Paragon, Gola (Poland, 1969)


Figure 1.--This Polish film, 'Paragon, Gola' is about Paragon, a good soccer (football) player, but not a very good student. Here we see Paragon wearing short pants and long stockings without garters. We are not sure if the film is sent in contemporary time or the 1950s. The children do not seem to be wearing smocks at school which they did in the 1960s.

I think we already have stills from this film archived on HBC to illustrate post-war era clothing like long stockings and we did not know the title of the film. We ran across this still on the Russian internet, and I think it is from the same film that we already had. The Russian site calls the film "Paragon, Gola", Paragon being the main character's name. The plot apparently concerns a young football (soccer) player on his school's team who is the most talented of the boys athletically speaking. But he is somewhat wild and unruly in school. He and a mate run away, stealing a boat (or barge) and having other adventures in a forest or rural area. They are finally discovered and returned to school. The ending, I think, is happy with Paragon actually winning the championship in the soccer competition. The costuming is a little strange because the boys wear very short shorts with long cotton stockings that are continually falling down. They don't wear garter waists as most such boys would have done, but hold their stockings up by misfiting and probably improvised elastic bands around. We think the director's idea was to dramatize by the untidy and badly fitted stockings something of the boys' maverick qualities. We can see something similr in the Pipi Long Stockings books and movies. HBC dated the style the boys are showing from the 1950s. The film is a decade later (1969). A reader writes, "I doubt that it is historical in its costuming, and I rather think that the director was portraying a style still seen in Polish schools during the 1960s but perhaps a bit eccentric to emphasize that the boys are somewhat rebellious and individualistic." Koenig Kalli tells us, "'Paragon gola' is the (shortened) movie version of the tv series 'Do przerwy 0:1'. Paragon is indeed the nickname of the main character, he is, however, NOT the boy with the long stockings, but the other boy in the picture. The boy with the stockings (Rudy Milek) appears only in this section of the movie (episode 4 of the series) and briefly at the end. He lives with his grandfather from whom he keeps trying to run away. The long stockings are used to characterize him as very poorly dressed, as is the rest of his costume which is too small for him. He wears the stockings not with a bodice but with round garters."








HBC






Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main alphabetical Pa-Pc movie page]
[Return to the Main movie page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]





Created: 4:36 AM 1/31/2013
Last updated: 8:27 PM 2/5/2013