Nights and Days is a 1975 film from Poland directed by Jerzy Antczak.
It takes place over fifty years, from the 1860s to 1914, in the part of Poland that belonged to the Russian Empire (Germany, Russia, and Austria divvied up Poland between them in the late 18th century). Barbara is a young woman who at the start of the film is being married off to Bogumil, a hero of the failed January Uprising of 1863-64. Barbara accepts marriage to Bogumil but does not especially love him, instead continuing to nurse a crush on another man, the handsome Mr. Toliboski.
Bogumil gets a job as manager of a large farming estate, something else that does not sit well with Barbara, as she prefers city life. Decades pass as Barbara experiences tragedy and heartbreak, while Poland experiences tumult and war. All this is told against a Framing Device as Barbara and other civilians flee before the Russian army in 1914.
Tropes:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: After receiving an inheritance, Barbara insists on leaving the farm and getting a house in town. Bogumil, left on the farm, starts up an affair with a pretty servant girl.
- Answer Cut: A pissed-off Teresa grouses to her husband that Barbara won't visit them, because she prefers the fun and parties at Jan Lad's house. Cut to Barbara, at a party at Jan Lad's. (This is where she meets Bogumil.)
- City Mouse: Barbara never does get used to life on a farm, complaining that things are better and more interesting in the city. In one scen she pesters her husband into taking her into town. After she inherits some money Barbara moves out of the farmhouse and takes a house in town, and the separation between her and Bogumil hurts their marriage.
- Death of a Child: Barbara and Bogumil's firstborn son dies at the age of 4.
- Downer Beginning: The film starts with Barbara and everyone else in Kalisz making a panicked flight from the town as the Russian army bears down on him. The streets are choked with refugees and parts of the city are already burning.
- Epic Movie: Fifty tumultuous years of the history of Poland are told through the memories of one woman.
- Establishing Character Moment: Mr. Toliboski's flamboyant chivalry is demonstrated in his first scene, where he strides waist-deep into a swamp to pick water lilies for the young ladies in the procession, ruining the snow-white pants he was wearing.
- Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: A newspaper vendor shouting "Special edition!" is how we learn the story has advanced to the end of June 1914 and the assassination in Sarajevo.
- Framing Device: The film starts out with Barbara fleeing, along with all the other residents of Kalisz, as the Russian army approaches in August 1914. From there the whole story plays out as a series of flashbacks from Barbara's memory.
- Gilligan Cut: Played for drama. A servant is panicking about the advance of the Germans, and Barbara tells her that it's no big deal, that Germany is "a cultural nation" and the Germans are "at war with Russia, not us." Cut to panic in the streets soon after, as the city burns when the Germans arrive.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Towards the end, Bogumil is sitting around planning what to do with the new farm—and he coughs. A couple of scenes later he's dead of pneumonia.
- Inner Monologue: A lot from Barbara, starting with the first scene in which, as she flees westwards in a wagon, she berates herself for leaving Bogumil's picture behind.
- It Will Never Catch On: At a dinner party, Ostrzeński confidently bleats that nothing historical will happen in Europe ever again. (The 1905 Russian Revolution is right around the corner and WWI is coming in ten more years.)
- I Was Quite a Looker: Barbara's elderly, bedridden mother says "I was young, pretty", and then tells a ribald story about how she used to rendezvous with boys in the attic of the family's barn. Once she tripped and breaks a toe.
- Lingerie Scene: Barbara is shown in a frilly corset in a scene where she seduces Bogumil because she's in an unusually good mood, after inheriting 6000 rubles.
- Mood Whiplash: A Time-Passes Montage shows Barbara, Bogumil, and their little son Peter cavorting together and having fun. This ends with a cut to a scene revealing that Peter died at age 4.
- The Noun and the Noun: Nights and Days
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Ends with Barbara in her coach, going off into the forest to another place of refuge, after she missed Toliboski at his mansion.
- Perfumigation: Two different people make nasty comments about the pungent cologne Daleniecki wears, after he sold the plantation out from under Bogumil and then stiffed him on repairs. For a man to wear any perfume at all in early 20th-century Poland would be quite unusual.
- Repeat Cut: Used for a scene where Toliboski rushes up some steps and through a doorway to embrace Barbara. It's implied that they had a tryst.
- Title Drop: As Bogumil and Barbara chat about the passage of time and how their children will one day grow up and leave, Barbara says "Life's full of nights and days, and even some Sundays." She's anticipating the time when they'll be able to rest.
- Later when she's more depressed she says "With us our without us, nights and days pass on regardless." (She has just found out Bogumil is cheating on her.)
- Train-Station Goodbye: Between Bogumil and his mistress, and it's a hostile one as Miss Woynarowska is angry at hom for not leaving Barbara.
- Victorian Novel Disease: Barbara's sister Teresa sickens and dies from—nothing in particular. The obvious guess might be TB, but she is never shown to cough.
