Jerzy Łapiński
"Deserter's Gold", the sequel to the very popular "The Deserters", is a rich war comedy, skipping humorously around the more serious dangers of a war. Deserters Gold takes place during World War II, while the first film happened during WWI. The heroes' mission is to rob a Nazi-run bank in Poland for gold that will buy military supplies for the Polish Underground.
For con men, the game of trickery is at least as important as any monetary reward they might seek. In this wry Polish film, a con-man (Piotr Fronczewski) has just been released from prison. A real artist of conmanship, he starts back at his old tricks slowly, but his deceptions grow ever more elaborate and travel steadily up the ladder of society until he has local politicians and important government ministers involved in his schemes.
A few hours before the official visit of the communist party representative, the management of the visited factory learns about it. Everything must be prepared to show the guest how well the place is being managed.
Sampson is one of several Andrzej Wajda films harking back to his youth during the Nazi Occupation of Poland. Many of these concern not only the struggle between good and evil, but also between passive and impassive. The hero is a Jewish youth. He, like his family, has always been silent and undemonstrative in the face of prejudice. Now he stands up for his right to survive, and in so doing represents the fighting spirit that culminated in the 1943 Warsaw Uprising. It was originally titled Samson, but re-spelled as Sampson upon its American release to avoid confusion with a sword-and-sandal epic of the same name.
