Andrzej Munk’s cinema of internalized exile (1957--1961)

Abstract

This thesis defines Andrzej Munk's feature films as a cinema of internalized exile by conducting a stylistic analysis of Man on the Tracks (1957), Eroica, (1958), Bad Luck (1960), and Passenger (1961). I extend Melinda Szaloky's use of the concept of internal exile in her thematic analysis of postwar Hungarian orphan films and discuss Munk's tight and claustrophobic cinema using Hamid Naficy's concept of the "closed cinematic form." I argue first, Munk's cinema is one of internalized exile, because his mise-en-scene expresses the characters' isolation, anxiety, and feelings of homelessness because of the burden of nationalism, and second because Munk's characters find no agency from international spaces due to limited mobility imposed by the state and exclusion from the international community.