The history of Polish cavalry in its fight against the Germans in WWII as symbolized by an off-white horse that passes to various people in the military until ... Wajda, son of a cavalry officer killed in the war, made his first color film as a tribute to heroic horsemen who faced German tanks.  "If I correctly guess Wajda's intentions, his new film is supposed to be a kind of artistic conclusion to the age of Polish romanticism, which reached its bloody climax in September 1939.  This was to be a film evoking, perhaps for the last time,the typically Polish poetry of horse and sabre.  In form, however, was not intended to be a lyric, but a critical poem, bound together by bitterness and, at times, by sarcasm.  But this is not what actually happened.  In the dialogue between critic and poet, the poet wins.  In the debate between that rationalist and the romantic, the romantic emerges triumphant.  The researcher of historical paraphernalia has become their museum curator.  Lotna became a film dedicated to the poetry of props; it grieves me to say it is a poetry of form, rhythm and color, rather than of content."  Stanislaw Grzelecki "Zycie Warszawy", Warsaw, 8 October, 1959.  

Directed by Andrez Wajda, Screenplay by Andrzej Wajda and Wojciech Zukrowski, Original Music by Tadeusz Baird, Cinematography by Jerzy Lipman.

Features:  Directors Biography, Scene selections.