Knights of the Teutonic Order 1960 (Ford)
Second Run Blu Ray
Martin Scorsese has included Knights of the Teutonic Order in his dozen essential Polish film masterpieces. A large claim. But is it justified? No. So what impressed Scorsese? Was it the epic nature of the film? Probably, but Hollywood, with all its historical film misgivings, has made better epics than this.
Scorsese loves overseeing the restoration of great colour films of all genres and decades. Here he’s on steadier ground for the wide screen Knights of the Teutonic Order certainly has a warm colour palette. So, it must be great then because of its climactic battle sequence? Well that’s good, though it’s not a patch on the black and white filmed battles in either Welles’s Chimes at Midnight or more appropriately Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, whose inescapable influence on Knights is very apparent. Whilst in the more lyrical depictions of the Polish landscape you think of the soviet master Dovzhenko.
In the middle ages, Poland is invaded by Teutonic knights who want to convert the nation to Christianity. But their fierce violence causes the people to take up arms against them. This centres on the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic war eventually culminating in the battle of Grunwald in 1410.
The 1960 Knights of the Teutonic Order was a vividly patriotic and optimistic statement for the Poles who, a decade before, had sat through some bleak screen depictions of their struggles during the Second World War. The cruel knights can be seen as proto-Nazis against which Polish nationalism triumphs. And in 2000 it was the most popular film ever screened in Poland and abroad.
To return to the aesthetics of these knights: for me they delivered a moderately entertaining but not great cinematic experience. At a running time of nearly 3 hours I found it overlong. Ford’s direction rarely keeps a firm grip on his important subject matter. The film may function effectively as crowd-pleasing propaganda but even propaganda needs to be coherent.
One hour in and Ford’s control of the narrative seriously meanders to the point of confusion (who was fighting who?) as the script quickly lost track of not only its politics but storyline. True Ford does communicate a sense of heroic endeavour and chivalric romance but there’s no strong emotional hook or compelling idea you can really indentify with and believe in.
The princess Danusia (played by Grazyna Staniszewska) and her lover, the knight Zbyszko (played by Mieczyslaw Kalenik) look attractive enough but they’re cardboard characters. And the intimacy of their romance is frustratingly scattered and lost inside generalised scenes of national struggle. “On your knees, dog.” and other archaic “dog” declarations have a bad habit of underlining the brute action of Polish defenders and their enemies.
I’d like to have been more enthusiastic about Knights of the Teutonic Order. It was a film I first saw many years ago when I was twenty – back then I loved it. In fact along with Ashes and Diamonds it was my first introduction to Polish cinema.
Today I have to agree with a critic on the Rotten Tomatoes website who found it mediocre and functioned best as “film as an educational text book.” Well that’s maybe a little harsh, for to return to the colour photography and composition, there are some striking moments of visual power – like the moving scene of the blind and injured father of Danusia standing over his dying daughter and numerous individual shots in the decisive battle for nationhood.
History lesson or not (and the film has been challenged by some for its accuracy) it’s a ‘significant’ Polish film: that I now feel could do with a re-make for a new generation.
Alan Price©2026
Knights of the Teutonic Order 1960 (Ford)
Second Run Blu Ray
Martin Scorsese has included Knights of the Teutonic Order in his dozen essential Polish film masterpieces. A large claim. But is it justified? No. So what impressed Scorsese? Was it the epic nature of the film? Probably, but Hollywood, with all its historical film misgivings, has made better epics than this.
Scorsese loves overseeing the restoration of great colour films of all genres and decades. Here he’s on steadier ground for the wide screen Knights of the Teutonic Order certainly has a warm colour palette. So, it must be great then because of its climactic battle sequence? Well that’s good, though it’s not a patch on the black and white filmed battles in either Welles’s Chimes at Midnight or more appropriately Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, whose inescapable influence on Knights is very apparent. Whilst in the more lyrical depictions of the Polish landscape you think of the soviet master Dovzhenko.
In the middle ages, Poland is invaded by Teutonic knights who want to convert the nation to Christianity. But their fierce violence causes the people to take up arms against them. This centres on the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic war eventually culminating in the battle of Grunwald in 1410.
The 1960 Knights of the Teutonic Order was a vividly patriotic and optimistic statement for the Poles who, a decade before, had sat through some bleak screen depictions of their struggles during the Second World War. The cruel knights can be seen as proto-Nazis against which Polish nationalism triumphs. And in 2000 it was the most popular film ever screened in Poland and abroad.
To return to the aesthetics of these knights: for me they delivered a moderately entertaining but not great cinematic experience. At a running time of nearly 3 hours I found it overlong. Ford’s direction rarely keeps a firm grip on his important subject matter. The film may function effectively as crowd-pleasing propaganda but even propaganda needs to be coherent.
One hour in and Ford’s control of the narrative seriously meanders to the point of confusion (who was fighting who?) as the script quickly lost track of not only its politics but storyline. True Ford does communicate a sense of heroic endeavour and chivalric romance but there’s no strong emotional hook or compelling idea you can really indentify with and believe in.
The princess Danusia (played by Grazyna Staniszewska) and her lover, the knight Zbyszko (played by Mieczyslaw Kalenik) look attractive enough but they’re cardboard characters. And the intimacy of their romance is frustratingly scattered and lost inside generalised scenes of national struggle. “On your knees, dog.” and other archaic “dog” declarations have a bad habit of underlining the brute action of Polish defenders and their enemies.
I’d like to have been more enthusiastic about Knights of the Teutonic Order. It was a film I first saw many years ago when I was twenty – back then I loved it. In fact along with Ashes and Diamonds it was my first introduction to Polish cinema.
Today I have to agree with a critic on the Rotten Tomatoes website who found it mediocre and functioned best as “film as an educational text book.” Well that’s maybe a little harsh, for to return to the colour photography and composition, there are some striking moments of visual power – like the moving scene of the blind and injured father of Danusia standing over his dying daughter and numerous individual shots in the decisive battle for nationhood.
History lesson or not (and the film has been challenged by some for its accuracy) it’s a ‘significant’ Polish film: that I now feel could do with a re-make for a new generation.
Alan Price©2026
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film