A well shot and very good looking film with good performances particularly that of the female lead Grazyna Dtugotecka. As with several of the films of Walerian Borowczyk, however, part of the charm is the idiosyncratic pacing. Some films are more subject to this than others, seeming, an almost arbitrary mix of very slow sequences and speeded up ones barely allowing enough time for the viewer to absorb the goings on. The director's, The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne issues this technique to marvellous effect but here it can be distracting and with the film already rather lengthy, perhaps something that could be done without. Nevertheless this is entertaining enough and covers much ground from the young girl's virginal confession and through love and hate, motherhood and murder, robbery and rape, prostitution and more. If the film is a little overlong there is much to enjoy with a turbulent story and some ravishing visuals

Having found in the past that Arrow put out seperate releases for other films by directors they have done dedicated sets for,I decided to check for this film maker. Pleased to find they had put out another of his works,I sat down for a tale.

View on the film:

Matching the care shown for the film makers work in their earlier set, Arrow present a fantastic transfer,with the sharp soundtrack and crisp print being backed by extensive, detailed extras.

The only time he made a live action film in his home country of Poland, directing auteur Walerian Borowczyk crosses visual motifs and a major recurring theme in his works,within the opening shot, as a distorted Ewa is lectured to about sin by a self-important priest.

Breaking a run he had been on in being the editor of his own projects, with editor Lidia Pacewicz brilliantly entering the role,whose measured cuts keep the surrealist flourishes held as part of the wider picture of Ewa's life. Closely working with cinematographer Zygmunt Samosiuk, Borowczyk reveals a refined eye that gazes on a passionate Melodrama atmosphere of graceful long tracking shots gliding to the lowest depths Ewa's life hits,in an irresistible, romantic final shot.

Carrying a heaviness of following Ewa's troubled life (with Ewa being the latest in Borowczyk's major theme of a woman being the lead in his works) Borowczyk continues to build on his surrealist stylisation, with a excellent framing of Ewa's conversations reflected in objects and taking place behind closed doors creating a vision of seeing Ewa in her most private moments.

Wearing Ewa's life in only her second feature film, Grazyna Dlugolecka gives a incredible, subtly expressive performance as Ewa, whose bleak, brittleness from the horrors inflicted on her being placed by Dlugolecka on top of the faint hope Ewa holds by her fingertips,of discovering a happy ending in her story of sin.

Story of a Sin should be appreciated as more than a moral tale featuring abundant nudity and open depictions of sexuality. In addition to conveying a taste of Polish society at the turn of the last century, it's also an impressive production of 1970s Polish cinema, and reminiscent of Wajda's The Maidens of Wilko and The Promised Land.

I want to add my impressions about the movie as a female viewer. It reminded me of many other European films made in the 1970s that were publicized by ads that showed a naked woman in an embrace with a fully clothed man. There is a lot of nudity of Story of A Sin: nearly all of it is the lead actress showing her bare breasts and behind. In the scene with the nobleman both are shown fully nude, and there are some shots showing his flaccid genitals, but they're less than a minute long.

That said, the film's story is an old fashioned one warning that after the first sin, it's a long slide down to the gutter. By getting involved with Lukasz, a man seeking a divorce, young Ewa ends up estranged from her family, working in a sweatshop in a small town. After Lukasz departs for Rome in order to try to secure his divorce Ewa finds herself pregnant and abandoned. She learns that Lukasz has been jailed in Italy for forgery and theft. She gives birth alone, kills her baby, then steals money from her kind Jewish landlord. With the help of a nobleman, one of Lukasz's friends, she travels to Italy to find Lukasz, but the prison guards tell her he has been released and has left the country. While looking for him in France she hears that Lukasz has married a wealthy woman. She sinks into prostitution. Then a man who has been stalking Ewa attacks her and she drifts into a life posing as the man's wife, helping him and his henchmen con and rob others. She is forced to participate in a con that traps her nobleman friend; she kills him while he is making love to her. She escapes from the criminals thanks to the help of a reforming Count who takes her to his estate which he has converted into a refuge for fallen women. He gives an interview to reporters saying how he wants to promote reforms for Poland- I could see in this scene. why the then Communist Polish Government approved of the film. But Ewa is seduced back to her life with the criminals by one of the henchmen (who looks like Erich von Stroheim) telling her he has been sent by Lukasz to find her.

The film may feature sex, violence and nudity but it is very moral, and seems to lavishly portray Ewa's degradation as a warning to everyone - especially young girls- that one sin can lead to a sorry story of destruction. As well as being a cautionary tale, its a portrait of Polish life in the early 1900s, when Poland was not an independent country. Warsaw and the areas of today's Eastern Poland were under Russian rule ( other sections of today's Poland were then part of Germany and the Austrian Hungarian empire). The costumes, sets, and scenery are lush, and give an rich impression of life for the wealthy, the gentry, the working middle classes like Ewa's parents, and the poor, like Ewa's co workers in the offices and clothing sweatshop. The government probably encouraged the frank depiction of the seamier aspects of Polish life under the Czar (His portrait is displayed prominently in the offices where Ewa works as a copier). The film doesn't hold back in showing violence, the restrictions of the copiers' lives by their manager (he refuses to give Ewa the day off so she can visit Lukasz, who she's just learned has been wounded in a duel with the nobleman, so she abandons her job on the spot),the vulgarity of the girls in the sweatshop, and the poverty in Warsaw and in the small towns. In one scene in a tavern a waitress covers a table with doilies made of folded and cut newspaper pages. The film doesn't follow Party lines completely. It arouses empathy for noblemen like Eva's admirer, people with titles and estates but little money. It was heartening seeing a sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish landlord.

The scenes of the countryside are glorious. I recognised Warsaw locations in several shots, particularly Łazienki Park. There is much to delight the eye and much to enjoy in the Story of a Sin: it gives the viewer more to ponder than the consequences of sins of the flesh.