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ANDRZEJ MUNK TRILOGY
ANDRZEJ MUNK TRILOGY


 
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Of the three major directors to arise from the Polish School in the postwar period, Andrzej Munk's film output was less, but no less substantial, than that of Wajda and Kawalerowicz. Before his untimely death in a car accident in 1961, Munk completed only three feature films, all of which are collected here. The first, Man on the Tracks (1956, 90 mins.), is a screen adaptation of a short story by J.S. Stawinski. Using a disjointed structure with conflicting versions of the same story (a la Citizen Kane and Rashomon), Munk spins a tale about an engine driver found slumped across train tracks in the middle of the night. Just as the different characters examine the mystery, this classic of anti-Stalinism uses the story to examine  problems in 1950s Poland. Next came Eroica (1957, 83 mins.), which Pauline Kael described as "a true black comedy and one of the few modern movies that has something relevant to say about the modern world." In it, the Warsaw Uprising is looked at through the eyes of a drunken black marketeer; in the second "movement," Polish prisoners in a German camp fanatically espouse the heroism of their comrade, which, in fact, is a farce. Munk's final finished film, Bad Luck (1960, 105 mins.), tracks the odyssey of a man   through two decades of Polish history. From 1930 to 1950, we watch his childhood, his first love, his unwilling involvement in Fascist politics,