POLISH FILM ACADEMY

50 Years of Polish Film School, Warsaw 2008

Baltic Express

Seweryn Kuśmierczyk

In his last interview given in the summer of 2007, Jerzy Kawalerowicz admitted that he came up with the idea of making a film set aboard a night train during his numerous trips from Warsaw to Szczecin where Lucyna Winnicka, who subsequently became his wife, worked in the mid 1950s in one of the local theatres. [1]He realised that “practically everyone who travels by train is subconsciously awaiting some kind of adventure. They believe that something amazing is going to happen during the trip.” (…) That is why a lot of people easily make new acquaintances on the train, willingly listen to their fellow-travellers’ confessions; they observe other passengers waiting for something to happen…The train reaches its destination and the people get off slightly disappointed because nothing special has actually happened…

Sometimes it can be different though. “And this is what fascinated me to the point of obsession before making this film” – as Kawalerowicz wrote in “Więcej niż kino” [More than cinema].[2]

The train setting is a traditional motif used in numerous films. Since the premiere of one of the first films in the history of cinema – “The Arrival of a Train at la Ciotat Station” (1895) by the Lumière Brothers – the enclosed space of the train has been used as a place where mutual relationships existing between people being in close proximity to one another can be well observed.

Jerzy Kawalerowicz knew that an enclosed train carriage was a good place in which to carry out a psychological study of the people who happen to be inside it. The director did not fail to notice either that the enclosed space in combination with the duration of the trip can help create the classical unity of place, time, and action, which allows the successful build-up of suspense. The unity rule is strictly followed in the film with just one exception. The night train going through the darkness became a perfect vehicle for the trip deep into the world of internal life of film characters.

This small, enclosed space which creates favourable conditions for the director to show the subtleties of human attitudes and behaviours occurred in an earlier film by Kawalerowicz – “The Real End of the Great War”. The motif was also used in his later films in which the director studied human behaviour in deliberately limited space: “Mother Joan of the Angels”, “The Game”, “Chance Meeting on the Atlantic”, “Austeria”, “The Hostage of Europe”. In the course of time, this method of defining space has become one of the most distinctive features of Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s films.

Wajda and Munk asked historiosophical questions about the Polish fate and analysed the responsibility of an individual for public events whereas Kawalerowicz focused on a thorough psychological analysis. He was interested in the fate of an individual and the conflicts arising from human attitudes.

The director expressed his ideas in “The Real End of the Great War” (1957) which was based on a story written by Jerzy Zawieyski. This story of a spiritually injured man, ex-prisoner of a concentration camp, who is mentally ill but fully aware of his tragic situation was the first one to deal with the subject so widely explored later on by the Polish School: the problem of psychological and moral effects of war. Tadeusz Konwicki and Wojciech Jerzy Has, among others, dealt with and elaborted the subejct in their films.[3] In “Baltic Express” though Kawalerowicz wanted to avoid touching upon this subject as much as possible.

The screenplay written by Kawalerowicz together with a playwright Jerzy Lutowski was intended to be full of oblique statements. It was supposed to stimulate the viewers, provooke reflection and thought, encourage them to perceive the film from the point of view of their own experiences and feelings. We do not know a lot about the main characters. While watching the film we learn only as much as it is possible to find out about people met by chance on a train.

What Marta and Jerzy have in common is the carriage they are both sitting in, tickets bought from an unknown man and the time given to them by the trip during which we observe their feeling of confusion, dissatisfaction with life, loneliness and longing. Due to these limitations, every word and every gesture can matter, they can convey an important message, disclose the woman’s secret, show the man’s nervousness and emphasise the ambiguous character of this promising encounter.

Jan Laskowski, the director of photography, observes the characters very carefully paying attention to their faces and gestures. He notices and emphasises Jerzy’s nervousness, he recognises his mistrust and rebellion against Marta’s world. Laskowski’s camerawork creates the unity of artistic vision with directorial intentions, it makes the psychological study of the characters more profound enriching it with the portraits of faces and silhouettes which become the devices used to externalise the inner life of film characters.

All the characters feel lonely and a number them appear in this melodramatic story. Forced to observe the relationships between Jerzy and Marta, we start looking at other passengers. We can see them in the corridor or peep into another compartment. We notice their acting and masks they are wearing in the theatre of everyday life. As time goes by, we learn more and more about their experiences and anxieties. Their true selves can be noticed in the scene set outside the train in which an alleged murderer is being chased. Individual portraits of the passengers change into an image of a crowd releasing their stress and the feeling of mutual mistrust and threat. Intensifying emotions reveal fear and cruelty. The passengers of a night train heading towards the seaside town of Hel constitute an image of the society in miniature which the director attempts to analyse. The chase scene can also be understood metaphorically – the murderer being the personification of bad luck and misfortune. The rushing train can be perceived as an allegory of human fate.[4]

Thanks to the director’s endeavours, the inner life of a woman seems to take precedence over the life of a man. Kawalerowicz will be fascinated with “the fate of a woman” also in his following films: “Mother Joan of the Angels”, “The Game”, “Maddalena”. This kind of perceptiveness assigns the author into a trend of similar quests developing in the European cinematography.

The character of Marta was highly influenced by Lucyna Winnicka, the actress who was cast in the role. Because the screenplay did not specify the reason why Marta was travelling by this train, Lucyna Winnicka invented her character’s biography but only some elements of it were acutually used in the final version of the film. 

Unfulfilled love, unsuccessful suicide attempt, meeting a new boy whom she starts to flirt with in order to forget about the past. When she receives a letter from the man because of whom she wanted to commit suicide, she instantly decides to go and meet him in Hel. “Hence her strange behaviour. She is jittery and nervous. She can’t stop thinking about what it will be like to meet the man again, how she is going to get even with him, will she kill him or throw herself into his arms. (…) Conversation with the doctor is a way of relieving stress. It is a kind of confession which lets her get rid of the burden of harsh experiences” – said the actress in one of the interviews.[5] Providing more details concerning Marta’s past enabled the director to introduce the character of Staszek who was played by Zbigniew Cybulski.

Jerzy was supposed to be a mysterious and ambiguous character and Kawalerowicz was looking for the right actor to be cast in the role. Viewers should not be able to guess, until it is made clear by the course of events in the film, if Jerzy is a decent man or a criminal. Leon Niemczyk, who played the character, was expected to act in a modern way without theatrical influences. Kawalerowicz made his work “more difficult” by forcing him to improvise as he changed some dialogues on set. In the director’s opinion, the part should be reflected in the actor's look, his behaviour and the way of thinking.[6]

Jerzy Kawalerowicz believed that an actor must be an individualist whose personality may be very helpful for the director. He wrote in his book: “I always listen to my actors’ suggestions because sometimes they are more interesting than mine. That is why I very often resort to improvisation both during the interpretation and adaptation process. Actors enjoy full freedom, they have to follow my emotional and artistic visions though. The pace of actors’ movements, for example, must be adjusted to the general pace of the film, they must move to the rhythm of the stage. I suggest this rhythm to them. (…) I try to act as a universal audience member – I follow the acting and cooperate with the actors. Actors have to feel that they are watched and controlled. Only then is it possible to establish the contact – just like in a theatre – without which it would be imossible to even talk about real acting.”[7]

The necessity of  setting the film aboard a moving train was one of the most challenging tasks the director was faced with. For technical reasons though, it turned out to be impossible to do the filming during a real train trip. Two specially designed sleeping cars were brought to one of the sound stages of the Łódź Film Studio. The carriage walls were dismantleable which enabled the filming crew to properly place the camera and lights. The carriages were supported on special springs so that one person could set them into motion of a train moving at a given speed. Electric fans and threads attached to the curtains produced the illusion of the rush of air.

Jerzy Rutowicz, the production manager, used to reminisce: “Ryszard Potocki, the film set designer, constructed these moveable mirrors which reflected what was going on outside the train windows. The image captured in this way was then projected onto one of the mirrors which reflected it in the remaining ones. And thus we obtained the background outside the windows.” [8] Lampshades full of holes and moving around on the shining spotlights as well as the cleverly arranged mirrors threw flickering light onto the characters’ faces. The scene showing a person walking along a crowded corridor was shot with the camera placed on a special trolley. People standing in the corridor were making way for the trolley as if it was a person trying to walk past them.[9]

The producers of the film were awarded the “Georges Méliès” Premio Evrotecnica at the Venice Film Festival in 1959 for their original ideas and technical perfection.  

After “Baltic Express” has been filmed, Jerzy Kawalerowicz himself stressed the importance of technical skills. He wrote in “Więcej niż kino”: “I deliberately limited the place of the action which resulted in the necessity of coming up with new, inventive production ideas. It allowed us to achieve greater suggestiveness of the actors' performance and gradually build up the suspense. The main problem was how to achieve the dynamics in a completely static film. I reversed the interdependence between the static and dynamic elements. the background was moving while the main elements remained static. The train helped me to perform lots of the camera movements.” [10]

The soundtrack played by Andrzej Kurylewicz and his band is one of the improvisations recorded in the studio to “match the image”. Wanda Warska’s vocal improvisations of the “Moon Ray” by Artie Shaw harmonised with the mood of the film and Kawalerowicz found them very appealing. Jazz music harmonises in the film with the yearning for love felt by the female characters and serves as a unifying element.

The film was well received both by the audience and critics. Despite the doubts expressed by some of the reviewers with reference to psychological inconsistencies occurring in the film, they did appreciate its technical perfection, consistency of form, and directorial mastery of Jerzy Kawalerowicz.[11]

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