ANDRZEJ WAJDA'S WAR TRILOGY.

• Author: ROTHENBERG, ROBERT S.
• Position: Review

ANDRZEJ WAJDA'S WAR TRILOGY HOME VISION, THREE CASSETTES, $24.95 EACH

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issues an honorary Oscar, it is usually a salute to a Hollywood luminary who has failed to corral a coveted Academy Award despite a long and illustrious career. Recipients have included Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Gish, Mickey Rooney, and Orson Welles. When the Academy elected to bestow a foreign director with an honorary Oscar, the names were familiar to most moviegoers, especially the art house crowd. Jean Renoir, Federico Fellini, and Akiru Kurosawa fell into this category, but when the Academy decided to honor Andrzej Wajda, there was almost a universal "Who?" among all but inveterate film buffs.

To clear up the mystery, Wajda is Poland's leading moviemaker, most noted for his World War II trilogy--"A Generation" (1954), "Kanal" (1957), and "Ashes and Diamonds" (1958). Wajda has been honored with the Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize for "Kanal" and the British Film Critics Guild award for best foreign film and the Venice Film Festival International Film Critics Award for "Ashes," but the Academy totally ignored him until handing him the honorary Oscar in 2000.

With Home Vision's reissuance of the trilogy, America has a chance to see what Wajda's reputation is largely based on. It requires sitting through three black-and-white films with Polish dialogue and English subtitles. Despite somewhat dated techniques and low-tech production values, they hold viewers' interest, especially the gripping "Kanal."

In "A Generation," a group of teenagers join the Resistance to fight the Nazis almost...