'Mammals' is Polanski's tribute to by-gone era

Mammals (1962)
Starring: Henryk Kluba, Michal Zolnierkiewicza, and Voytek Frykowski
Director: Roman Polanski
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Two weirdos (Kluba and Zolnierkiewicza) take turns pulling each other on a sled across a frozen wasteland... until fatigue sets in and tempers start to flare.

"Mammals" was Roman Polanski's final short film before his career as a professional writer/director launched in earnest. Like all his shorts, it is a silent movie, as Polanski reportedly believed that dialogue would distract from important story points in a short film. Unlike the previous ones, this one is a straight-up homage to the comedy shorts of the 1910s and 1920s, with weird characters engaging in even weirder antics for inscrutable reasons.

There really isn't much of a plot here--the film is a string of loosely connected gags, some of which play amusingly with the white-out effect created by filming in black-and-white on a sunlit snowfield--but, like its main characters, the film is constantly in motion and there's not a dull second during its 10-minute running time. As a pastiche/homage to early film comedies, it's excellent... as a short film, I wish there had been a bit more of a through-line to tie the action together.

My desire for a little more story mixed in with the absurdity aside, "Mammals" is another clear demonstration of Polanski's raw talent for filmmaking, one which he would hone to unquestionable greatness as the decades progressed. (It's too bad he seems to be a terrible human being.)

Take a look at "Mammals" by clicking below. Feel free to let me and world know your take on it in the comments section.