Czwowiek na torze

Director Andrzej Munk graduated from documentaries to become one of the founding fathers of the 'Polish Film School'. This group was influenced by the neorealists but was obviously under stricter censorship than its Italian counterparts. One of his documentaries is entitled 'A Railwayman's Word' and it seems a perfectly natural progression from that to this, his first feature, called 'Man on the Track'. One of the outstanding characteristics of his documentaries is the imaginative use of 'natural sounds' and there is certainly no shortage of these here! The leading character Orzecowski happens to be a railway engineer but he essentially represents the eternal struggle between the individual and the collective. Munk and writer Jerzy Stawinski have cleverly made him a proud and stiff-necked man to whom it is difficult to warm. He has had forty years on the railways and is convinced that the much younger Zapora is conspiring to take his place. He is forced to retire by his exasperated superiors and is killed one night on the tracks by a train the driver of which happens to be Zapora. Has he committed suicide, been murdered or perhaps lost his life whilst attempting an act of sabotage......? Actor Kazimierz Opalinski does a grand job here in letting us see beneath his tough, unsympathetic exterior and this makes his final act of heroism even more moving. The films effectiveness is heightened by its dark-toned cinematography. Munk went from strength to strength and achieved international acclaim with 'Eroica' before his ultimely death at the age of forty which left his film 'The Passenger' unfinished.