[In his "Ashes and Diamonds," Andrzej Wajda] is doing a melancholy recapitulation on the political and social chaos at the end of the war.

As in his previous pictures, M. Wajda is putting forth here something more than a trenchant observation of a highly dramatic episode….

Wajda has shaped the story in strong and striking visual images. His sharply etched black-and-white action has the pictorial snap and quality of some of the old Soviet pictures of Pudovkin and Eisenstein. Facial expressions are high-lighted, bodily movements are swift and intense and the light that comes in from the outside in the shaky morning is as dense as luminous smoke.

Likewise, Wajda has created some vivid ideas through imagery—ideas that carry cynicism, melancholia, wistfulness and shock. There is a beautiful scene of the killers remembering dead comrades at a bar, marking each recollection with a glass of brandy set...