Bad Luck (Polish: Zezowate szczęście) is a 1960 Polish black comedy film directed by Andrzej Munk. The screenplay is based on Jerzy Stawiński’s novel Six Incarnations of Jan Piszczyk (1959).
Bad Luck was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.
Contents
Plot
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
Bogumił Kobiela – Jan Piszczyk
Maria Ciesielska– Basia
Helena Dąbrowska – Wychówna
Barbara Lass – Jola Wrona-Wrońska (as Barbara Kwiatkowska)
Krystyna Karkowska – Wrona-Wrońska
Barbara Połomska – Zosia Jelonkowa
Irena Stalończyk – Irena Kropaczynska
Tadeusz Bartosik – Wasik
Henryk Bak – Director
Mariusz Dmochowski – UB Officer
Aleksander Dzwonkowski – Cezary Piszczyk
Edward Dziewoński – Jelonek
Tadeusz Janczar – Ens. Sawicki
Stanisław Jaworski – Watchmaker
Andrzej Krasicki – Witold Kropaczyński
Wojciech Lityński – Young Jan Piszczyk
Kazimierz Opaliński – Prison Governor
Jerzy Pichelski – Maj. Wrona-Wronski
Adam Pawlikowski – Ens. Osewski
Witold Sadowy – soldier pretending to be Adolf Hitler
Wojciech Siemion – Józef Kacperski
Maria Kaniewska - Anastazja Makulec
Jan Tadeusz Stanisławski – Chief Scout
Tadeusz Waczkowski – Manager Kozienicki
Sequel
In 1988, the film Citizen Piszczyk was made, directed by Andrzej Kotkowski. Jerzy Stuhr played the main role.