Dos hombres y un armario

Roman Polanski's short films made between 1957 and 1963 in Poland, plus the French-made "Le Gros et le Maigre" (1961), are available in the 2-disc set Criterion release of "Knife in the Water" (his landmark first feature, 1962). It's a great opportunity to discover his early work and confirm how uniquely talented he was from the very beginning. My two personal favorites: the masterpiece "Le Gros et le Maigre" (q.v.), a Beckettian satire on despotism and humiliation; and this fascinating "Two Men and a Wardrobe", which tells the surrealistic story (without dialog -- Polanski seldom used dialog in his shorts) of two men who come out from the sea carrying a huge, heavy wardrobe (symbolic interpretations are welcome, of course) and land on a seaside village only to be rejected and humiliated by everyone they meet.

Mixing tones of Absurd Theater (Beckett, Ionesco), silent comedies (Keaton especially), surrealism (Magritte comes to mind), and Kafka with a very sophisticated visual style (those fabulous framings!), his very peculiar sense of (black) humor, great rhythm and K.Komeda's perfect score, Polanski manages in 15 minutes to build an exhilarating, original tale about intolerance, hypocrisy, selfishness, cowardice, violence, and prejudice -- but also about bonding friendship, about acknowledging your background and standing up for who you are (check out the ending). This is the kind of work that proves that short films can be a completely satisfying film format.

P.S.: The role Polanski plays here is a sort of "prequel" to his Chinatown thug.

I saw this Roman Polanksi short on the Criterion collection DVD set, and it's definitely one of my favorites of his. It shares a lot with silent comedy, but it's a little more peculiar within its own conventional quirkiness. It's all about two men, and a wardrobe, as the title all too blatantly makes clear. But what ends up being surprising, funny, and even touching to an extent is where the wardrobe gets taken around to. They can't seem to get it really anywhere, and the destination of the wardrobe seems to be undetermined. It's really all a big excuse to showcase a mixture of silent-film comedy with an underlying message that could be read into. What's it like to bring along something or someone that is just very out of place? This becomes all the more evident as the two men try to rest it down at some places, only to find they have to take it back up again and keep walking. I loved the bits of business that happened, but even just as much the light whimsy that's given to such a strange scene. What's more surreal than two men carrying a wardrobe along a beach? And the music by the great composer (who's best work is in Knife in the Water) Komeda, gives the picture just that perfect quality that lends itself to being memorable still. It's 14 minutes of cinematic bliss for Polanski fans, and for a student film it's got a genuine lot of creativity, humor, and a point that is not lost amid the tact of entertaining to no end.

Although you can file this movie under experimental or avant-guarde (which are controversial film genres), I think that if only all film student made short films as good as this one... perhaps student films would have had a wider audience (other than film students!).

Having studied the films of Roman Polanski thoroughly in the early 70's while taking a ground breaking GCSE O'Level in Film Study, I was lucky enough to take in the early works including Two Men and a Wardrobe. The film starts with the arrival of the two men from the sea as if joining a closed community from the outside world. Along with them they carry their burden, the wardrobe. The film documents their inability to be accepted into a society who's prejudices come to the fore as they are turned away from cafes and shops and eventually leave the society that shuns them. The wardrobe is symbolic of all societies shortcomings, whether it's sexism, homophobia, racism or plain class distinction. This is Polanski's first film and sets his stall out for a career which never hides from controversy, which includes the mock horror of Dance of the Vampires to Repulsion and the brilliant Cul de Sac. His crossing of genres take him past Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hardy's Tess, but most ardent fans return to the earlier work. Any one who enjoys Two men and a wardrobe should search out Knife In The Water before they return to his Hollywood days.

"Wardrobe" has two meanings for most people: 1 - A wardrobe (sometimes called an "armoire") is a standing closet, sometimes called an "armoire" used for storing clothes. Sometimes it is in the form of a big trunk. 2 - a collection of wearing apparel; a collection of stage costumes and accessories I know it as the second definition but in this movie, an early Roman Polanski film, it is a big "dresser, a large piece of furniture to store clothes and has a mirror in the middle of it. It looks big and tough for even two people to carry.

So....imagine the absurdity of the opening scene: two men appearing out of the ocean, walking to shore carrying this "wardrobe!" That scenes sets up this strange 14-minute film, the first one of Polanski's to get public viewing. Polanski made films in Poland for the first five years of his career. I wonder what people there thought of this strange tale.

This movie starts out strictly as a comedy, almost like an old silent film one because there is no dialog so all the humor is physical. However, it then delves into some other odd areas, such as animal abuse, some unexplained and non-eventful and very routine scenes with a girl, some fistfights. You just never know what will happen, all the while the two guys are carrying this huge wardrobe around. I left out mentioning a bunch of strange things so as not to spoil it.

Like most of Polanski's early works, this is unusual stuff. My opinion is that many people would see this in many ways, and have a wide wide of likes and dislikes about it. One thing for sure: it's different. You can see this early Polanski effort on disc number 2 of the "Knife In The Water" DVD.