Le Gros et le maigre (English title: The Fat and the Lean) is a short silent, comic film written and directed by Roman Polanski in 1961. Polanski shot this short film just after graduating from The National Film School in Łódź in 1959; it was made in France and was Polanski's last film before the international breakthrough of his 1962 debut feature, Knife in the Water. The Fat and the Lean features the music of Krzysztof Komeda, who composed the ...
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Le Gros et le maigre (English title: The Fat and the Lean) is a short silent, comic film written and directed by Roman Polanski in 1961. Polanski shot this short film just after graduating from The National Film School in Łódź in 1959; it was made in France and was Polanski's last film before the international breakthrough of his 1962 debut feature, Knife in the Water. The Fat and the Lean features the music of Krzysztof Komeda, who composed the scores for all but one of the director's films between Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) and Rosemary's Baby (1968).
In The Fat and the Lean, Polanski plays a slave playing a flute and beating a drum to entertain his master who rocks in a rocking chair in front of his mansion in the countryside overlooking Paris. The slave wipes his master's brow, feeds him, washes his feet, shades him from the sun with an umbrella, and holds a urinal for him, all the while longing to escape to Paris, which we can see in the distance. A humorous psychological game...
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