Movie - With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem)

[Redleg130th]

Found this movie and thought you all would be interested. I am renting it from NetFlix and hope to get it soon. It is a Polish movie (subtitled in English from NetFlix) and is about the conflict between the Polish and the Cossacks in the 17th Centruy.

I found it by researching Hussars. Their armor was most facinating, particularly the wings they affixed to their backs. There are some photos here - http://www.geocities.com/rik_fox/husaria/museum.html and a descriptive article here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussar Apparently, later on the term Hussar ment somthing else, but originally ment the winged (or not, some articles state they did not wear them all the time) lancers whose lances were long enough to outreach the pikes of the infantry.

Anyway, I found them fascinating and thought you might as well.

Fixed the link, thank you

[george seal]

Thanks for the link Redleg. You got a wrong link for the Wiki article.

If you are interested in Poles fighting Cossaks, you might check out the novel Taras Bulba. It's got a cool movie adaption with the Argentinian Army doing the battles (lots of cavalry). don't know how historically accurate it is.

The winged hussars remind me of the elite guards of Gondor in Pete Jakson's Return of the King. The wings are a pretty cool motif.

[Coydog]

I agree, the armor with the wings looks pretty awesome, and the psychological effect of seeing these guys coming at you must have been overwhelming.

I think I have to see this movie...

Monique MacNaughton

<i>Stories that begin with "Last seen in a bar" generally don't end well!</i>

[Joseph Sullivan]

Now I am interested, too.

Of course, the tall winged helms in LOR harkened back to the days of the sea-kings of Numenor, from whom Aragorn was descended. But we should not get into that discussion, I sadly suppose. Maybe we could have a LOR thread, in as much as Rohan was a race of horse warriors with remarkable animals, and horses played important roles good and bad throughout. However, any genuine discussion would have to be based on the books, rathern than the movies --except PEHAPS for a compare and contrast kind of thing.

Joe

[Trooper]

I thought the interpretation of the Riders in the movie was rather good. Wish we could have seen more of them.

Dušan

[Joseph Sullivan]

Riders of Rohan, or Black riders? If Rohan, I thought them one of the better interpretations. The best, though, was Gollum, followed by Gandalf, especially in the contest with the Balrog. The worst were the elves and the dwarves. In the case of the elves, any of them except to some extent Legolas, failed. Elves are supposed to be a stunningly beautiful higher race, but in the movie they just looked odd, Dwarves were robbed in the movie of the great dignity that Tolkien imparted to them.

Must say, though, Tolkien, though immensely visual in his descriptions, does not lend himself well to movies.

Joe

[Trooper]

Rohan - but the Black Riders were well done too.
Agree on the Elvenfolk and Dwarves.

Dušan

[Jim Bewley Φ]

I thought the movie did the Black Riders well. When they appeared you wanted reach for a sword. I have read the series twice and was amazed at the detail and the way he kept building middle earth in each book.

Shadowfax would, of course, be the dream horse. No bridle needed, just think where you want to go and he does.

Jim

[Redleg130th]

I saw part one last night, and it is a very well done affair. The costumes are very well done, the movie is richly detailed, and the story is quite intriguing. One observation I had was that while the movie is made by a Polish movie company, and depicts a historical battle between the Poles and the Cossacks, and the protagonists are clearly the Poles with the Cossacks the antagonists - it does show some mistakes the Poles made in their relations with the Cossacks wich brought about the Cossack rebelion. I am eagerly awaiting the second part (it appears Netflix only sends one disk at a time, bah). The second part is where the Polish Hussars and the Cossacks clash and it should be stunning in detail and scale if the first part of the film is any indicator.

The wings on the Hussars were not fantasy, they did put them on. One article I read indicated they did this to prevent themselves from getting lassoed, another states they wore them to be intimidating. Looking at the Hussar armor pictures from a museum display in the first link I posted, both uses seem plausible.

Here is a painting of a Polish Hussar with the wings afixed -


When I get the second part of the film, I will post screencaps of the Hussars and Cossacks as depicted in the film.

[george seal]

What where the wings made of? Metal? They probably where not heavy, but if they had a protective function they should have been hard. For example they could have deflected a sword cut.

[Trooper]

Redleg130th,
I notice that this film is part of a trilogy - which may account for the sending of one disc at a time? I will be very interested in hearing your opinion of the entire trilogy if you get to see it. In the Amazon reviews it mentions the Turks as the adversary rather than Cossacks, maybe Cossacks sided with the Turks?

Dušan

[Redleg130th]

It looks like metal or wood with the feathers attached (glued maybe?) to the back edge of the wing. Here is a picture of the armor as displayed in a Polish museum - linked as it is not hosted by me - http://www.geocities.com/rik_fox/husaria/hussar2.jpg

My guess is wood based on that picture, or a thin bar of metal with a wood strip to attach feathers. It is hard to tell.

Those wings are indeed very unique and very facinating.

The lance they use is pretty nifty too, 4.5 to 5.5 meters long to outreach the pikes of the infantry. http://www.kismeta.com/diGrasse/lance.htm

[Trooper]

By coincidence:
http://cgi.ebay.com/HUSSAR-MEDIEVAL-SUI ... dZViewItem

Maybe the vendor could answer wing construction questions?

Dušan

[Redleg130th]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Trooper</i>
<br />In the Amazon reviews it mentions the Turks as the adversary rather than Cossacks, maybe Cossacks sided with the Turks?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

The Cossacks are allied with the Tartars, which can be Turkish - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartars - If I am following the plot correctly, the Poles and Cossacks have been fighting with the Muslims (Tartars or Turks I assume), but the Cossacks are not happy with thier treatment durring peacetime. The Cossacks are complaining that the Poles use them as soldiers in war and then neglect thier needs and take their freedoms in peacetime. Therefore the Cossacks ally with the Tatars to regain their freedom from Poland. The Polish nobility (at this point in the movie) are mobilizing to suppress the Cossack insurrection and drive out the Tatars.

[Trooper]

Redleg130th.
Thanks for the clarification. My knowledge of Polish history is VERY sketchy but I like their military horse heritage and will be interested to hear your view on the entire trilogy if you get to see it.

Dušan

[wkambic]

I've got a copy of the History Channel's "The War Horse" in VHS. The VCR is currently AFU so I'm SOL in any attempt at reviewing it. (Gee, I love that kind of talk!!!!! [:D]).

But as I recall there is a sequence on Hussars and some re-enactors riding with "wings." As I remember they were not terribly elaborate, but were more like wooden dowls with cloth streamers attached. When the rider was at the gallop they made a kind of "buzzing" sound. I would bet a bunch of horsemen making that sound (combined with just the normal sound of a bunch of charging horsemen) would have been quite un-nerving. I don't recall of the sequence gave a practical reason for their use or not.

I went to high school at De La Salle in Detroit in the mid-60s. About 40% of the school was Polish, 40% Italian, and 20% "other." I was an "other." One of my classmates was a rather ardent Polish nationalist. When "Taras Bulba" came out he was absolutely irate at the historical innacuracies, particularly the final climactic battle which, in the movie, Yul Brenner as Cossack chief won. The true outcome was a Polish victory. At the time I didn't pay it much heed. I still don't rely on Hollyweird for my historical facts! [;)]

In the U.S. we don't pay much attention to "military theater." Sometimes that's unfortunate, as appearance and presentation can be a valuable ally to "shock and awe." In times past they DID pay attention to such things. I wonder if the Hussar was outfitted as he was as much for the psychological effect as anything.

And, as a final thought, in Germanic mythology you had the Valkyrie on winged horses choosing the slain for Valhalla. Could this be an attempt to incorporate the terror aspect of that belief?



Bill Kambic

Mangalarga Marchador: Uma raça, uma paixão

[george seal]

The Plot seems simmilar to Taras Bulba's where the Cossaks rebel after serving the poles. The chieftain Bulba leads a revolt against the Ciossak king to breack the alliance with the Poles (who abuse their Cossak allies). Bulba unites the various clans and takes over a Polish city, but his son falls in love with a Polish girl. The film version ends with Bulba killing his son.

Cleraly Bill is a faster draw (poster) than me.

[Pat Holscher]

Wikipedia article on Polish cavalry. Haven't really read it in depth, but it has some interesting paintings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cavalry

Pat

And one on Polish history. I don't know anything about the history of Poland, but it is intersting to note how it was once much larger, and very significant, in comparison to today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland

[Redleg130th]

That is facinating, I had always thought that the Polish Cav in WWII charged tanks in a noble, but suicidal attacks. It appears that the horse Cav actually had some signifigant tactical victories over the German army, but an Itallian journalist twisted the story to be an Axis tactical victory.

I am amazed that Nazi propoganda found its way into my own picture of history. Someone in my youth must have restated this 'fact' to me. It would be interesting to see how this story was passed from 1939 to me as a boy in 1970.

[Pat Holscher]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Redleg130th</i>
<br />That is facinating, I had always thought that the Polish Cav in WWII charged tanks in a noble, but suicidal attacks. It appears that the horse Cav actually had some signifigant tactical victories over the German army, but an Itallian journalist twisted the story to be an Axis tactical victory.

I am amazed that Nazi propoganda found its way into my own picture of history. Someone in my youth must have restated this 'fact' to me. It would be interesting to see how this story was passed from 1939 to me as a boy in 1970.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Nazi Propoganda was very effective in defining how we imagine much of the ground war in WWII as it pertains to the Germans.

This is such an example. There are actually several variants of this story, but it is clear that Polish cavalry never took on German armor intentionally in a lance charge.

What is often missed is that the German military itself was far less motorized than their propoganda suggested. The Germans from the very onset of the war created a movie image of an army that combined effective armor attacks with aircraft. They did use armor and aircraft, of course, but the overwhelming majority of German troops were true infantrymen, which was not particularly mechanized. Most German infantry walked. The German infantry that invaded the USSR in 1940, for example, walked in, and when it retreated a few years later, it walked back out. It was really the Allied armies that were motorized, not the German army.

Indeed, by wars end, a lot of German units were no more motorized than they had been in 1918. And they never approached anywhere near being fully motorized at any point. German artillery remained horse drawn in many instances. German transporation systems remained, in many instances, horse and rail based, just as they had been in 1914.

But they didn't issue many propoganda films that emphasized that. There is a lot of film of horse drawn artillery, etc., but it was never their main focus. Nor were the G98 armed and M1916 wearing infantry that went into Poland (as some units were still using) in 1939. The German film was shown around the world, and that formed the popular basis, ever since, as to what the German army of WWII was like.

Pat