While Andrzej Wajda was shooting `Kanal,' a film that beats the viewer over the head with its obvious point but gives us no reason to care for any of the characters as they trudge through the sewers of Warsaw, the less famous Andrzej Munk was making more subtle, individualistic and intelligently-engrossing films such as `Man on the Tracks' and `Eroica.' In `Man on the Tracks,' an older train engineer from the pre-war generation is mysteriously run over by a train and is subsequently remembered by several other characters through flashbacks. While the engineer represents a Poland that has vanished under Communist rule, the film also works as a wonderful character study, and Kazimierz Opalinski is excellent in the role of the engineer who stubbornly refuses to give in to a new Poland that he detests.
Review of Man on the Tracks
