Le gros et le maigre

may surprise those who know him best from Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist that several of Roman Polanski's early short features took the form of silent comedies, reminiscent of Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Jacques Tati. The main difference to traditional silent comedies was that Polanski's were wacky and surreal, but not very funny. This is the exception.

The Fat Man and the Thin Man (or The Fat and the Lean; there are several English translations) is one of a small number of Polanski's films to star Roman himself, and this implies it's a more personal work. He actually has quite a flair for this, and with his skinny, gangly body and innocent face could probably have made a career in slapstick had he wanted to.

Of all his shorts this is also the most open attack on the Polish regime, in particular the way Polanski felt at that point after being censored and generally messed around by both his film school and the state due to his seemingly subversive student films. Here Polanski is literally playing and performing to somebody else's tune, humiliating himself in the process. Add in to the mix that this film is also about wanting to escape, and you have a fairly clear idea of what Polanski was trying to say here.

And The Fat Man and the Thin Man is genuinely funny too. We see Polanski performing various degrading tasks for his master, and then on the second day attempting them all whilst chained to a goat (yes, it is still fairly bizarre) and, on the third day, doing them all in a joyful, exaggerated manner now that he has been unchained again.

Alongside When Angels Fall (which it could hardly be more unlike), this is easily the most entertaining of Polanski's shorts

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