The Adventure of a Good Citizen (1937)

Directed by: Stefan Themerson, Franciszka Themerson

Przygoda czlowieka poczciwego (The Adventure of a Good Citizen, 1937) is almost all what is left of Polish film avant-garde. Stefan Themerson tailored several experimental films with his wife, the painter Franciszka, that were lost in Paris during German occupation. His visual experiments were carried out in Warsaw and, later, in London where the Themersons settled after World War II. Apart from being the most narrative of Themerson’s films from the Polish period, The Adventure of a Good Citizen is also an apologia for extravagance in daily life.

The protagonist of the title is an office clerk who escape from his ennui by walking out of his workplace backwards, and into two furniture movers on the street. The Good Citizen eventually escapes to the forest pursued by an angry mob bearing ‘Down With Walking Backwards!’ placards. The mix of narrative elements and primitive camera tricks culminating into a mob scene clearly evoke René Clair short film Entr’acte (1924). The forest sequence offers a sample of Stefan Themerson’s trademark ‘photogram’ technique which consists in filming the outlines of objects through a translucent sheet.

This late example of pre-war surrealism inspired Roman Polański who adopted the wardrobe motif in his debut short Dwaj ludzie z szafą (Two Men and a Wardrobe, 1958). Fortunately or unfortunately, the limited circulation of The Adventure of a Good Citizen prevented Themerson’s gem from scandalising the Polish artistic milieu of the time.

Originally published by The Krakow Post on November 17, 2012