The Noose

Kuba drinks. Tomorrow he begins treatment; his girlfriend arranged it, the hour is set, and all he has to do is get through today without a drink. He wakes and the day begins. The telephone rings, the door goes, old friends turn up, acquaintances appear in the street, and every encounter turns into a glass. The clock on the wall keeps being visible. Wojciech Has directs. Gustaw Holoubek plays Kuba. The source is a story by Marek Hłasko. It is Has's first feature; in later years he made formally far more elaborate films such as The Saragossa Manuscript. The form rests on one day and one character. The camera does not leave Kuba's side and the spaces narrow: a room, a bar, a street, a telephone box. The image of the clock recurs throughout. Time passes and the viewer feels it as much as the character. The narrative does not construct alcoholism as a moral question; it gives it as an illness and a loneliness. The people around him want to help and do not know how. It belongs to the postwar generation of Polish cinema and stands outside the social realist mould of the period. Who it is for: viewers who follow Eastern European cinema and dark character driven drama. Who it is not for: it is without hope, the pace is deliberately suffocating, and the narrative offers no way out.