A Year of the Quiet Sun is a 1984 film from Poland directed by Krzysztof Zanussi.
The story takes place in early 1946, somewhere in the "Recovered Territories
" of western Poland, areas transferred from Germany to Poland at the end of World War II. The handover is so recent that there are still Nazi slogans painted on walls. Emilia is a widow in her mid-40s, who is transferred there with her elderly mother, as part of the ethnic cleansing population transfers that saw Poles sent to fill in the void left by expelled Germans. Emilia and her mother live in an apartment in a crumbling, war-damaged building. Emilia is attempting to fend off starvation by baking and selling cakes and cookies, while her mother has a badly infected leg wound that seems likely to kill her.
Enter Norman (Scott Wilson), an American GI posted to what is actually Communist-dominated Poland as part of a war crimes commission. Norman suffers from shell shock and is haunted by the war. Norman meets Emilia, and the haunted, war-damaged man and the lonely woman fall in love. Will they find happiness?
Not to be confused with Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Year Of The Quiet Sun.
Tropes:
- Amazing Freaking Grace: A melancholy Norman sings "Amazing Grace" at the train station, as he waits for the train that will take him away from Emilia forever.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Played for Drama. A brief flashback shows Norman among some American prisoners outside a camp, where they have been mustered. For no obvious reason, an SS officer is inspecting them while another SS man trails behind him taking pictures, and while the Americans shiver from cold and fear. The SS men laugh when they turn Norman around and find that he has soiled his pants.
- Commie Land: Poland, or "Polish People's Republic", a dismal place less than a year after the World War II. The people are living in crumbling, damaged German apartment buildings. They are lining up for food. State Sec communist thugs are everywhere, sometimes oppressing the people and sometimes just stealing from them, as with the goons who barge into Emilia's apartment, steal her money, and nearly rape her. The film is in color, but everything is gray and sad.
- Distant Finale: The last few minutes of the movie skip forward 18 years to 1964, to find Emilia living in a Catholic hospice, so presumably she's terminally ill. She gets a large cash transfer, which must be from Norman although he is not named, for her to finally come to America.
- Face Framed in Shadow: Norman's face is cast in shadow by the rear-view mirror of his Jeep, as he bids Emilia goodbye outside her building.
- Fatal Family Photo: Inverted. Norman and his fellow soldiers are excavating a mass grave of American aviators murdered by the Nazis. One corpse is pulled out of the ground, and photos of his family are found in his coat.
- Great Offscreen War: The Recovered Territories are an area that was Germany less than a year before and as such, was ravaged during the Soviet offensive. Everyone is suffering from the trauma of war. Emilia and her mother seem to have been transferred to Poland's new territory against their will, after they lost both their house and Emilia's husband in the war. Norman suffers from trauma and nightmares from his time as POW.
- Headbutt of Love: Emilia has come to the mass grave where Norman and other soldiers are retrieving American corpses. Norman and Emilia do a Headbutt of Love when he embraces her, after she nearly faints at the sight of the bodies.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Emilia's mother finds out that the human smuggler that they are paying to take them into Germany is doubling the price—and in any case Mom can't go because of her badly infected leg. So she deliberately refuses to take the penicillin she needs for her pneumonia, and as a result she dies.
- After this happens Emilia promises to take her neighbor, Stella the hooker, in place of her mother. But she didn't know that the smuggler was now saying he would take only one, and she doesn't have the money for a second passage. So she sends Stella instead, and as a result is separated from Norman forever.
- Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: The Poles sometimes do this in Norman's presence. As Norman sits down in Emilia's apartment, she says to her mother, "Now he'll pull out some photos and start showing them. I suspect that's the drill next door," next door being where Stella the prostitute entertains johns. (Norman does not pull out photos, apparently because he has no family.)
- Imagine Spot: And a Call-Back, and possibly a Dying Dream. In 1964, Emilia appears to collapse and die in her room in the hospice. The film then ends with a scene of Emilia, looking how she looked in 1946, dancing with Norman in Monument Valley. Emilia and her mother had previously mentioned Stagecoach, a film shot in Monument Valley which is something they think of when they think of America.
- Incurable Cough of Death: It has already been mentioned that Emilia's mother's festering leg wound is likely to kill her. But when she starts coughing, it's a sure signal that she's a goner.
- It Always Rains at Funerals: Actually, it's thick fog, not rain, as Emilia's mother is buried. But the effect is the same, reinforcing the melancholy and sadness.
- I Will Wait for You: "I'll wait for you," says Norman after he's ordered back to Germany. Apparently he kept his word, as 18 years later he's still trying to pay for Emilia's passage to America.
- Language Barrier: Emilia and Norman fall in love despite barely being able to communicate. They occasionally communicate via a pocket Polish-English dictionary. On two different occasions they get translators, but both times the translators are absolutely terrible.
- Lonely Funeral: Emilia is the only mourner at her mother's funeral.
- Meet Cute: For a given value of "cute". Norman, needing to pee, stops his car somewhere in the countryside and walks over to relieve himself inside of a wrecked, abandoned car. He is unzipping his fly when he sees Emilia, in the front seat of the car, where she was painting a picture.
- No Name Given: Emilia's mother is never named.
- Ominous Fog: A brief flashback shows Norman in a POW camp, where they have been mustered in front of an SS officer. Everything is wreathed in thick fog, emphasizing Norman's terror.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Norman. He has nightmares of his time in a German POW camp. While waiting for Emilia he encounters an English-speaking German man waiting for Stella the prostitute. An agitated Norman demands that the German say the German phrases for "hands up!", "turn around!", and "attention!", before Norman slams the German up against a wall in a fit of rage.
- Shout-Out: Emilia and her mother mention to Norman some American pop culture they're familiar with—the film Stagecoach, a 1939 release that they must have seen just before the war started. This sets up the Imagine Spot finale in Monument Valley.
- State Sec: The communist secret police who terrorize civilians. One three-man goon squad enters Emilia's apartment, ransacks it, and starts torturing her mother before Emilia finally hands over their hidden cash. It's not directly stated that they're communists but implied when the most neatly groomed and dressed of the three tells Emilia not to bother reporting the robbery. There's another man in a suit, who watches the apartment building and grills Emilia about the activities of Stella the Jewish prostitute. He also tells her that there's no way she will be able to leave Poland "without the authorities' permission."
- Trivial Title: "Year of the quiet sun" or "years of the quiet sun" refers to a scientific project to study the Sun during years of reduced solar flare activity. The first one was in 1964 which is also the time of the Distant Finale of this film, but astronomy or solar flares are never mentioned in the movie.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Did Stella make it to Germany and the West, or not? She is never seen after Emilia says that she can go with the smuggler while Emilia will stay behind.
