Masterpieces of Polish Cinema - Night Train

A noirish psychological study and a hazily expressionistic tale of solitude, Night Train brings together two lonesome voyagers on an overnight train journey to the Baltic coast worthy of Hitchcock. Around them, a microcosm of the human experience plays out in the speeding railcars’ shadowy, cramped quarters: a coquette, bored with her older husband, attempts to seduce every available man; a former prisoner of a concentration camp fights his insomnia; and a stowaway (Zbigniew Cybulski) seeks his beloved. Is a runaway murderer in their midst? The local police think as much and when they board at a way station, everything changes. An artistic work of great subtlety that climaxes with a tense manhunt through the misty countryside, Night Train is a breakthrough by writer-director Jerzy Kawalerowicz.

1959, 99 minutes, black and white, DCP | Written by Jerzy Lutowski, Jerzy Kawalerowicz; directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz; with Lucyna Winnicka, Leon Niemczyk, Teresa Szmigielówna, Zbigniew Cybulski, Helena Dabrowska.