POLISH FILM ACADEMY

Jerzy Kawalerowicz. Malarz X Muzy /Jerzy Kawalerowicz. Painter of the Tenth Muse, Editor: Mieczysław Kuźmicki, Krystyna Zamysłowska, Stanisław Zawiśliński, Publisher: Muzeum Kinematografii w Łodzi, 2012.

Marta - sad lady from Night Train

Magdalena Ulejczyk

A train full of women

Night Train by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, premiered in 1959, proved to be innovative in many respects. Compared with other Polish films of the time, what made it impressive was the type of heroes – very modern, firmly fixed in their time, yet average people picked out from a crowd on the platform. The claustrophobic confinement of some passengers in a train carriage supported by skillful use of certain forms of film expression helped Kawalerowicz deepen the psychological portraits of the characters, of whom the women seem particularly interesting to me. Kawalerowicz liked to talk about how the idea of the film came about and how it drew fromn his own experience: 'I have travelled a lot in my life, I have talked to various people and it puzzled me that when one is travelling by train one subconsciously expects an adventure. We believe that during every journey something unusual will happen.’

Kawalerowicz noticed that a man usually chooses to occupy a compartment with a beautiful woman, even if he has no intention of flirting. Women, for their part, dress very carefully for these occasions. An intimate atmosphere is created, in which people are willing to listen to stories of fellow travellers and make new acquaintances. 'They watch their companions and practically all the time are waiting for something to happen... The train reaches its destination and people get off a little disappointed because, of course, nothing interesting did happen... But sometimes the course of events is different. And this is what fascinated me almost to obsession before I started the film.’

Kawalerowicz often admitted that the idea of the film came to him when he was under the spell of his then wife Lucyna Winnicka. It was with her in mind that he created the main feminine character. He emphasizes in Prywatna historia kina polskiego (The Private History of Polish Cinema) that the story of the screenplay was based on a real adventure that he experienced when travelling by train from Warsaw to Szczecin. He had not had the time to buy a ticket and the conductor agreed to put him in a 'ladies only’ compartment as it seemed empty. A passenger with a reservation turned up at the last moment. 'It was a strange night – we spent a good several hours talking. She told me about her life and I listened for most of the time and said almost nothing about myself.’ The women never introduced
herself. They never met again and so it is not certain whether she ever watched Night Train to discover the echo of her own story. There is a wide array of interesting feminine types on board Night Train. A young girl appears first who is followed by the camera for quite a while. Yet one quickly realizes that she was not intended to be the main character. This role falls to three women: the mysterious Marta, the flirtatious wife of a lawyer and the middle-aged conductor, seemingly disagreeable but sensitive and protective at heart. They occupy a first-class compartment and it is they who focus the viewer’s attention.

Night Train shows a whole spectrum of women of different ages who create an interesting background to the action: from young ones – probably students travelling in a noisy merry group with their boyfriends – to silent elderly ladies on pilgrimage, with a figure of Holy Mother. The statue of Virgin Mary is treated with great veneration; the pilgrims cover it from people’s view. The main character’s behaviour is influenced by a woman, too. The apparition of a young suicide girl who died on his operating table torments Jerzy to the extent that he sees her in the sheetcovered fellow traveller. And the feminine characters, especially Marta, appear in the film with a lyrical female vocal in the background. However, Kawalerowicz dismisses the claim that the film could be about or dedicated to women: 'The only film about a woman that I have made was Mother Joan of the Angels. All the others
are about men, and women come as an addition. I think that women are popular in films. A woman attracts the interest of both men and women. A woman actor is interested in men and women, whereas a man actor is only interested in women.’ This somewhat instrumental approach aside, Night Train provides a very thorough presentation of women’s feelings and experiences in a way unknown to Polish cinema until then.

Polish Jeanne Moreau

Lucyna Winnicka was familiar to the Polish audience for her roles in Under the Phrygian Star or The Real End of the Great War, yet it was the role of Marta that made her a real star. It won her the Special Jury prize for the Best Actress at the Venice Festival in 1959. Night Train was very popular at home; it won the Film magazine competition for the best film of the year.After the political changes of October 1956, the audience had relatively easy access to western productions and there was a wide offer of French, Italian or American films in the mid-50s. Poles could get acquainted with new trends in international cinema, although of course not all western films were screened in Poland. Understandably, the audience expected a change in themes and stylistics from Polish artists. In a way, the success of Night Train was a proof that Kawalerowicz appealed to the tastes and hopes shaped to a large extent by French cinema. Certain New Wave elements can be traced in the way that characters are presented. They seem very natural, true and spontaneous, to the extent that viewers may get an impression of looking at real passengers that they could meet on a train. The effect is enhanced by the fact that the situation of the passengers is known to the viewer from experience. Its naturalness shows in the behaviour of Marta. When talking to the fellow travellers, she reacts very emotionally or unpredictably. In one of the scenes she slaps a man, after which she sits on the bed and starts to whisper a monologue. The viewer hears only snatches of sentences. The emotions on her face and in her gestures are more important than her words.

The New Wave authors, who aimed to emphasize the naturalness of characters, also avoided theatrical make-up. Even if actresses were made up, it had to match the character. (...) This shows very well in the case of Marta and the lawyer’s wife. Marta’s eyes are enlarged with black pencil, which renders her as elegant and attractive, yet not provocative. This harmonizes with the way Winnicka plays and is shown – the appropriate lighting highlights her eyes. I think that focusing on just the eyes may serve to emphasize the innocence and sensitivity of the woman. The flirtatious wife of the lawyer has a stronger make-up and the dark lipstick signals her sensuality and readiness for flirting. New Wave authors often strive to stress that the action is happening at present. In Night Train, too, the director is interested in the everyday plain holiday reality. The banality but then also the uniqueness and fragility of the whole situation are underlined by the right prop: an evening paper showing in the frame very early on in the film. Its importance is underlined by the information about an escaped murderer, who will chance to be travelling on the same train. The authors of the film compare the night incident to an evening paper quickly becoming out of date. This shows in one of the last scenes. A man who slept soundly all night and did not participate in the dramatic events looks for yesterday’s evening paper. The night pursuit of the murderer is all past now, just like yesterday’s news. The evening paper bought by a passenger before the departure is passed round during the journey to reach another passenger at the destination – it is another element highlighting the closed structure of the film, or the journey part, to be precise. It is worth noticing that Marta does not get off hurriedly with most of the passengers but does it much later, choosing the door on the beach side. This may mean that to her the story will be a much more significant memory than to the others. For her, the end of the journey does not mean the end of the changes that started last night.

It is also worth noticing that filmmakers in the‚ 50's were still afraid of presenting women as elegant,
trendy, full of charm and sex appeal. It was probably because this kind of image was associated with
the bourgeois woman from before the war and as such was unwelcome by the authorities. Most feminine characters of the time lack the attributes of attractiveness which Kawalerowicz’s character already possess. Marta is, arguably, the first postwar woman character whose style is the resultant of
the reserved elegance of the pre-war lady and the sex appeal of a modern emancipated woman. Therefore, she resembles more a woman from western films than from any Polish productions. Winnicka’s role in Night Train is as much a landmark achievement for Polish cinema as the role of Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows for European cinema. Both actresses have created totally new types of characters heralding changes in woman’s image in film. Looking at the main character of Night Train, it is worth following the process of her creation and noticing the special role of Lucyna Winnicka. There is little information about Marta in the screenplay; she is presented as ‚a girl by the window, lost in thought’. Additionally, she is described as ‚pretty, with a shapely figure and fair hair’. She is juxtaposed with the other young woman described as‚ blonde’; in the film she is a lawyer’s wife and is played by Teresa Szmigielówna. The screenplay seems to suggest that originally both characters were intended to play a bigger role than was ultimately granted them.

Journey into the Self

On one side the unhappy Winnicka, on the other - the unhappy Szmigielówna, between them - some people... In her analysis of Night Train Alicja Helman noticed that the director focuses on two women and that one is a caricatural copy of the other. 'The first one is played – in grand-lady style - by Lucyna Winnicka; the other - consistently in the petit-bourgeois convention - by Teresa Szmigielówna.’ The latter created a character seemingly comic but in fact very unhappy. Joyful, willing to start conversations, sometimes funnily clumsy, at first glance she seems the opposite of Marta – self-contained and looking for solitude. Maciej Znajdek claims that this motif is characteristic of Kawalerowicz. In his view, the situation in which two different women complement each other and one’s behaviour trivializes the other’s drama is also found in Mother Joan of the Angels. 'This way of creating the film’s reality in which two characters have their 'counterparts’ or the same actors appear in two roles, thus revealing the other side of their personality, can also be traced in other works of Kawalerowicz, like Cellulose and Pharaoh.’ I cannot agree that the lawyer’s wife and her story make Marta’s drama trivial. It is hard to judge whose drama is more serious, more real. They both seem to exist in the film’s reality in equilibrium. As extreme opposites of each other, together they create a coherent picture of the rich inner life of a woman.

From the first moment together, the two women are contrasted with each other like in tales, where the blonde is usually good and the dark-haired one bad. If they both were blondes, the duality of their nature might have to be based on more subtle physical differences. In the aforementioned scene, Jerzy pushes his way through the passengers trying to find his compartment. Marta stands on his left, looking at him a little flirtatiously. On his right, the other woman comes out of her compartment and looks at Jerzy with equal interest. At this moment certain ambivalence in creating relations between the two women can be captured. Marta, pensive at the window, looks like a romantic. Her hair is blowing in the open window and she is squinting her eyes in the setting sun. The lawyer’s wife appears to be a woman who knows what she wants and who finds herself attractive. As soon as Jerzy disappears from her view, she looks at herself in a wall mirror with satisfaction.

Despite these differences, before we learn the stories of both women, they both represent the same type of a woman hungry for male company and for close contact with another person. Each of them will try to satisfy these needs differently. The shot in which Jerzy passes Marta gives a foretaste of how the relation between the two women will be presented. Kawalerowicz shows by turns the differences and similarities between them. Their clothes highlight the contrast. The elegant outfit of the lawyer’s wife highlights her ambivalence. On the one hand, it is a dress that covers her body almost completely. Unlike Marta, she does not tempt men with her bare back and shoulders. Yet, she uses her outfit for a game with men. The tight dress highlights her feminine movements, especially her hip-swinging, as she passes passengers in the corridor. In addition, she teases men while talking by playing with the beads on her bosom. The contrast between the lawyer’s wife and Marta is best seen when one compares the scenes in which they act. The former attracts men with her feigned clumsiness. She starts her flirt with Jerzy by trying to open the window, sighing ostentatiously and stressing her helplessness and need for a man’s help and care. This stands in contrast with the attitude of Marta, who rejects Jerzy’s offer of help when a speck of soot gets in her eye. Marta plays the role of a self-reliant and independent woman, when in fact she feels lost and emotionally drained. When Jerzy takes care of her, she submits to his actions without protest. Marta needs a man’s support as much as the lawyer’s wife does, maybe even more. The other woman is doing well on her own – she has to take care of her grumpy husband, who is much older than her. She seems to be better prepared for life in prosaic reality, whereas Marta seems to live in a world of dreams and delusions.

The differences between the two characters are well brought out in the two corresponding scenes of preparing for bed. The moment Marta takes off her elegant outfit, her mask of an unapproachable woman falls off, too. She changes into her pyjamas and buttons up to the neck. The change of dress causes her to change her behaviour. She combs her hair back into two ponytails. She is smiling and relaxed now. The man, lying in the top bunk, tells her the Indian adage ‘about the small crayfish that saved the Brahmin’. Marta listens to Jerzy like a little girl who is being read to at bedtime. At last she seems calm, composed and safe. The friendly atmosphere is emphasized by the melodic line. After a while a mirror appears in the film frame. Jerzy sees the reflection of her bare feet. Just at the moment when the girl sees her reflection the melody stops and the train suddenly jerks forward, which highlights the tension between the two characters. Still, Marta does not want to tease the man with her nudity. She reacts at once by trying to open the cabinet so that her reflection would disappear. The mirror reflection performs many functions in Night Train. In this case, it reveals what the woman would like to hide.

In a mirrored scene, the lawyer’s wife gets ready for bed, too. Shown in warm diffuse light, she stands naked in front of the mirror. She is not ashamed of her body. On the contrary, she tries to tease her husband but he is deeply engaged in rehearsing a defence in which he mentions the recent ‚fad for emotions’ and he does not pay attention to his young wife. The woman quickly gives up. When she is sitting in the top bunk in a scanty nightdress, she seems very lonely. After her husband tells her to turn off the light and adds dismissively, 'I bet you’re crying again’, her eyes shining with tears are highlighted in the darkness, just like Winnicka’s eyes. Again, the noise of another train passing underlines the ensuing emotion.

In some scenes, however, the two women are portrayed in an almost identical way. For example, the point-of-view shot as seen by the man playing cards, presents the lawyer’s wife walking in the corridor in same way as it does Marta. The camera’s pan up focuses on the women’s legs. The lawyer’s wife is conscious of that look, smiles and sways her hips coquettishly. Marta, a bit jittery after her exchange with Staszek, staggers a little in the corridor and wants to hide away from men’s eyes. Nevertheless, both women are perceived by other passengers as alike. This is also stressed in the conversation between the conductress and her superior, who makes a comment about the women shown in long shot: 'That lot always have their holiday at the right time’.

The most interesting is the scene when the two women are standing next to each other. First, the lawyer’s wife appears at the corridor window just after she went into Jerzy and Marta’s compartment and saw them in what she thought was a suggestive situation. The frame presents her in medium close-up, reflected in the window with the landscape flashing by in the background. The woman’s face looms out of shades of grey unseen in the film so far. The lawyer’s wife, reflected in the window, seems unreal, totally changed, different than before. This is also because we see her without that coquettish smile, deep in her thoughts. The sad mood is intensified by the vocal, which usually appears in the film when Marta fills the frame. The pensive lawyer’s wife does not seem to be looking at the outside. The mirror reflection once again serves as a tool for bringing out the truth concerning deeper levels of human existence: the truth about sensitivity, confusion and loneliness of the character. When a young man appears in the corridor, the woman straightens up, smiles and peeks at him out of the corner of her eye – she instinctively puts on her mask of a coquette again.

When Marta leaves the compartment, the lawyer’s wife is drawing something with her finger on the window pane. Marta stops by the window, too. The frame shows both of them profiled, with the wife in the foreground. They look like clones of each other. The ever-recurrent motif of a mirror carries an association with a mirror reflection. A mirror as ‚ duality, split, ambivalence, reflection, echo, thesis and antithesis’ – all these notions come to one’s mind when one compares the two figures. The women are absolute opposites of each other. In the a scene, the warm light lightens up Marta’s hair and brings out a mysterious smile on her face as she looks at her companion. This kind of presentation reflects her delicate nature and her manner of a mysterious, reserved dreamer. The wife in the foreground is not only sad and serious; because she is lighted differently – her features are more distinctive – she seems more real. The lawyer’s wife, who probably got married not for love but for a higher living standard, seems more down-to-earth than Marta. Judging superficially by their characters and their looks, they are extremes of woman’s nature. On a deeper, purely spiritual level - when you look into the mirror – they are very much like.

Marta, whose reflection appears in the window after a while, also runs her finger on the pane in a sensual way. She makes a gesture which I have already mentioned: she tenderly strokes the reflection of her nose – the same way as a man stroked his girlfriend’s nose at the beginning of the film. This way Marta compensates for the emotional emptiness at this moment. But the mirror is also 'an augury, clairvoyance of the present, past and future’. When Jerzy learns that Marta is a meteorologist he remarks that ’it cannot be a serious job because nothing can really be predicted’. When he later asks about her duties at work, Marta answers mysteriously, 'I am a fortune-teller’. ’Good or bad?’ he asks but quickly finds the answer himself and calls her 'a really good fortune-teller’. Maybe when looking at the reflection Marta sees, unknowingly, her future incarnation of a loved woman?

The images and reflections of Marta and the lawyer’s wife which appear so often in the frame are an indication that for both young women the night train journey is also a journey into themselves, a time of reflection on themselves and their life so far. The juxtaposition of both women provides a coherent picture of full femininity. There is another woman to complete this image: the conductress representing still another feminine type: a mature woman. She appears more often in the screenplay than in the film, where she is more interesting, less unambiguous. At the start she seems to be a brusque martinet who allows Jerzy to occupy the compartment only after he pays extra. With time, the warmer side of her personality is revealed. She flirts with the chief guard but then with motherly care she will help a passenger cleanse a wound after the chase of the murderer. In the final scene when she helps Marta pack up, it seems that it was her soothing presence that helped the girl to pull herself together after the short disappointment that Jerzy had caused her. When they are facing the camera and when delicate warm light illuminates their faces, Marta suddenly kisses the conductress heartily.

Marta the Dream Woman

A comparison of all the feminine characters in the film shows that they present different shades of the female psyche. This makes Night Train one of the first Polish psychological films devoted to women and its atmosphere brings to mind the best European films of the genre, like Antonioni’s L’Avventura. Although Kawalerowicz said that he had never been interested in woman as a separate topic, there is no doubt that at least three of his works give evidence of a detailed study of women. The three pictures: The Real End of the Great War, Night Train and Mother Joan of the Angels form a triptych about the power of love, the hardships it brings and the determination of women in love. All three films are linked by the main actress Lucyna Winnicka - the director’s wife and muse. Among the three roles, Marta is particularly interesting. Met in the very familiar setting of a train compartment and with her apparently prosaic problem of unhappy unreciprocated love, she is as authentic and moving as the other two characters. Kawalerowicz showed, maybe for the first time in Polish cinema, that the figure of contemporary woman presented in an everyday banal situation may be interesting and worth exploring. For the author, the woman’s world of inner experiences is more important than her professional or social status or her political views, so seen from this angle she resembles more the young women from western films of the time. Her psychological profile is also not quite identical with the character of the average flesh-and-blood Polish woman of the time. Rather, she is the resultant of who Polish woman was and wanted to be. Following Grażyna Stachówna, she is the epitome of the Polish dream woman of the late 1950s.

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