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and recognized line of heirs of the French Emperor derived from this liaison. Though connected with Poland it became completely assimilated in France.
Napoleon’s historians and biographers have published several versions of the romance that began between Napoleon | and the beautiful Polish woman. There can be no doubt that the romance with Maria Walewska was one of the deeper and more lasting of Bonaparte’s numerous adventures with women. Polish legend of the period is even prepared to seek some relation between the liaison and the steps which, however half-heartedly, Napoleon took to restore the Polish state. The romantic version of the events promotes Walewska to the rank of one of the Emperor’s few ‘‘true loves’ and reports that etiquette and political reason alone prevented him from sealing the affair with wedlock.
The film-makers are quite circumspect in their treatment of this far-reaching claim. Instead they focus their attention on the purely comic aspect of the history of Bonaparte and Walewska or, as they put it, of Marysia and Napoleon. They make fun of the doddering figure of Walewski, years older than his charming wife, and of the Emperor who sets out on his war campaigns rather like a man who is going abroad on an extended business trip and nurses a vague hope of a romantic adventure. The film-makers are also entertained by the fascination of the young woman living at Walewice, a small provincial estate in Poland, with the legend of the great hero. But ‘’Marysia and Napoleon” is above all a satire on the political speculations of the beau monde of the time: countesses gossiping in the salons and retired politicians reading the future in coffee grounds. This salon society was ready to relate national destiny, the course of future events and the history of Europe, to the imperial secrets of the alcove. This is the most entertaining part of the film. Ridicule of political naivité is seasoned with pungent wit, an indispensable ingredient which lends a fresh glow to the comedy.
Set in a contemporary frame, the story of a Frenchman who accidentally finds himself at Walewice, the film is a tour by force of one of Poland's oldest and busiest film directors, Leonard Buczkow