Overview
“Night Train (Pociąg)” is a 1959 polish film with an ensemble cast, set in a night train. Directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, who is known for his “Mother Joan of the Angels” (1961). 94 minutes.
Plot
A man named Jerzy (Leon Niemczyk) boards an overnight train from Warsaw to Hel, the Baltic resort, without a ticket.
He buys a ticket from a conductress on the train, but he is forced to share a compartment with a young woman named Marta (Lucyna Winnicka).
Marta has just broken up with her boyfriend Staszek (Zbigniew Cybulski), and Staszek is also on another car of the same train, following Marta.
A variety of people rides on the train: a couple just married, an old priest and a young Father, a lawyer and his wife, and an insomniac man.
At midnight, cops get on the train in search of a murderer on the lam, and they suspect Jerzy as the culprit.
Commentary
The setting of the film is similar to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938). The film contains the elements of mystery/thriller and melodrama. It can be enjoyed as a drama about a one-night encounter between the people who happened to ride a train together.
The jazz theme featuring female scat is an arrangement of the standard number “Moonray” composed by American clarinetist/composer/bandleader Artie Shaw.
