Bearing witness to the destruction of an ideal, Lotna is a deeply pessimistic film, built on an image of decay and obsessed by death….

Almost all of Wajda's imagery here is bizarre—too bizarre, perhaps, for some tastes…. But Lotna, after all, is in itself something of a romantic gesture; its baroque excesses are also its strength, and one either likes them or one doesn't….

With vivid strangeness, underlined by Wajda's extraordinary use of colour, Lotna records the passing of a civilisation. The night sequences are shot in sepia, with most of the day scenes dominated by the pale browns and greens of autumn exteriors (echoed in the cavalry uniforms), so that the more delicate tints—the blue of a Wedgwood vase, the red of an apple—seem to be gradually enveloped in a wash of drabness. (p. 42)

Tom Milne, "'Lotna'," in Sight and Sound (copyright © 1965 by The...