Wojciech Pszoniak
Birthday: 1942-05-02
Place of Birth: Lwów, Lwowskie, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine]
Synopsis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wojciech Pszoniak (born in 1942 in Lwów, currently Ukraine), is a Polish film and theater actor.
Pszoniak gained international visibility following Andrzej Wajda's 1975 film The Promised Land, in which he played Moritz, one of the three main characters.
The actor left Poland during the period of political unrest in 1980-1981, which saw the appearance of the Solidarity trade union and ended with the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981. Pszoniak found roles in France, where he is currently living and working. Since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Pszoniak has appeared in Polish movies and plays.
Internationally, he simplified his first name into Wojtek, which is the standard diminutive of the relatively formal Wojciech in the Polish language.
Pszoniak often plays Jewish characters, although he is not of Jewish descent. In France, this is partially attributable to his role in The Promised Land, as well as his foreign accent.
Pszoniak did not speak French when he emigrated to France, so he learned his theatrical lines phonetically; in movies like Danton, where he played Robespierre, his voice was dubbed. An anecdote about his language skills relates that when he finally started speaking French, one director told him that he preferred his old accent.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Wojciech Pszoniak, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Acting
If You Saw His Heart
as Le polonais
Cast out of his insular community, a damaged and down on his luck man teeters between a life of crime and the path to redemption.
Rosemary's Baby
as Mr. Wees
Modern 3 hour mini-series adaptation of the classic novel by Ira Levin focusing on young Rosemary Woodhouse's suspicions that her neighbors may belong to a Satanic cult who are hell bent on getting one thing: the baby she is carrying.
Hope
as Benedykt Weber
Francis Ratay witnesses the theft of church painting "Angel with violin". The entire incident recorded by an amateur camera. The thief turns out to Benedict Weber, gallery owner and art connoisseur. Francis comes to his gallery. Blackmails him, that will provide police record, unless the image in three days back in place.
Viper in the Fist
as Père Volitza
1920. Jean Rezeau and his elder brother were living happily in their family estate in Brittany, until the death of their grandmother. The return of their mother, a worthy descendant of fairytales' witches, brings an all new atmosphere to their home.
Angry Harvest
as Cybulkowski
In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.
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Dangerous Moves
as Le grand maître Felton - l'équipe de Fromm
World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.
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Danton
as Maximilien Robespierre
Danton and Robespierre were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France's ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass executions that became known as the Reign of Terror. Danton, well known as a spokesman of the people, had been living in relative solitude in the French countryside, but he returned to Paris to challenge Robespierre's violent rule and call for the people to demand their rights. Robespierre, however, could not accept such a challenge, even from a friend and colleague, and he blocked out a plan for the capture and execution of Danton and his allies.
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Hospital of the Transfiguration
as Marglewski
The film is set toward the beginning of World War II, at a psychiatric hospital in the country. But this is an unusual hospital: there are several incurable schizophrenic cases, staff is bit strange and a writer has voluntarily entered the clinic because he is "peculiar" and a drug addict. Then, the occupying forces arrive...
