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The silence is that kept by an old priest. The film is set in a small Polish town suffering ibe immediate privations of the aftermath of the war. A rebellious young teenager taunts and abuses the old priest: then, the following day, has an accident. The village people turn against him in their superstitious belief that it is God's direct punishment for his irreverent behaviour towards the priest. The old priest neither defends nor accuses the boy, he refuses to disclose the origins of the feud between them, which obviously hark back to earlier days — he keeps his secret.
This stark siory is a complex picture of Polish small town life immediately after the war, with broad overtones of the harshness of man to man and corrosive effects of hoarded grudges. Yet, to the very end, we are not clear about the reasons which keep the old priest's lips sealed — true to the latest trends in Polish films, the picture is haunting and ambiguous, yet leaving one with a deeper understanding of the complexities of man.