At the ATTK, you can browse through successive versions of the scripts for The Decalogue (1988), written jointly by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, and trace how the idea of making a series of television films inspired by the Ten Commandments evolved. On one of the typewritten pages stored there, the authors wrote:
“So we wanted to start each film in such a way that the protagonist would be chosen by the camera in a somewhat random manner, as one of many. So there was the idea of a huge stadium, where we would zoom in on one face among hundreds of thousands. There was also the idea that the camera would stop on someone in a crowd of passers-by, pick them out, and then follow them throughout the film. In the end, we decided to set the action of The Decalogue in a large housing estate with thousands of similar windows visible in the frame. Behind each of these windows, we said to ourselves, there is someone whose mind, heart, or even better, stomach, is worth looking into”.
When the script for the series was ready, the director began to think about the cast. On one of the sheets of paper, Kieślowski wrote down the names of actors for the “ideal cast” on one side and for the “real cast” on the other. The first list included international film stars, probably placed there to better reflect the type and personality of the characters in the script. And so, Robert Redford was included in the “ideal cast” of the first episode of The Decalogue in the role of Krzysztof. In the third episode, the ideal taxi driver would be Robert De Niro, and in the tenth, Paul McCartney would be best suited for the role of the brother of the character played by Jerzy Stuhr (his name appears on both lists). As we know, Artur was played by Zbigniew Zamachowski, although Kieślowski listed Piotr Siwkiewicz and Janusz Józefowicz as possible actors for this role.
The Sokołowsko collection includes a unique set of contact sheets with photographs of young actors from theater schools in Łódź, Kraków, and Wrocław. These are traces of the search for an actor to play the role of the young killer in A Short Film About Killing. Several faces have been circled with a marker. Adam Kamień, Andrzej Mastalerz, and Mirosław Baka, who was chosen for the role of Jacek Łazar, can be recognized here.
At the end of the above-quoted text by Kieślowski and Piesiewicz, we read: “We wrote the scripts for over a year, one after another, in sequence. We sat in the evenings in Piesiewicz’s kitchen or in my small, smoky room. Then I spent a year and two months shooting the film. Now all that is far behind us. What remains are films that sold better than we could have imagined, and we don’t really know why.”