was perfectly captured during the shooting of the film. Critical reception outside Poland In Western Europe, Ashes and Diamonds was widely praised by film critics. The Italian critic Nevio Corich found in the film a lyrical reference to Baroque art. Some film experts, such as Fouma Saisho, pointed to the poetic qualities of the work. Georges Sadoul compared Wajda's work to those of the prominent director Erich von Stroheim. In his 1999 retrospective review for The Guardian, Derek Malcolm compared Maciek's death to the ending of Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados. However, some critics were irritated by the alleged mannerism of the work and the exposition of Baroque ornamentation. Dave Kehr from Chicago Reader shared an opinion that "[f]ollowing the art cinema technique of the time, Wajda tends toward harsh and overstated imagery," while the Time Out London review stated that "Wajda's way is the sweet smell of excess, but some scenes remain powerfully memorable – the lighting of drinks on the bar, the upturned Christ in a bombed church, and Cybulski's prolonged death agonies at the close." As David Parkinson from Empire said, "[Wajda's] final installment of the classic Polish trilogy is heavy in symbolism but remains affective and intimate viewing." Awards and nominations Ashes and Diamonds received the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1959. The film was also nominated twice for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award, with Zbigniew Cybulski nominated in the "Best Actor" category and Andrzej Wajda nominated in the "Best Film from any Source". Legacy Ashes and Diamonds is considered by film critics to be one of the great masterpieces of Polish cinema and arguably the finest film of Polish realist cinema. Richard Peña in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die considers the ending of the film to be one of the most powerful and often quoted endings in film history. The film was ranked #38 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2019. In the 2015 poll conducted by Polish Museum of Cinematography in Łódź, Ashes and Diamonds was ranked as the third greatest Polish film of all time. Directors Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, Francis Ford Coppola, Paweł Pawlikowski and Roy Andersson have listed it as one of their favourite films of all time. Ashes and Diamonds had a significant impact on the development of the Polish Film School, causing a