Secret Agents, Informers, and Traitors: Agnieszka Holland’s Fever (Gorączka, 1980)

Abstract

The article examines Agnieszka Holland’s film Fever (Gorączka, 1980) depicting the 1905 revolution in Russian Poland. While situating it in various socio-political and cultural contexts, the author examines the significance of the historical event and its parallels to the Solidarity movement. Special attention is given to the fact that both movements were infiltrated and surveilled by the state security apparatuses. Close analysis of the figures of secret agents featured in Fever focuses on their political significance and meanings to reveal how these expressed scepticism and distrust in the possibility of political change. As the author demonstrates, Fever questions the possibility of genuine revolutionary change, yet most importantly it presents the failure as a ‘national defeat’ rather than a crash of political aspirations of the working class and peasantry. The numerous figures of the Okhrana spies and agents in Holland’s film paradoxically solidify this ‘national’ dimension of the revolution as they are presented as collaborating with the oppressor of the Polish nation in the first place. Likewise, the Solidarity movement was also appropriated by the national discourse, while class-related political aspirations were marginalized and eventually corrupted. The article concludes with the claim that the figure of a secret agent proves paradoxically crucial in mobilizing and stabilizing national discourse as represented subtly, yet persistently in Fever.