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
Original Polish poster
Zezowate szczęście
Directed byAndrzej Munk
Written byJerzy Stefan Stawiński
StarringBogumił Kobiela
CinematographyJerzy Lipman
Krzysztof Winiewicz
Edited byJadwiga Zajiček
Production
companies
Release date
  • May 1960 (1960-05)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryPoland
LanguagePolish

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

Plot

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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

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Sequel

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

References

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  1. ^ Niemitz, 2014: “tragicomedy…”
  2. ^ Zelman, 2013: “The tragi-comedy Bad Luck (Zezowate szczęście, 1960)..."
  3. ^ 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.”
  4. ^ 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.”
  5. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Bad Luck". festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 2009-02-19.

Sources

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