Man on the Tracks

director: Andrzej Munk
year: 1957

With the help of several witnesses, a group of Communist officials tries to reconstruct and understand the mysterious death of an old locomotive engineer (Kazmierz Opaliński), who, one dark and dreary night, is struck dead by a speeding train.


Using the subjective flashback structure of films like Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, Andrzej Munk's Man on the Tracks turns away from the personal and toward the political: exploring—and ultimately condemning—a debauched Communist mindset whose first impulse upon learning about a death is to insinuate that the corpse was a saboteur. And, as a political statement, the film works well. Released in 1957, a year after Khrushchev made his famous "secret speech" denouncing Stalin and blaming Soviet excesses on the dead leader, Munk effectively captures both the inhumanity and self-corruption of a system that attempts to enforce ideological uniformity by stamping out all and any deviations. He also shows the Communists' fear and suspicion of anything or anyone who identifies with Poland's interwar period, as well as the broken method for professional advancement that depends on Party allegiance more than skill and experience. For all of that, the film is noteworthy. Unfortunately, Munk is also somewhat guilty of what he's criticizing: Man on the Tracks, though its message is clear, treats its characters as mere props used to communicate that message. Neither the dead engineer nor any of the witnesses are rendered with any kind of warmth or interest. Which would be fine, if Munk had decided to distance himself from his material on purpose; he does not; he tries and fails to create an emotional story on which to hang his observations and criticisms. Hence, the film's ending, meant to be tragic, merely fizzles out—as do all the scenes given to developing character relationships rather than engaging in politics. While this can probably be explained by Munk's experience with documentary filmmaking (Man on the Tracks is his first narrative feature), what can't be so easily explained is the film's visual style. I've seen a handful of Munk's documentary shorts, and they've all been more visually interesting than Man on the Tracks, which just rolls along at a steady, familiar pace from rolling start to rolling finish. I did watch a poor quality copy, though, so maybe I'm missing something...

Memorable and historically important as an early Polish cinematic jab at Communism, Man on the Tracks is just not a great movie.