Don’t expect Strangers on a Train (1951). While it may only graze the boundaries of film noir, Jerzy Kawalerowicz’ visionary Pociag (US: Night Train), widely hailed as a masterpiece, is still Poland’s most likely entrance into the noir cycle. Taking place almost entirely on an overnight train ride to the Baltic Sea, and containing far more psychological tension than physical action, the film stars Lucyna Winnicka and Leon Niemczyk as Marta and Jerzy, two emotionally troubled travelers who find themselves accidentally sharing a compartment on the same train on which a murderer is hiding. As revelations are made and conflicts arise, we soon begin to wonder if the murderer is Jerzy, and so do the police who board in the middle of the night. The sophistication of Kawalerowicz’ direction is awe-inspiring: while it’s not the climax of the film, a stunning sequence in which the supposed murderer escapes from the train and is chased by a mob into a foggy graveyard on a hill is an otherworldly viewing experience, shot like it’s the unification of heaven and hell. Despite the cool, breezy jazz score, it’s almost impossible to watch this crowded Polish train and not think of Nazi concentration camps, the terminus of so many crowded Polish trains during World War II only 15 years earlier. Polish superstar Zbigniew Cybulski, who starred in what many consider Poland’s greatest film, Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds (1958), plays Marta’s obsessive ex-boyfriend who boards the train with the goal of winning her back.