Calling Mr. Smith

Calling Mr. Smith
Directed byFranciszka Themerson
Stefan Themerson
Written byFranciszka Themerson
Stefan Themerson
Release date
  • 1943 (1943)
Running time
10–11 minutes
CountryPoland
LanguagePolish

Calling Mr. Smith (Polish: Wzywając pana Smitha or Wzywamy Pana Smitha) is a short experimental (avant-garde) anti-Nazi Polish-British film from 1943, created by Franciszka Themerson and Stefan Themerson.[1]

Development

The film was written, directed, photographed and edited by Franciszka Themerson and Stefan Themerson, in association with the Film Bureau of the Ministry of Information and Documentation of the Polish government-in-exile in London.[1] It reused some materials from the 1942 Black Book of Poland, a Polish report on German war crimes.[2]

Contents

The 10[3] or 11-minutes-long film juxtaposes still and moving images from war photographs and newsreels (including from German propaganda, such as a clip of the Bydgoszcz massacre[4]) showing the outrages of war with flashes of colorful lights.[1][5][6] It uses techniques such as anamorphic lenses, the Dufaycolor technique, cartoon animation, photomontages, photograms and double exposure.[7][8] The narration (with a female voice[8]) is considered amorphous and abstract.[1][5][6]

The soundtrack contained classic music scores by Johann Sebastian Bach, Fryderyk Chopin and Karol Szymanowski, as well as the distorted German anthem (Horst-Wessel-Lied).[1][6][7]

Reception and analysis

The film was censored in the UK due to a controversial scene showing a hanged woman on the gallows, which the British censors demanded be removed, which Themerson refused to do.[8][9] This meant that the film could not be shown in public cinemas.[10] Nonetheless, the film was well received by contemporary British critics, and has been described as "a sensation in London film circles"; it has also been described as "the only experimental film made in England during the war".[2][1] While the rhetoric of the film was considered commonplace for its time and place, the combination of images with classical music, and the overall tone, was well received.[2][5][11]

The aim of the film was to show the terror of German occupation to the British public (the titular everyman "Mr. Smith"), and criticize their passivity.[1][5][6][8] By contrasting Bach music with contemporary (and distorted) German anthem, images of cultural artifacts and childish, comic-book font with war atrocities, the film posed a question to the viewers: how could a cultured nation such as Germany commit terrible, barbaric-like atrocities?[7][8] The film also showed the destruction of Polish culture by the Germans.[9] Some imagery of the film invokes Polish martyrology (in particular, the concept of Poland as the Christ of Europe).[7][8]

The use of German newsreels has been described as an early example of found footage, and as a satire of propaganda.[8]

The film style has been described as Futurist and Dada-like, and inspired by Norman McLaren’s Hell Unlimited (1936)[7] as well as Themerson's own Europa (1935).[2]

As the film also contained scenes of German atrocities against Polish Jews, it is also considered one of the early Holocaust films.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Calling Mr. Smith – Franciszka and Stefan Themerson". Culture.pl. 2018. Retrieved 2025-09-24.
  2. ^ a b c d Chwastyk-Kowalczyk, Jolanta (2008-03-30). "Film na łamach londyńskiego "Dziennika Polskiego i Dziennika Żołnierza" w latach 1944–1989". AUPC Studia ad Bibliothecarum Scientiam Pertinentia (in Polish). 6: 50–76. ISSN 2300-3057.
  3. ^ "Franciszka and Stefan Themerson – Monoskop". monoskop.org. Retrieved 2025-09-24.
  4. ^ Ben-Moshe, Yael; Zöller, Alexander (2025-04-01). "Contested Memory". film-history.org. Retrieved 2025-09-24.
  5. ^ a b c d "Calling Mr. Smith". LUX. Retrieved 2025-09-24.
  6. ^ a b c d "Calling Mr. Smith". www.luxonline.org.uk. Retrieved 2025-09-24.
  7. ^ a b c d e Kuc, Kamila (2014-06-17), Kuc, Kamila (ed.), "'The inexpressible unearthly beauty of the cinematograph': The impact of Polish Futurism on the First Polish avant-Garde Films" (PDF), The Struggle for Form: Perspectives on Polish Avant-Garde Film 1916–1989 (in German), Columbia University Press, pp. 31–56, doi:10.7312/kuc-16982-004, ISBN 978-0-231-85065-0, retrieved 2025-09-24{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Sroka, Honorata (2022-11-01). "Polityczności filmów Themersonów" [The Political in Themersons’ Films]. Teksty Drugie. Teoria Literatury, Krytyka, Interpretacja (in Polish). 6 (6): 142–160. doi:10.18318/td.2022.6.10. ISSN 0867-0633.
  9. ^ a b Sroka, Honorata (2021). "Na przecięciu, w zestawieniu, z dystansu. Antypolityczność Stefana Themersona" [At the Intersection, in the Comparison, from the Distance. The Anti-politics of Stefan Themerson]. In Wójtowicz, Aleksander; Kornhauser, Jakub; Rakoczy, Marta; Karpowicz, Agnieszka (eds.). Polityki/awangardy (PDF). Awangarda/Rewizje (Wydanie I ed.). Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. ISBN 978-83-233-4968-6.
  10. ^ Sajewicz, Natalia (2025). "Franciszka & Stefan Themerson (The Themersons)". Culture.pl. Retrieved 2025-09-24.
  11. ^ Haltof, Marek (2018-10-19), "3. Cinema, World War II, and the Postwar Construction of National Identity (1939–1948)", Polish Cinema: A History, Berghahn Books, pp. 69–95, doi:10.1515/9781785339738-006, ISBN 978-1-78533-973-8, retrieved 2025-09-24{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  12. ^ Schmidt, Fabian; Zöller, Alexander Oliver (2021-03-10). "Atrocity Film". Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe (12). doi:10.17892/app.2021.00012.223. ISSN 2365-7758.
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