[1] It was the first film made about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, telling the story of a company of Home Army resistance fighters escaping the Nazi onslaught through the city's sewers.

Lieutenant Zadra leads a unit of 43 soldiers and civilians to a new position amidst the ruins of the now isolated southern Mokotów district of Warsaw.

When they reach the designated exit at Wilcza Street, Korab is too weak to climb the upward sloping tunnel, so they rest for a while.

The story and script were written by Jerzy Stefan Stawiński who himself survived in the sewers as an officer of Armia Krajowa (the Polish underground resistance Home Army) during the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944.

[13] While Wajda’s debut film A Generation (1955) received a measured critical response, Kanal provoked widespread controversy and debate among Poles as to its merits.

The futile death of the uprising’s heroes, covered in dirt and excrement, did not correspond to the idealized picture of the nation’s martyrs.”[14] Critic Leon Buko in Dziennik polski complained “This whole Warsaw, this whole Rising wallows in filth, in the gutters of history…”[15] Aleksander Jackiewicz [pl], of the Trybuna Ludu wrote: Maybe Kanal will mark the beginning of the truth being told about history, about ourselves, about a whole generation.

Perhaps it will prove to be art as a warning, art of purgation, a triumph of the heroism of life over the heroism of death.”[16]Biographer Boleslaw Michalek adds that Jackiewicz placed emphasis on the skeptical note in the film, its confrontation with the legend of the Warsaw Rising, and by and large this was how reviewers hailed Kanal as a landmark in Polish cinema.”[17] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 8 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8.1/10.

[21]Historic manifestations of “romanticism and heroism” were deemed anachronistic in post-war Poland and challenged by appeals to “reason” and “political common sense.” Despite these political exposures, Wajda’s romantic, sensual style endows the characters in Kanał with “heroic dimensions.”[22] The descent into the sewers has been compared to Dante’s depiction of the souls damned in his Inferno, and acknowledged as such by Wajda.

Biographer Bolesław Michałek writes: Kanał is permeated by a virtually unrelieved mood of despair, bitterness and resignation.

[23]The historical subject that Wajda addressed in Kanal was one of the most politically and socially charged topics in post-war Poland.

The outbreak of the Rising on August 1, 1944 was ordered by the Home Army leaders in agreement with the Government-in-Exile in London, but no clear understanding was made with the command of the approaching Soviet armies…when a deadlock was reached at the Soviet front, a war of attrition was mounted [by the Nazis] against the insurgents…Gradually the remorseless German assault forced the insurgents to withdraw to Mokotów.

[27][28]Michalek adds that “Wajda’s treatment of the Warsaw Rising and the retreat through the sewers had a definite and deliberate historical and social edge.”[29] By the mid-1950s, two fundamental perceptions had become established among Poles regarding the event.

The second was official skepticism as to the purity of the high-command’s motives in committing men and women patriots to a doomed endeavor.

[31][32] Polish critic Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz [pl] commented on the contrasting “heroic dimensions” of the characters in Kanal and the “latent skepticism” concerning the 1944 uprising: “Like all artists approaching this subject, Wajda has succumbed to certain pressures.