peak. Unfortunately for him (although fortunately for filmgoers), in the same year, he also released the delicately shocking class satire La Bête, certainly a far more interesting film, but one whose explicit perversity would doom the director to a future of soft core sex movies (like 1987's `Emmanuelle V' (sic)).PS Apologies - I have deliberately left all diacritic marks from Polish letters as the various computer transcription systems (not least amazon's) tend to render them incompletely and often wrongly.uk-16 May 2012

Good