Bad Luck (1960 film) : Plot, Cast, Sequel, Sources Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bad Luck (1960 film)

1960 Polish film

May 1960 (1960-05)

Running time

92 minutesCountryPolandLanguagePolish

Bad Luck (Polish: Zezowate szczęście) is a 1960 Polish black comedy film directed by Andrzej Munk. ^[1]^[2] The screenplay is based on Jerzy Stawiński’s novel Six Incarnations of Jan Piszczyk (1959).^[3]^[4]

Bad Luck was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.^[5]

Plot

Bad Luck reflects the episodic source material by novelist Jerzy Stawiński from which it is adapted. Jan Piszczyk is petty bourgeois Jew and son of a Warsaw tailor. The story opens when the middle-aged Piszczyk is laid off from a job, and bemoans his fate. He provides a retrospective on his life in a series of flashbacks, spanning the history of Poland from the rise of fasict anti-Semitism during the 1920s to the postwar Stalinist period. Piszczyk emerges as a political and social chameleon, willing to accommodate himself to any situation. His opportunism propels him repeatedly into ludicrous and pathetic failures.

Cast

Bogumił Kobiela – Jan Piszczyk
Maria Ciesielska – Basia
Helena Dąbrowska – Wychówna
Barbara Lass – Jola Wrona-Wrońska (as Barbara Kwiatkowska)
Krystyna Karkowska – Wrona-Wrońska
Barbara Połomska – Zosia Jelonkowa
Irena Stalończyk – Irena Kropaczynska
Tadeusz Bartosik – Wasik
Henryk Bak – Director
Mariusz Dmochowski – UB Officer
Aleksander Dzwonkowski – Cezary Piszczyk
Edward Dziewoński – Jelonek
Tadeusz Janczar – Ens. Sawicki
Stanisław Jaworski – Watchmaker
Andrzej Krasicki – Witold Kropaczyński
Wojciech Lityński – Young Jan Piszczyk
Kazimierz Opaliński – Prison Governor
Jerzy Pichelski – Maj. Wrona-Wronski
Adam Pawlikowski – Ens. Osewski
Witold Sadowy – soldier pretending to be Adolf Hitler
Wojciech Siemion – Józef Kacperski
Maria Kaniewska - Anastazja Makulec
Jan Tadeusz Stanisławski – Chief Scout
Tadeusz Waczkowski – Manager Kozienicki

Sequel

In 1988, the film Citizen Piszczyk was made, directed by Andrzej Kotkowski. Jerzy Stuhr played the main role.

References

^ Niemitz, 2014: “tragicomedy…”
^ Zelman, 2013: “The tragi-comedy Bad Luck (Zezowate szczęście, 1960)..."
^ Niemitz, 2014: “Bad Luck (1960), based on Jerzy Stawiński's novel Six Incarnations of Jan Piszczyk (1959), like Man on the Tracks, is a retrospective on a life.”
^ Bren, 2012: “Munk's…overtly comic Bad Luck, is adapted from Stawiński's 1959 novel, Sześć wcieleń Jana Piszczyka (Six Incarnations of Jan Piszczyk), its title accurately suggesting the film's episodic line.”
^ "Festival de Cannes: Bad Luck". festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 2009-02-19.

Sources

Niemitz, Dorota. 2014. The legacy of postwar Polish filmmaker Andrzej Munk. World Socialist Web Site. 13 October, 2014. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/13/munk-o13.html Retrieved 08 July, 2022.