Man on the Tracks

One night in 1950 a passenger train runs a man down. The dead man is Władysław Orzechowski, a veteran engine driver known for his old methods and his hard manner. An inquiry panel tries to work out why a man like that would step in front of a moving train, and everyone connected to the case is questioned separately, each bringing his own version. It was Andrzej Munk's first feature and one of the first films of the Polish Film School, generally counted as the first anti Stalinist film in Central and Eastern Europe. It shows how a system that always looks for the fault in the individual works, by way of the shape of the inquiry itself. It won best director at Karlovy Vary.