Short films

Between 1957 and his feature debut in 1962, Polanski made a number of distinctive short films, most of them at the Lodz Film School.

Murder aka Morderstwo Poland 1957

Teeth Smile aka Usmiech zebiczny Poland 1957

Breaking Up The Ball aka Rozbijemy zabawe Poland 1957

His first completed films reveal that his interest in violence and voyeurism dates from the very start of his career. The context-free Murder shows a man being stabbed while sleeping, Teeth Smile observes a Peeping Tom's discomfiture when the beautiful woman in the bathroom is replaced by her husband, while Breaking Up The Ball records a genuine gatecrashing that the young director set up without the knowledge of the legitimate guests.

The Lamp aka Lampa Poland 1959

Most of his other shorts are absurdist comedies very much in the vein of Beckett, Ionesco and even Buster Keaton, while the fascinating and inexplicably-disowned The Lamp delves into full-blown surrealism with its recurring images of broken and decaying dolls more reminiscent of later work by the animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Svankmajer.

Two Men and a Wardrobe aka Dwa ludzie z szafa Poland 1957

Polanski first came to attention with Two Men and a Wardrobe, made for the 1958 Brussels Experimental Film Festival, where it won third prize. This parable of two men emerging from the sea carrying a large wardrobe was the earliest Polanski film to show unmistakable signs of his talent for unnervingly dislocated imagery (the trompe l'oeil shot of the fish apparently floating in the sky), and Polanski's cameo as a young thug who beats up one of the wardrobe-carriers foreshadows a similarly abrupt and violent scene in Chinatown.

When Angels Fall aka Gdy spadaja anioly Poland 1959

His graduation piece When Angels Fall was much more ambitious, crosscutting between the present-day existence of an elderly lavatory attendant and her rather more colourful past as young lover and victim of war twice over. Until The Pianist over four decades later, this was the only Polanski film that evoked his wartime childhood (underscored by the intriguing decision to play the woman himself in drag when the narrative reaches the Second World War) while the climax, alluded to by the title, contains a rare instance of explicitly religious imagery.

The Fat and the Lean aka Le gros et le maigre France 1961

Mammals aka Ssaki Poland 1962

His last two shorts, The Fat and the Lean and Mammals, return to this theme of the uneasy relationship between decidedly odd male couples in bizarre settings. The first is set by a house on the outskirts of Paris, with Polanski himself playing the 'lean' servant of the indolent 'fat' master in his most explicit physical tribute to silent comedy. Mammals is set in a featureless snow-covered landscape, into which one of the characters disappears at one point in an inspired visual gag.