Polish enfant terrible Skolimowski’s sophomore effort picks up the autobiographical thread of his debut feature Identification Marks: None, with the ex-boxer writer/director/star playing Andrzej, an amateur prizefighter who is drifting across the country after finishing his military service, picking up fights where he can. When he meets Teresa (Aleksandra Zawieruszanka), a government engineer in a bleak industrial town, he decides to take off with her rather than turning up for his bout against a much stronger opponent the next day — but in a stultifying Communist society still very much enslaved to the dictates of machismo, even the beck and call of a “man’s duty” is subordinated to the overwhelming ennui of everyday alienation and aimlessness. Echoing the French nouvelle vague in its air of youthful disaffection and intriguing use of formalist devices (Skolimowski’s own poetry is frequently read over top of the action), Walkover heralded a shift towards a more eccentric, individual-oriented cinema within the Soviet bloc during the short-lived period of official leniency in the mid-to-late 1960s. —TIFF Bell Lightbox
Jerzy Skolimowski (born May 5, 1938) is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious Polish Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol (The Menacing Eye). He lived in Los Angeles where he painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and acted occasionally in films. More recently, he began dividing his time between the US and Poland and returned to film making as a writer and director after a 17 year hiatus with Four Nights With Anna (Cztery noce z Anna) in 2008.
–Wikipedia
