Controlled Conversations

Ryszard Ochódzki used to run a sports club; he has come down in the world and agrees to inform for the secret police. The assignment is to go to Suwałki and get inside the Solidarity organisation there. He gets on the train. That night martial law is declared in Poland. The telephones are cut, the roads between cities close, everyone suspects everyone. Ochódzki is left in the middle, at risk both of being exposed as an informer and of being taken in as an oppositionist, and he does not know which side he is on either. Sylwester Chęciński directs the Polish comedy; ninety-three minutes, with Stanisław Tym as Ochódzki, a character he had already played in Miś. It was made in 1991, ten years after martial law and after the regime had gone; it is among the first Polish comedies able to mock that period openly.