The best Barbara Połomska’s movies

Two sketches covering episodes from the World War II. In the first novel, "Scherzo alla polacca", a shrewd son, trying to preserve his skin, ultimately becomes a hero and finds a reason for fighting. He initially tries to avoid underground training to avoid the Warsaw uprising. His drunkenness, disregard for safety and cowardice when sober stated with humorous effect come out as something sane in the world gone mad. His will to survive is more acceptable than any desire for heroic death. The second novel, "Ostinato lugubre", details a hopeless attempt at escape from a prison camp by a man who can no longer stand the confinement and idiocy of the professional soldiers trying to keep up the military preneses in prison. Nevertheless, his escape boosts the morale of his fellow prisoners, while the "escapee" lies hidden from Germans and comrades alike." From Polish Cinema Database

The story is an odyssey of a little man through Poland of 1930 to 1950. It shows his attempts to cope with a changing world which seems to have no place for him. He has no consciousness of any kind but is always on the verge of turning into a more coherent human being, only to be slapped down. It begins with the hero's childhood. Then comes the first love marred by his unwilling involvement in fascict politics, him being taken for a Jew because of his nose. Later he decides to join the army to charm the girl, but arrives too late for any fighting. He is arrested by entering German troops while he dresses in officer's uniform and mistakenly sent to POW camp as an officer.

Polish writer/director Aleksander Ford's Eighth Day of the Week takes an astonishing anti-Communist stance--the first of many that would compel Ford to leave his homeland after a general governmental crackdown on personal expression in 1968. Zbigniew Cybulski and Sonja Ziemann play a married couple who fall through the cracks of Red bureaucracy in Warsaw. The film does not endeavor to preach, merely to present a matter-of-fact glance at how little the individual matters when confronted with mountains of red tape. Upon its completion in 1958, the government refused to allow Eighth Day of the Week to be shown in Poland; it would not been seen anywhere until its European release one year later.

A man has been found dead after having been hurled from a train. As security agents, police and a medical examiner piece together his identity, three accounts emerge: one set during World War II, one in the immediate aftermath of the war, and one in contemporary Poland.

In 1943, Ewa decides to take care of her Jewish neighbour's daughter and brings her home just for a few days. When the ghetto uprising begins, the woman keeps on looking after the little girl.