Starring: Jerzy Skolimowski, Elżbieta Czyżewska
Directed by: Jerzy Skolimowski
During his second year at the Łódź Film School a young, retired boxer with literary ambitions started hunting for enough film stock to direct his first, full-length feature. He eventually managed to cut together 29 sequences for the project in straitened circumstances before receiving his diploma.
Skolimowski also asked his then wife, actress Elżbieta Czyżewska, to play three different characters in the movie. The director himself plays the main character, disconsolate student Andrzej Leszczyć. Rysopis (Identification Marks: None) follows Leszczyć as he wanders the streets of Łódź, killing a few hours before reporting for military service.
After revising the screenplay for Andrzej Wajda’s cult-movie Niewinni czarodzieje (Innocent Sorcerers, 1960) and co-penning Roman Polanski’s thriller Nóż w wodzie (Knife in the Water, 1962), Skolimowski finally gave himself the chance to do things his own way.
The director follows himself with a wavering camera in a juvenile quest for nothing that has a strong Godard-esque feel. His debut film remains one of the most radical statements of individualism ever expressed in Polish cinema.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on January 08, 2012