Projecting the Archive: No Way Back

Osiecki was a Polish documentarist and his sole British fiction film, produced by Derrick de Marney, is a venture into the post-war spiv cycle with Terence de Marney as a washed-up boxer lured into crime by his former sweetheart. A gratifyingly downbeat ending in a warehouse shoot-out breathes an air of poetic realism into the lowlife milieu.

Plus The White Eagle (UK 1941, dir Eugene Cekalski, 25min), an Oscar-nominated documentary, produced by de Marney, giving impressions of the Polish community in exile in Britain.

Introduced by Nigel Algar (BFI National Archive)