The Law and the Fist

Andrzej Kenig arrives in this new part of Poland following his release from a concentration camp. He would like to start a new life here and looks for a job. Eventually he is allowed to join a group of men, led by a ‘Doctor’, who are given the task of ensuring that the goods left behind by the Germans are passed to the new authorities in a proper state so that Polish repatriates from the East can take possession of them. It turns out, however, that Kenig’s comrades, some of them brutalised by the misery of war, regard this as an opportunity to enrich themselves. Kenig has to stand up to them in an unequal battle, reminiscent of High Noon (1952) by Fred Zinnemann. However, the two directors of this Polish Western do not chose ‘high noon’ as its setting, but darkness, in line with the tradition of German Expressionism and films such as Andrzej Wajda’s Kanal (1957).