Munk, Andrzej

(1920-1961)

   One of the leading directors of the Polish School generation, usually considered by critics as the leading exponent of its "rationalistic" tendency. After completing the Łódź Film School in 1950, Munk began his career with a series of documentary films. Some of them, such as A Railwayman's Word (Kolejarskie słowo, 1953) and The Stars Must Blaze (Gwiazdy muszą płonąć, 1954), moved beyond the constraints of socialist realist cinema and contained the elements of Munk's mature style. Following his feature debut, the war adventure film The Blue Cross (Błękitny krzyz, 1955), Munk directed his breakthrough film, Man on the Track (Człowiek na torze, 1957). The film tells the story of a retired train engineer, Orzechowski (Kazimierz Opaliński), who dies under mysterious circumstances while attempting to stop a train and whose death saves the passengers of the train. The film opens in the manner of Citizen Kane and Rashomon by introducing the mystery. The rest of the film becomes a search for (unattainable) truth—for the psychological portrait of the old man and the motivations behind his actions amid suspicion of sabotage. Munk's next film, Eroica (1958), also based on Jerzy Stefan Stawinski's script, is one of the most important works of the Polish School. It offers a tragic-grotesque depiction of a different, everyday face of Polish heroism, stripped of romantic myths.

   Munk's subsequent film, Bad Luck (aka Cockeyed Luck, Zezowate szczęście, 1960), scripted by Stawiński as well, belongs to the same tradition. Set between the 1930s and the 1950s, it introduces Jan Pisz-czyk (Bogumił Kobiela), a Polish everyman who desperately wants to play an important role in the course of events, yet with no luck on his side he becomes another victim of history. The Holocaust motif is present in Munk's incomplete The Passenger (Pasazerka), based on Zofia Posmysz's novel. At the center of the film is the relationship between the oppressor at Auschwitz (an SS woman, Liza, played by Aleksandra Śląska) and the oppressed (a Polish inmate, Marta, played by Anna Ciepielewska). Years after, a chance meeting between the two on a luxury liner brings back memories of the suppressed past.

   Munk was killed in 1961 in a car accident while returning from the set of The Passenger. The film, finished by Witold Lesiewicz, premiered on the second anniversary of Munk's death, 20 September 1963.

   Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof