Salto is a film drama by written and directed by Polish director Tadeusz Konwicki

Tadeusz Konwicki

Tadeusz Konwicki is a Polish writer and film director, a member of the Polish Language Council.-Life:Konwicki was born in 1926 in Nowa Wilejka near Wilno, where he spent his early childhood. He spent his adolescence in Wilno, attending a local gymnasium...

. It was released on 11 June 1965 in Poland. The director of photography is Kurt Weber

Kurt Weber

Kurt Weber is a cinematographer active from the 1950s to the 1980s in Poland and West Germany. He did the cinematography for comedies and drama films...

 and the music was by Wojciech Kilar

Wojciech Kilar

Wojciech Kilar ; b. 17 July 1932 in Lwów, Poland) is a Polish classical and film music composer.-Biography:Wojciech Kilar is one of Poland’s esteemed composers. Born in 1932 in Lwów . His father was a gynecologist and his mother was a theater actress...

. The title can be translated as "somersault" in English, or it can be seen as a reference to a rhythmic dance movement. The film received an Honorary Diploma at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, 1967.

Plot

The film tells the story of a man who jumps off a train into a sparsely populated town. He is "a crazy guy who drops into a kind of ghost town and tells various cockamamie stories, and the citizens aren't sure if they remember him or not" . The crazy man "claims to have hidden in this town during the war", and he confronts a number of people, being "alternately hostile, tender, understanding, accusing, cowering, [and] passive-aggressive"; but the townspeople do not seem to remember him.

Style

The film is "mostly a lot of curious confrontations, both intellectual and earthy, conveyed in a fluid camera style with disorienting transitions" . The film uses a "graceful combination of fluid camera work within each scene and disorienting jump cuts between scenes, which give the whole thing its dreamlike

Oneiric (film theory)

In a film theory context, the term oneiric refers to the depiction of dream-like states in films, or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state to analyze a film. The connection between dreams and films has been long established; "The dream factory" “...has become a household...

 flow". The film depicts a Poland which is "irrevocably haunted" by war. In the film, the "memories of a wartime execution are no longer flashbacks but appear as a series of nightmarish dreams, edging closer and closer to reality"; the film is "a commentary on the complex fate of his generation".

Cast

• Zbigniew Cybulski
  Zbigniew Cybulski
  Zbigniew Cybulski was a Polish actor, one of the best-known and most popular personalities of the post-World War II history of Poland.-Life:...
  
  as Karol Kowalski vel Malinowski
• Gustaw Holoubek as the Host
• Marta Lipinska as Helena
• Irena Laskowska as Cecylia
• Wojciech Siemion as the Artist
• Wlodzimierz Borunski as Blumenfeld
• Andrzej Lapicki as Pietuch
• Jerzy Block in the role of the Old man
• Zdzislaw Maklakiewicz as Rotmistrz
• Iga Cembrzynska

Music

The score by Wojciech Kilar includes a "stately, delicate piano piece" during the opening credits. While there is "no background music during the film", the climax of the story depicts a town festival at which a "small band of piano, drums, double-bass, guitar, clarinet and trumpet" plays a "beautiful waltz" and the "title dance, the salto", which has a "driving rhythm".