Czwowiek na torze

While Andrzej Wajda was shooting `Kanal,' a film that beats the viewer over the head with its obvious point but gives us no reason to care for any of the characters as they trudge through the sewers of Warsaw, the less famous Andrzej Munk was making more subtle, individualistic and intelligently-engrossing films such as `Man on the Tracks' and `Eroica.' In `Man on the Tracks,' an older train engineer from the pre-war generation is mysteriously run over by a train and is subsequently remembered by several other characters through flashbacks. While the engineer represents a Poland that has vanished under Communist rule, the film also works as a wonderful character study, and Kazimierz Opalinski is excellent in the role of the engineer who stubbornly refuses to give in to a new Poland that he detests.

As means of transport, trains have a certain mystical quality attached to them. This has a lot to do with the fact that whenever trains fail or succeed in carrying out their tasks of moving passengers from one place to another, it is not only them which fail or succeed as machines as the blame is attributed to a whole range of persons whose jobs are related to trains. It is precisely keeping this thing in mind that Polish director Andrzej Munk set out to direct "Czlowiek Na Torze", a film about the lives of Polish railway workers. His film questions the role of a dead railway worker who went much too far in the course of his job before after having been being fired by the authorities. This film was made possible with the help of Polish Railway employees who are shown to wisely tackle differences at work place. The film begins with a nicely shot sequence of a train driven by a steam engine. It is worth mentioning that the camera has been placed so meticulously that one could see the actual train chugging marvelously on the tracks. The film is replete with nicely shot scenes of this kind which capture each moment of what it is being in a situation related to trains.

Director Andrzej Munk graduated from documentaries to become one of the founding fathers of the 'Polish Film School'. This group was influenced by the neorealists but was obviously under stricter censorship than its Italian counterparts. One of his documentaries is entitled 'A Railwayman's Word' and it seems a perfectly natural progression from that to this, his first feature, called 'Man on the Track'. One of the outstanding characteristics of his documentaries is the imaginative use of 'natural sounds' and there is certainly no shortage of these here! The leading character Orzecowski happens to be a railway engineer but he essentially represents the eternal struggle between the individual and the collective. Munk and writer Jerzy Stawinski have cleverly made him a proud and stiff-necked man to whom it is difficult to warm. He has had forty years on the railways and is convinced that the much younger Zapora is conspiring to take his place. He is forced to retire by his exasperated superiors and is killed one night on the tracks by a train the driver of which happens to be Zapora. Has he committed suicide, been murdered or perhaps lost his life whilst attempting an act of sabotage......? Actor Kazimierz Opalinski does a grand job here in letting us see beneath his tough, unsympathetic exterior and this makes his final act of heroism even more moving. The films effectiveness is heightened by its dark-toned cinematography. Munk went from strength to strength and achieved international acclaim with 'Eroica' before his ultimely death at the age of forty which left his film 'The Passenger' unfinished.

This film opens with a gorgeous black and white shot of a train at night journeying to some destination until it is forced to stop because it has hit a man on the tracks. From this point, our story proceeds to unravel the mystery with an ingenious method of telling the story backwards. Different characters who had a relationship with the dead man during his life take part in the investigation of his death and they relate their involvement with the dead man.

A fascinating character study and mystery all at the same time. The cinematography is excellent, as good as it gets in black and white. The script is ingenious and the acting is uniformly superb. I am sorry that some enterprising movie company has not seen fit to offer this wonderful film on video. Munk was clearly a great story teller and it is a shame he did not live long enough to create many more great films. This is a masterpiece.

Action takes place in 1950. Machinists driving a steam train locomotive notice a man standing on the rail track next to an open semaphore but cannot stop the train before crushing him. They discover he is their former, old chief in the locomotive driving team, and also that one light of the semaphore is out, which means "run through normally", while there should be two which means "slow down and drive carefully". Railroad investigators mostly suspicion sabotage, because the man was actually recently forcibly retired, but do not understand why he found himself on the track. They question people having worked with him, or involved in the fatal situation. All seem to hate him, and for some good reasons, as the man was harsh for young coworkers, not very obedient to new management and some witnesses might share responsibility for the accident. The investigation is mostly an examination of the old man's life and personality, because technical details which allow to finally know what happened are revealed near the end only.

During the examination, motives for the old man's behavior are progressively revealed. The harshness is probably related to his dislike of too ambitious colleagues, who want fast promotion to full driver positions. His servant-like treatment of aides might come from his back problems that he tries to hide to keep the job. His lack of obedience is also a refusal for the new and presumably unreasonable corner-cutting policies, motivated by the not-so-well working Stalinist model. The movie has therefore a political dimension. The old "engineer" opposed not only new young ambitions and new policies in the railways, but also by extension in the entire country. The investigators behave somewhat like an inquisition. It is by consequence important for political correctness that the final flashback which reconstructs the most plausible story is told by a party mogul in a positive way.

The long flashbacks which compose the movie and tell the actual story from different and partially contradicting points of view will remind you of Rashomon; the action date even matches its release year. The concept of examining a mystery surrounding the death of a controversial hero was present in Citizen Kane. The beginning scenes in the train strangely reminisce me of The Lady Vanishes. The ending is worth a Capra movie.

The intrigue is rooted in workplace reality, which makes the movie somewhat more viewer-stressing than Rashomon and good candidate for illustrating a conflict solving managerial training. The location shooting makes it realistic and thus a good testimony of the past. There is a bit of action and a few moving train stunts. The scenes in the locomotive's cabin seem shot while the train was really in movement and without special effects. Some shots are from a camera attached to the train laterally. Various funny railroad devices are prominently featured, like machines for rotating locomotives or cranes for water refills.

The movie received the Best Director award in 1957 Karlove Vary film festival, Czechoslovakia, and the "Warsaw Siren" Polish Film Critics' Award in 1957. It is available on VHS.

Rating: 10