Nikt Nie Woła (Nobody’s Calling) review – hypnotic passions in postwar Poland
A mysterious stranger arrives in a small town in western Poland soon after the second world war, and embarks on a string of messy, equally enigmatic affairs
This cult 1960 Polish film is a political absurdist nightmare from director Kazimierz Kutz, written for the screen by Józef Hen and featuring a clamorous, disturbing orchestral score by composer Wojciech Kilar (later to win awards for his music for Coppola’s Dracula and Polanski’s The Pianist). It feels like a European new wave picture by Antonioni or Resnais, but has something of the romantic travails of Franz Kafka, and even appears to anticipate the coming vogue for paranoia thrillers.
Like Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds from 1958, but weirder in tone, this is about a man who is part of the Polish anti-communist underground insurgency, who refuses to carry out an order to kill a communist. It was therefore a subject congenial in 1960 to Polish and Soviet authorities, but also a subject that speaks to a very complex part of the Polish mind. Refusing to kill a leftist is good … but wasn’t it the leftists, in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, who invaded Poland in 1939 at the same time as Hitler and helped start the war in the first place?
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