1960’s Knights of the Teutonic Order is one of the most watched movies in Poland’s history. According to some sources, almost everyone in the country saw it when it was released and it remains popular to this day. What is it about this tale of proud Poles taking arms against an order of corrupt German clerics dominating their country, made less than 15 years after a German invasion had propelled Europe into the Second World War, that caught the attention?
The historical parallels are obvious, but there was the added bonus of the film’s anti-clerical theme chiming with the anti-religious agenda of Poland’s communist overlords. There will be no pushback from that direction.
As to the film itself, it’s a hugely complex, sprawling epic, mad in its ambition, which for the most part focuses on a handsome young noble, Zbyszko of Bogdaniec (Mieczyslaw Kalenik), getting caught in the crossfire between Poland’s temporal lords and the Teutonic Knights, who use religion as a lever to exert power and will ultimately try to seize total control. Zbyszko may not have money but he has the family name and its honour. This he pledges to Danusia (Grazyna Staniszewska), a comely young noblewoman whose virtue transfixes Zbyszko.
Zbyszko’s feelings for Danusia are motivated by notions of chivalry as much as lust. His feelings are honourable, up to a point, with Danusia existing both as an all-too-real woman as well as the embodiment of Poland. This is all a bit confusing if Hollywood is your main source of historical information about courtly behaviour. But things become more suited to modern sensibilities when Jagienka Zychówna (Urszula Modrzynska) arrives on the scene and a more familiar boy/girl dynamic gets going between her and Zbyszko.
The plot is intricate and multi-focal, but essentially deals with the Order’s nefarious scheming, its abuse of power, its hypocritical godlessness, and how a union of Poland and Lithuania eventually throws off the yoke of the Teutonic Knights in the decisive Battle of Grunwald, the huge set piece (15,000 extras) that brings the film to a rousing finish.
Though it’s a beast entirely of its own colour, there is also a fair bit of Hollywood here – the look is The Adventures of Robin Hood or even Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester, though with realism much more to the fore. This is a Europe of bears and wolves, forests and lakes, with lots of thatch in evidence. Director Aleksander Ford also gives us the full social sweep, from legless beggars to lords at high table, all the seasons, bitter winter to high summer, and all the dramatic registers, from melodrama to comedy and back.
Fealty is the key concept. Servants to masters, knights to ladies (hence that vow), subjects to king and country. And, of course, the Knights to their God, as represented here on Earth by Siegfried de Löwe (Henryk Borowski), the Order’s unsmiling, malevolent despotic ruler – an unprincipled, lying torturer who loves nothing better than to defile women. File under baddie – Borowski is particularly good at all this and presents the Order’s boss as a properly bad lot.
The camerawork is epic, whether it’s the big, widescreen vistas or the vast banqueting halls where men carouse and devour hunks of meat, hounds loll and jesters tumble.
Yup, stick-on beards, which are obvious even on the 2006 DVD by Second Run which I watched. Its image is a little soft at the edges here and there, something Second Run were apologising about even at the time. That’s all fixed in the Blu-ray (linked to below) from a 2K restoration, apparently. I’ve not seen it but it must look good if the very handsome 2006 version is the starting point.
The whole thing is hugely splendid, though probably tells too many stories and suffers a bit from epic flab syndrome, but then that is the nature of these things.
The Battle of Grunwald marked the beginning of the Polish-Lithuanian union that was to be a dominant force in central Europe from the 15th century. Knights of the Teutonic Order gives us background to that historical fact. The budget was huge and the results speak for themselves. With something for everyone, it’s easy to see why this glorious epic is so popular.
Knights of the Teutonic Order – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
