Bad Luck

Jan Piszczyk does not want to leave prison. To talk the warden out of releasing him he starts recounting his life: he was present for every phase Poland went through from the thirties to the fifties, and every time he was in the wrong place, on the wrong side, at the wrong moment. Nationalism, occupation and the new order each flattened him identically. He considers himself unlucky; what he actually is, is a man who takes the shape of whatever wind is blowing. Andrzej Munk adapted Jerzy Stawinski's novel and turned a black comedy on the heroic story Poland tells about itself. It went to Cannes in 1960. Munk died in a car accident a year later at forty, and the few films he left are counted among the bravest in Polish cinema.