Bad Luck

If we are lucky in our youth we will meet someone whose tale of woe, of rotten luck, of good work gone for nothing reveals itself to be a consequence of self-absorbed indifference to the true lives of others.

Piszczyk tells his own story. At the outset we know he is in prison and wants to stay there. For the 108 minutes (in the Polart DVD) of Munk's farce, Piszczyk, a Harry Langdon character for all Munk's chaplinesquerie, unwittingly persuades us his bad luck is a direct consequence of his moral cowardice. From his childhood in prewar, protofascist Poland through middle age in Stalinist Poland, he hasn't a clue beyond his own immediate safety and gratification.

Piszczyk stumbles through the worst atrocities of European history without compassion, encountering the Good and the Bad, the Noble and the Ignoble, oblivious to consequence, ready to be used indiscriminately by anyone who offers him any form of reward. The sooner in life we meet such people the better our chances of escaping their fate.

Most importantly, Munk makes us laugh at him, monster though he is.