Bad Luck () is a 1960 Polish black comedy film directed by Andrzej Munk.Niemitz, 2014: “tragicomedy…”Zelman, 2013: “The tragi-comedy Bad Luck (Zezowate szczęście, 1960)..." The screenplay is based on Jerzy Stawiński’s novel Six Incarnations of Jan Piszczyk (1959).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.”
Bad Luck was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.
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
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.
External links
Bad Luck at the Filmpolski.pl