The Last Day of Summer

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The Last Day of Summer is the English title for Ostatni dzień lata, a film released in 1958, directed by the Polish film director Tadeusz Konwicki.

A bleak parable about the seemingly unbridgeable abyss between survivors, the action takes place amid the deserted dunes and screaming gulls of a chilly Baltic shore. Two lonely, damaged people, played by Irena Laskowska and Jan Machulski, whose characters remain nameless throughout the film, happen to meet on a deserted beach. Both are haunted by vivid memories of World War II and make silent, imperfect attempts to reach out to each other, but they cannot find a means to communicate. Meticulously shot, the film is profoundly symbolic and, despite the seeming inaction, quite dynamic thanks to the studied close-ups of the actors' faces and Jan Laskowski's camera work.

The Last Day of Summer turned Konwicki from a man of letters flirting with the cinema into a full-fledged director who helped lead Polish film-making beyond the era of Socialist Realism. In its way, the film anticipates the French New Wave, although it hit the screens while the French directors were only just beginning to make the films that comprised that movement. Konwicki consciously avoided direct representations of the calamities of war, choosing instead to focus on its psychological impact upon his protagonists, a method which was later animated such films as Konwicki's All Souls' Day, Jerzy Passendorfer's Return, Kazimierz Kutz's Nobody's Calling and Wojciech Has' How To Be Loved.