Starring: Bogumił Kobiela, Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass
Directed by: Andrzej Munk
Following the global de-Stalinization of 1956, Charlie Chaplin was finally able to gain the recognition he deserved in Eastern Europe. This was also the year that director Andrzej Munk’s Człowiek na torze (Man on the Tracks, 1956) was released – a film that paved the way for the flowering of the Polish Film School. Munk was the only one of his generation to fully question why the dominant mood of his generation constantly tuned into a dramatic tone derived from neorealism.
The good soldier Piszczyk, as clumsy and cowardly as Private Švejk in Jaroslav Hašek’s satirical novel, is a character without parallel in post-war Polish cinema. In Zezowate szczęście (Bad Luck) Munk takes the anti-heroism of Heroica (1958) to an extreme where the characters still consider military honour as a moral value. Drifting like a leaf through events, Piszczyk only survives the bombing of a cabbage field thanks to his lucky cowardice.
The Polish title of the film, Bad Luck, translates literally as ‘cross-eyed luck’ and can be seen as a reference to the twists of fate that propel Piszczyk as he goes from prisoner of war to Party desk-jockey. Piszczyk, a precursor to Forrest Gump, is played by Bogumił Kobiela – possibly the most talented comedy actor in the post-war period.
Like Munk, he was killed in a car accident in the 1960s. Roman Polanski, still a student at the time, was lucky enough to be Munk’s assistant-director on this, his masterpiece. Polish cinema will never distance itself from Wajda’s imagery that, like the imagery in this movie, pays homage to the golden age of slapstick film.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on July 10, 2011