Żuławski’s first film is a bewildering but brilliant mash-up. Set in wartime Poland, it combines the quest for a cure for typhus, which involves putting infected fleas in matchboxes to bite the skin of volunteers, with the Gestapo hunt for Michal, the charismatic lead. Żuławski’s camera darts around like a cat on a hot tin roof whilst the plot moves forward like one of the film’s jumping fleas, frequently hiding in remote corners before leaping into the light. Zuławski narrative uses leaps in time to wilfully disorientate and confuse the viewer. Michal’s wife and child are murdered by the invaders at the start of the film, and Michal’s dead son haunts him as he helps a woman who looks just like his dead wife give birth. The idea of the double permeates the film, lending it an existential flavour to go with the bio-thriller elements. It’s a film that feels at once modern and baffling, the work of a mad scientist, a visionary or an idiot. But what can also be said, without doubt, is that it’s a film that’s aggressively original. The same could of course be said for much of Polish cinema that emerged out of the communist era: a cinema perhaps compelled by censorship to say things in cryptic tongues, to hide meaning in suitcases or coffins, to use the camera to disorientate as much as it clarifies, throwing the dogs off the scent, allowing its secret messages to slip through the net.
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