Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958)
"Dwaj ludzie z szafa" (original title)

Two men come up from the beach carrying a large wardrobe between them. They come up into the town but not only find that accommodation is difficult to come by with their wooden travelling ... See full summary »

Director:

Roman Polanski

Writer:

Roman Polanski (scenario)

Stars:

Jakub Goldberg, Henryk Kluba, Andrzej Kondratiuk

2 wins.

Cast

Cast overview:
Jakub Goldberg	...	Man with the wardrobe
Henryk Kluba	...	Man with the wardrobe (as Henryka Klube)

Storyline

Two men come up from the beach carrying a large wardrobe between them. They come up into the town but not only find that accommodation is difficult to come by with their wooden travelling companion but also that both women and men shun or mistreat them.

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Plot Keywords:

wardrobe | absurdism

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Genres:

Short

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Details

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish

Release Date:

17 March 1961 (Finland)

Also Known As:

Two Men and a Wardrobe

Filming Locations:

Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland

Company Credits

Production Co:

Panstwowa Wyzsza Szkola Filmowa, Telewizyjna i Teatralna (PWSFTviT)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

15 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film won five international film festival awards in Brussels, San Francisco, and Oberhausen.

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Connections

Featured in The Story of Film: An Odyssey: Episode #1.4 (2011)

User Reviews

Really fun surrealist short from Polanski as a 25yr old kid!

Plot outline: two men carrying a wardrobe appear, walking out of the sea. The walk all over town, getting into trouble, being silly, and walking past the odd social atrocity every now and then.

I was surprised when i saw this to learn that Polanski has been around this long. Polanski always seemed to me to exist only in the 70's, when he made that string of cult classics, and downright just great movies, and also when the double tragedy happened to him, of his wife and friends being slayed by the Manson family, and his subsequent being charged for sleeping with a minor, and not surprisingly not being able to face this, after a life filled with tragedy after tragedy (he lived in a ghetto during his childhood, i believe), his finally fleeing the US.

So i was surprised to learn that he had an entire career in Poland before he came to America, the beginning of which was this short, just under eighteen minutes long, which provided an art gallery audience the other week with a rousing good time. He might be pleased to know that the audience were more impressed by his short than with Pabst's Pandora's Box, and to my mind, that's saying something.

Actually, Polanski's short, which came very early in his career, he was only 25, is one of the most fun surrealist shorts i've seen. It has a young person's sense of fun in its absurdity, but also the cynical world view of someone who's been through traumatic events. I'm never quite sure whether proper surrealist art should have a meaning or not, because Dali, a major proponent of such art, often made meaning in his paintings, and there is certainly meaning in the Dali/Bunuel filmic collaborations Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or. Actually, i would hesitate to call this movie more fun than L'Age D'Or, but its definitely lots of fun.

You can see what Roman Polanski looked like in 1958 in this short, since he has a similar cameo to that in chinatown, playing a kid who smashes the hell out of the face of one of the men with the wardrobe.

This has definitely made me want to check out more early Polanski stuff. I hear his first polish feature, Knife in the Water, is fantastic.