User reviews

Night Train is the first film I've seen from highly rated Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz and it's a highly impressive film too! The film takes on a Hitchcockian style, although Kawalerowicz' directorial style is more sombre than Hitchcock's and the film straddles the line between thriller/mystery and drama excellently. As the title suggests, the film is set aboard a train, and the director really makes good use of this setting as the claustrophobia of the vehicle is constantly imposed, and other elements such as the chance of meeting strangers on a train and the idea of a lot of different people being together in one place also come into play. The film focuses on Jerzy; a mysterious man who boards a train on course for the Baltic coast. It soon becomes apparent that the man has a high need for privacy, and this is disrupted by Martha, a woman who he finds in his compartment. At first he seems keen to get rid of her, but later reluctantly agrees to let her stay. It later transpires that the police are on the hunt for a man who murdered hid wife...and Jerzy finds himself under suspicion.

The film is stylishly shot and Kawalerowicz' style reminded me somewhat of the "Nouvelle Vogue" style that was popular in France around the early sixties. The black and white picture helps to impose a dark atmosphere on the film and this in turn helps to build the mystery surrounding the central character. The characters themselves are all interesting and the way that the director feeds us more information about each one as the film progresses is well done and helps to keep the audience interested in the film. The acting courtesy of Leon Niemczyk and Lucyna Winnicka in the central roles is excellent and both performers give their characters plenty of credibility. The murderer plot often feels like something of a spare wheel to the other things going on in the film, but I think this was intended as by not putting the full focus on this plot, more time is given to developing the characters. The results of this plot are stunning, however, and the sequence that finally sees the murderer chased down is well shot and highly memorable. As the film winds down, Jerzy Kawalerowicz gives us an interesting take on the twist ending and this helps to separate Night Train further from the majority of other thrillers. Overall, this is a fascinating little thriller and comes highly recommended!

A bird's-eye view of a crowded train station. A haunting, almost chilling jazz score with sensuous female vocals. Crisp black and white cinematography. You can't help but get the feel of a high quality noir film right from the first frame. The myriad human beings look like small creatures scurrying in all directions. It's a seemingly normal view at a train station. Soon, as the view draws closer, we get a glimpse of some of the primary players in this strangely ambiguous psychological drama.

A dapper looking man with sunglasses, Jerzy (Leon Niemczyk) enters the train compartment without a ticket (saying that he forgot everything at home) and insists on buying his way into the train, and also the neighbouring berths 'cause he wants to alone. He seems to be tensed, possibly just wants to go away some place, hardly smiles, and smokes a lot of cigarettes. A beautiful young blonde, Marta (Lucyna Winnicka) makes an appearance. She has a certain sadness in her eyes. She obviously has something to hide and is probably on the run from something. A younger man (Zbigniew Cybulski), hot on her pursuit, enters ticket-less and proceeds to constantly stalk her, every chance he gets. As luck would have it, some sort of technical error leads to Marta and Jerzy ending up in the same coupe of two berths. Both of them are visibly disconcerted by this, but eventually give in, and are forced to spend the night in the company of each other, owing to lack of any other option.

It's the holidays and the train is practically overflowing, as passengers crowd the corridors. They are a motley crew of individuals with varied behavioral traits and their own quirks. There are a group of ogling men who lustfully eye practically every woman that passes by. There's a flirtatious, married woman (Teresa Szmigielówna) trying to seek the attention of Jerzy every chance she gets, even at the momentary halts at the intermediate stations. For a while we can only hear her husband's voice, who seems to be a lawyer, and for some reason, seems to be a very boring companion! There's a young sailor who quietly stares in admiration at a pretty young thing, throughout the train journey. And then there's an man, an insomniac who cannot sleep in the bunk beds because they remind him of his concentration camp days, so he spends his time reading in the corridor.

Amidst all the chaos, there is some gossip about the latest news of a man who killed his wife and fled! A lot of conversations, exchanges of glances, vague ramblings later, the journey turns into an eventful one for all the passengers. The train suddenly stops at an unknown location, where official authorities board the train, for they have information that there is a wanted killer on board! Which of these ensemble of characters is the person they are looking for? There are suddenly grapevines, as doubt and tension fill the environment, and the characters we are by now familiar with, begin to exhibit a gradual transformation of sorts….

Jerzy Kawalerowicz's "Night Train" (Original title: Pociag) is not much about its plot. It is, in fact, a very realistic study of how a given group of people would behave and make judgments based on whatever little information they have. Passengers on a train are mostly strangers to each other. But a lot is judged (or misjudged) based on their overall demeanor, body language, personality, and what-not. It is a strikingly natural aspect of any human being and "Night Train" brings it out like no other! The lead characters are both strangers to each other, and in that one night together, they seem to assume quite a few things about each other. So do the other passengers. Where the director plays a winning hand, is at his tactful handling of the screenplay by keeping things deliberately ambiguous for the most part, playing a clever trick on the audience, by keeping them guessing constantly, as they start framing their initial mental perceptions about the various characters. The viewer, then, becomes a passenger himself, the kind of curious bystander who makes enquiries in hushed whispers, despite knowing that its none of his/her business. Or the kind that pushes the others aside to be amongst the first to know more and gossip about it; or the kind of person who starts judging based on initial impressions.

So what is the reality of all these characters then? We are given a hint of it much later, although not everything is declared explicitly. Kawalerowicz's ploy lies in keeping almost everything under wraps until the final half hour when some subtle twists almost sharpen the blurs, but not entirely! It is also during this time that we learn how a society as a whole, goes up in arms, against anything deemed wrong in the conventional sense. Somewhere amidst all the chaos, we, as individuals of society are also shown the mirror. It is alarming how people can turn their backs on you and stop at nothing to malign or blacklist you, just as quickly as they can turn you into a hero! Kawalerowicz's film has some extraordinary camera-work (apparently most of the train corridor scenes were shot on a set; it is almost impossible to make out), which has its highly realistic effect on the viewer (the suffocating feeling of trying to squeeze through a narrow, crowded passageway). It also has some great performances, especially by the two leads, Leon Niemczyk and Lucyna Winnicka, and there's some riveting drama and mesmerizing score to go along. But "Night Train" goes way beyond its very enticing exterior of a claustrophobic, tense noir, a supposed nod to Hitchcock's thrillers. It makes a very important statement on societal dynamics.

A hidden gem, a winner all the way!

Although it has superficial similarities with Hitchcock films (it's in black and white; it takes place on a train; it's a murder mystery; there are plenty of red herrings and misleading clues), I loved this moody Polish film because it is visually stunning and refreshingly free of Hollywood clichés. I saw a lot of Expressionist influence in the artfully planned staging and unusual camera angles, both inside the cramped railway corridors and outside the train in various stops along the route. The film is fairly demanding on the viewer: there are a lot of secondary characters with complicated stories of their own, and I found myself repeatedly pausing the DVD to catch details that I had missed. The final scenes were intricately choreographed and highly stylized, reminiscent of black-and-white-era Fellini. Not for everyone, but I found it delightful and plan to watch it again.

It is marvellous that this magnificent Polish classic has been made available in 2011 in a restored version on DVD with English subtitles. The film, in crisp black and white with extremely creative camera work, is a joy to watch. In many ways it resembles the Western noir films of the late forties and early fifties, but it has psychological depth and is not just a thriller. In many ways it reminds me of a high-quality noir such as Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE (1950, see my review), where loneliness and tragic encounters are really the main theme. That film's theme was 'I loved you for a few weeks', but in this film the love lasts for but a day. NIGHT TRAIN (POCIAG in Polish, which merely means 'train', though in an earlier release for the cinema, the film was known in English as BALTIC EXPRESS) takes place mostly on a train, and train films are always such a great favourite, being a perfect metaphor of life. This aspect is intensively stressed by the director, with his shots of the many separate carriages and compartments, both full and later empty. The moving shots up and down the crowded corridors seem to be a miracle of planning, and give every appearance of having been shot on a real moving train. But some of it was done in a studio with removable walls, to enable this seemingly impossible camera movement to take place. The camera never stops, it roams restlessly like a wild beast through this moving Noah's ark of humanity, seething as it is with mystery, fear, an escaping murderer, a woman with murder in her heart, a despairing wife trapped in a hopeless marriage, and even a survivor of Buchenwald who cannot sleep in a bunk because it reminds him of the concentration camp, so that he spends all his time in the corridor reading, until he drops off. They are all supposed to be going off on holiday to the seaside, a town called Hel. The dramas meanwhile are swirling round everyone as they tensely smoke their cigarettes and fret about the dangers of a killer in their midst, and make furtive assignations. The train stops at night at a place where it has never stopped before, and three policemen get on, in search of the man who has just murdered his wife. Which of the mysterious men on the train is really the murderer? The astonishing scene where the murderer leaps from the moving train and all the men go after him in a mob scene and trap him in a ramshackle cemetery is meant to be a metaphor for the seamy side of Poland's recent history. The Polish government had banned jazz music until the reforms of 1956, so this film has a defiantly jazz soundtrack all the way throughout, though soft, dreamy, and haunting. The atmosphere of the film is electric but also mesmerizing. There are long periods of brooding and contemplation, and many characters barely speak, while others chatter uncontrollably. The focus of the film is on the mysterious blonde beauty, played by Lucyna Winnicka, who says little, and after this film was shot, married the director. She conveys so much by her eyes and expressions and moods that there is little need for dialogue. The film was directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz (1922-2007), who made 17 films between 1952 and 2001, of which this, PHARAOH (1966), QUO VADIS? (2001), and MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS (1961) are the most famous. In NIGHT TRAIN, he shows himself to be a master of the cinematic craft. The film is continuously absorbing, thoughtful but paced, and deeply intriguing. Like life, it does not answer all of its mysteries, and happiness remains elusive. One of the most frustrated and disappointed of the characters is played by the famous actor, Zybigniew Cybulski, as an eager young man who simply cannot comprehend his rejection by Winnicka, or even begin to understand her new and impenetrable air of gloom and inevitable fate. When fate takes an unexpected turn, the defeat of inevitability itself has the taste of exchanging one emptiness for another. Empty compartments, empty lives; a speeding train, life's hurtling express in which we all are carried. This is one of the finest of the many 'train films'.

As a viewer, for me, the most important thing about a film is to know what it is I'm about to see.

Up front, one has to know ahead of time that "Night Train" is a psychological drama, not a Hitchcock suspense story, not a murder mystery. Setting it up by using the name Hitchcock is going to cause people to hate it.

Night Train is filmed in a dark, moody. claustrophobic way, and looks similar to Diabolique. It concerns the passengers of an overcrowded train en route to the seaside. One of the people on this train is a murderer. The train is filled with interesting characters: a beautiful blonde, Marta (Lucyna Winnicka) in the wrong compartment, who refuses to leave; the man in sunglasses, Jerszy (Leon Niemczyk) who is in the same compartment; an insomniac who can't sleep in a bunk bed because it reminds him of his time in a concentration camp; an attorney practicing a closing to a jury; his good-looking, flirtatious wife; a young man rejected by Marta, who continues to pursue her, even at one point hanging off her window on the train.

When police board the train unexpectedly, they are looking for the murderer and an assumption is made. And here the story becomes about crowd psychology, and there's a neat twist.

Night Train moves slowly and concentrates on the characters and their interrelationships. The "story" part actually comes in the last half hour. The final scene in the film is very striking.

Some excellent acting throughout, and as a bit of trivia, the lead actress, Lucyna Winnicka, married the director, Jerzy Kawalerowicz.

Recommended for its atmosphere, jazz score, and style.

The film beautifully depicts the reality of trains, possibly not only those running in Poland but also all over the world. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the train brings people together and lets the viewers plunge into the story and its rhythm. Beautiful black and white pictures and melancholic jazz theme bring to mind other films form the era. What makes the film even more attractive is the final turning point and sudden change in the behavior of the passengers. The only regretful fact is that such intimate,subtle films are not made anymore. Great pity.If it was made in English by lets say Orson Welles it would have been a cult movie for sure all over the world just as it is in Poland.

There's some of Hitchcock, Tati and Tarkovsky in this expertly directed slow burn of a film.

Following the passengers on a train that travels through the Polish night, "Night Train" is a study in people watching. Featuring a cast of a dozen or so, "Night Train" works best when it does very little.

Suspense films always benefit from revealing their information in a very drip-drip manner. Some do it better than others. The makers of "Night Train" may be accused of keeping things vague for a little too long. Fair point. I felt like that at some points during its' running time. However, when the final image flickered from the screen, I was left, not with a sense that I had been cheated, but with a sense that I had been witness to a very unique film experience.

If anything, "Night Train" is part suspense film and part fake doc as it pays close attention to a number of brief, dramatically quiet, yet enjoyable moments shared between various passengers. Though focused primarily on 2 characters, "Night Train" features a number of background players - who line the corridors of the travelling train - chatting, flirting, philosophizing with each other. These secondary characters are all very memorable and interesting for one reason or another and, in an astonishing scene late in the film, they share a very powerful moment that takes them from euphoria to something approaching mild disgust.

In the end, "Night Train" is less concerned with satisfying the requirements of a genre demanding twist after twist and more interested in observing humanity in all its' flawed glory.

This film stays with you. I'm glad I watched it.

This is a film which is a privilege to watch, I don't understand why Criterion collection doesn't have this issued yet. If you didn't watch it make yourself one of the biggest favors and watch it right away. I won't describe the movie, I won't spoil your pleasure. This is not a great movie in the sense that other great movies from the same period are considered masterpieces by critics but when we come to watch them they impress us very little. This is a treat, a delight, a thrill, by any modern standards, you have just to find some good subtitles not the lousy ones available on the web and translated online word by word by translation websites. I myself have watched the movie with this kind of subtitles and still I managed to be impressed to tears by this gem. A big bravo to Jerzy Kawalerowicz!

"Night Train" follows the tradition of "The Lady Vanishes", but sometimes beats Hitchcock at his own game; in fact, it is more like a cross between "The Lady Vanishes" and "Brief Encounter". The camerawork is particularly virtouso; the way it moves, apparently effortlessly, through the crowded, cramped train compartments makes the film a marvel of logistics at the very least. The sound of the train moving combined with an offbeat, jazzy score help create a melancholy, hypnotic mood. Sad-eyed Lucyna Winnicka is superb and flirty Teresa Szmigielówna is incredibly sensual. An exceptionally well-crafted arthouse thriller. *** out of 4.

Sadly, I can't agree with most people who find this film to be Hitchcockesque in its representation of a thriller.

To say this would be to say that your Jaguar is just like a Mercedes. They might both be fine cars, but they are in no way alike.

The really quite simplistic plot travels at a slow and in many ways, inexplicable pace. There is little tension built up, and, for the most part, little mystery to be found.

However, don't take any of this to be a retrograde description.

The various small character subplots and interactions are wonderful. The whole journey has a quite haunting feel to it, which I find I am at loss to explain, because if I analyse the film, there is no real reason to this feeling. And yet, there it is.

The beautiful and mysterious Lucyna Winnicka is utterly mesmerising.

In so many ways this film shouldn't work with anything like the power it achieves, but somehow it does. If it captures you in the way it has me, then it will stay with you long after the event, from the strange individual passengers right down to the oh so ethereal soundtrack.

I am without explanation, but I truly hope it gives you the feeling of something wonderful it gave me.

This is definitely one of the greatest, and at the same time, one of the most under-appreciated movies in the history of Polish cinema. Jerzy Kawalerowicz is a true master craftsman in the country's film world, and with Night Train he once again proved that this statement is perfectly true. It's a shame that the movie is sometimes cruelly omitted when talking about fine post-war cinema, because it is certainly worth a watch.

Night Train is different from other various Polish movies that came out in the 50's and later, as it doesn't present the social problems that the country had to fight with during the difficult period of Communism.

It reminds me of the movies directed by the Master of Suspense, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, as it contains the recurring themes of murder, suspenseful mystery, the wrongly accused man and a search for the real criminal.

It also reminds me of the great noir movies produced in the United States or Italy throughout the 20th century. It possesses a deeply sombre tone and claustrophobic ambiance created by the particular scenery, in which it takes place - a train. All of this is complemented with an eerie music playing in the background.

Aboard the train, which goes from Lodz to the seaside in Poland, there are many unusual, strangely mysterious, and overly suspicious passengers. One of them is Jerzy, the main character, played brilliantly by Leon Niemczyk. Strolling around in his classy dark glasses he seems like he needs to hide from something or someone. Unfortunately, due to some peculiar circumstances, he has to share the sleeping cabin with a pretty lady, Marta. However, as time passes by, the two are starting to have a connection, because of the seemingly similar life experiences and peculiar interests.

In the neighboring compartment we can find an unnamed man with his nosy wife, who quickly starts to flirt with distracted Jerzy. She looks so unhappily married that she resolves to flirting with almost all of the co-travelers.

Then there is also Staszek, the boy, who is deeply in love with Marta, but, due to some unmentioned previous occurrences, she doesn't want to be with him any more.

All those characters' affairs intertwine at various points in the storyline. Great and clever dialogues accompany every scene. And in the middle of it all there is the tranquil search for the murderer. However, as important as it may seem sometimes, it isn't actually the main topic of Night Train.

The hunt for the killer occurs in the climax of the movie, when an angry mob runs through the train cars and into the woods to finally catch him. What happens next – the public execution (however not deadly) reminded me of the great western The Ox-Bow Incident. The will of the majority always wins, no matter if someone is legally found guilty or not.

The final scene beautifully reflects what had happened on that night - the compartments are empty, and look somehow pure, but the scattered belongings and open windows give the sequence an obscure touch.

All in all, Night Train is truly a fantastic Polish movie with many suspenseful twists, romance and a huge emphasis put on various characters' personalities, in order to show that anonymity is omnipresent and everyone can almost hide in its shadow if he wants to.

A man named Jerzy (Leon Niemczyk) is taking a Night Train along the Baltic coast, he wears dark sunglasses and by his body language we can tell he wants to be alone and to this end, he books a sleeping compartment all to himself, .But on entering his compartment he finds a young blonde woman named Marta (Lucyna Winnicka) occupying it, she refuses to leave even when the train inspector is called, but when the inspector threatens her with the police, Jerzy says forget about it and he lets her stay, suspicious behaviour as the very overcrowded train is awash with talk of the local murderer who is on the run from the police, Marta also seems to have something to hide and is being chased by a young suitor travelling in standard classic, in a train full of different character, could the killer be on board?Jerzy calls a truce with Marta and soon their conversation begins to open up, a bond gradually grows between the two but is interrupted when the police hunting for the killer, board the train in a remote area and immediately arrest Jerzy, can he prove his innocence on the remaining journey? Jerzy Kawalerowicz perhaps best known as the director of the superb tale of possession, Matka Joanna od aniolów (1961) here produces a Hitchcockian type thriller set on a train with equally successful results. Set to a jazzy score Andrzej Trzaskowski, which adds immensely to the atmosphere while also perfectly suiting the motion of the train, we are gradually introduced to many of the different characters on board, a large group on a pilgrimage, the desperately flirtatious wife of a Polish solicitor, intent on getting some attention from whoever will listen, the young priest travelling with his elderly Monsiegnor, we even get to know the train staff intimately. Jan Laskowski's cinematography is beautiful and captures the claustrophobia of the overcrowded train, but yet still retains a sense of movement in a confined space. The killer being chased at dawn across cold open fields by all on board is a highlight, it finishes with the killer's capture in a rundown graveyard. The films ending is quite apt and somewhat downbeat as all the travellers return to their own lives at their destination, after the excitement of the previous night.

Polish film is not a regular staple on my selection, which is a great remiss of me and surely will change after this one, from one of the leading maestros of Polish cinema school, it is my first encounter with Kawalerowicz, NIGHT TRAIN ostensibly is a Hitchcock-esque mystery with a beguiling noir sheen for the first glance, yet soon viewers will notice there is no McGuffin employed in the story except a promise that a murderer is at large, Kawalerowicz doesn't sink to atmospheric suspense to keep audience hooked in its narrative, and steers us through an overnight journey on a sleeping train where strangers shelter hidden agenda within a confined space.

After the opening bird's-eye view of the flowing stream of passengers, our protagonist Jerzy (Niemczyk) is introduced in a foreshadowing surreptitious fashion among sundry other passengers, sporting shades, suspiciously requiring a first-class berth with two bunks for himself only, it promptly arouses our suspicion there must be something fishy about him. So is a mysterious and beautiful woman, later we know her name is Marta (Winnicka), with whom eventually Jerzy will share the berth, after the initial resistance. Now we have our femme fatale, and a newspaper article about a fleeing murder suspect also duly arrives, so a compelling film noir beckons.

However, once various characters are shoehorned into the limited space, their interactions are more interesting for Kawalerowicz, Jerzy is pestered by a young wife (Szmigielówna) who has married to a much older and duller lawyer husband, and obviously is looking for any possibility of adultery, but he shows his courtesy in spite that his interest leans more toward Marta, the latter is also being badgered by Staszek (Cybulski), a young man she jilts as the different classes of their compartments connote the destiny.

The theatrical highlight turns up when Jerzy is arrested by police who identify him as the said murder suspect, which apparently justifies our ongoing impression of him, well- groomed but is running away from something shady, it is Kawalerowicz's mastery to infuse these false impressions on us, which effectively anticipates the twist in the middle, when Marta becomes a significant witness to expose the real murderer. The chasing sequences are imbued with symbolistic gravitas where a cemetery is coincidentally at hand. And the passengers' collective endeavour rings stridently of how an individual can inadvertently lose oneself in the impulsion of being an executioner under the spur of self-acclaimed justice, even the receiving end is an alleged but defenceless murderer, Kawalerowicz overtly makes his stand clear.

After that dramatic interlude, the film goes on as the train keeps heading to its destination, a coastal area for vacation, Jerzy and Marta finally reveal their real purpose of the journey. When the train stops, they must get off and continue their respect paths, their budding romance is nipped off by Jerzy's farewell gesture, they remain strangers who actually don't know each other's names. The ending, which is seen from the eyes of the female train conductor (Dabrowska), offers an objective view from someone who is way too familiar with the scenario and magically breathe out a poetic empathy.

The two leads, Leon Niemczyk dependably conforms to his suave and impenetrable facades whereas Lucyna Winnicka stuns in her photogenic elegance and thanks to the singular flair added by monochrome, she sublimates into a symbol of ethereality we can never achieve in reality. NIGHT TRAIN is such an exceptional film defies our expectation and a phenomenal curio affirmatively raises our awareness of how awesome a Polish classic can be!

You know from the first minute that this is a different kind of train thriller. The first shots are in the station, lots of people bustling about, but instead of "busy" music on the soundtrack, the music here is slow, and it is cool jazz. This sets up the detached tone from the beginning. Some of the characters are nervous, even hysterical, but the director keeps everything at arm's length.

The story is very simple: A man on the train is fleeing after killing his wife. It is not known whether he is alone or with a woman. The movie concentrates on two couples, a single woman, and a single man. The three women move between the men--are they ordinary women looking for companionship, or is one of them trying to help, or escape from, the killer?

The scene in which the murderer is caught will recall the same scene in M and, of course, since the movie is Polish, the hunting down of fleeing, terrified people which so recently happened on Polish soil. The photography, excellent throughout, is especially beautiful and powerful in this scene. The director makes us aware of the symbolism, but not in an obtrusive way. The man who picks up the Cross and what he does with it quietly makes the point that the murderer and his pursuers are not different in kind, only in degree.

From the opening overhead shot of passengers streaming in and out of Lodz railway station to the final shot of Lucyna Winnicka walking along a beach, luggage in hand, we are in the presence of an undisputed masterpiece of film-making.

There are four main characters here: Jerzy, the mysterious man wearing sunglasses who insists on a sleeping compartment to himself; Marta, the unhappy, emotional blonde with whom he is reluctantly obliged to share; her impetuous former lover who boards without a ticket and even resorts to hanging off the train outside her compartment in an attempt to win her back; the attractive, coquettish young wife of an extremely tiresome lawyer. They are all wonderfully drawn and offer penetrating psychological portraits. Leon Niemczyk as Jerzy is a well-known face of Polish cinema mainly through Polanski's 'Knife in the Water' whilst Zbigniew Cybulski as the jilted lover is the first socialist 'superstar'. The fascinating Teresa Smiglielowna is the bored wife and Lucyna Winnicka was recognised at the Venice film Festival for her performance as Marta.

The pivotal sequence in the film is the discovery of the escaped murderer. He jumps off the train and the way in which the passengers pursue and close on him like a pack of hounds over their quarry is brilliantly handled by director Jerzy Kawalerowicz and his cameraman Jan Laskowski. There have been similarities drawn with Hitchcock and the scene where the young honeymooners are roused from their compartment at journey's end blissfully unaware of the dramatic events that have unfolded is a masterstoke worthy of Hitch. There is also an inspired and haunting use of an arrangement of Artie Shaw's 'Moon Ray'.

Beautifully directed and performed this film works on so many levels but is essentially about loneliness and the near impossibility of relationships. As Marta observes; 'Noboby wants to love but everybody wants to be loved'.

Andrzej Wajda referred to Kawalerowicz as 'the Father of Polish cinema'. Sixty years on from its release this masterwork has not dated one little bit.