To live in Piaseczno and die in Warsaw
The walls and houses of ancient Rome are rising again in Piaseczno, more than 2000 years and 1,600 kilometers from the time and place they might first have stood.
They are part of the sets for Jerzy Kawalerowicz's film adaptation of the Henryk Sienkiewicz novel "Quo Vadis," whose $12 million budget makes it the most expensive Polish production thus far. While Kawalerowicz began filming in Tunisia on May 8, his Warsaw team has been busy putting together the sets he will use when the production moves to Poland at the end of June after additional shooting in France.
Joanna Lelanow is overseeing the construction of a Christian neighborhood. "This district (near the Tiber river) was one of the more modest and smaller districts of Rome," Lelanow said.
To recreate such a long-vanished reality doesn't seem easy, but Lelanow said that for those who have been involved in making movie sets for years, the task is par for the course.
"We have to reconstruct streets, a square, some buildings and a temple," she said, along with shop and olive processing plant interiors. All elements such as roof tiles, doors, windows, and molds are being made by hand at the decoration department of the Documentary and Movie Production Studio (WFDiF). During her 20 years with the WFDiF, Lelanow has worked on set design and construction for Andrzej Wajda's "Pan Tadeusz," and for another Sienkiewicz adaptation, Jerzy Hoffman's "With Fire and Sword," which held the record for being the most costly Polish movie made until the advent of "Quo Vadis."
While Lelanow builds the place where Christians lived, her WFDiF colleague Waldemar Weiss is busy with the site of their most public and theatrical deaths. He is directing the construction of a Roman amphitheater in Mokotow's Warszawianka stadium. It was in amphitheaters where gladiators fought to the death and Christians met their end under lions' claws. "The frame (of the structure) is ready and now we're getting ready to decorate it," Weiss said. "Next we'll assemble other elements such as the pillars."
Kawalerowicz has thought about putting "Quo Vadis" on celluloid since his most famous movie, "Pharaoh," received an Oscar nomination in 1967. An enthusiast of Polish literature, Kawalerowicz has previously filmed novels by such Polish writers as Boleslaw Prus ("Pharaoh"), Julian Stryjkowski ("Austeria") and Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz ("Joan of the Angels"). Now he has the chance to work with what is Sienkiewicz's most internationally popular and widely read work.
"Quo Vadis" became a bestseller soon after its publication in 1896, not only in Europe, but also in the United States, where it was the most popular book in 1898. The novel describes the decline of Rome and the rise of Christianity through events surrounding the relationships between the Christian Ligia, her Roman lover Marius, and the epicure Petronius. So far, it has been translated into 48 languages and published in more than 80 countries.
Directors drawn to "Quo Vadis" over the past hundred years have included Mervyn Le Roy, who directed Metro Goldwin Meyer's 1951 production starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr.
The Kawalerowicz version is being produced by Chronos Film in cooperation with Telewizja Polska (TVP), Kredyt Bank, HBO, the Film Production Agency, WFDiF, and Kadr. The production is being sponsored by Kredyt Bank and Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA).
