As part of Freeline Media’s ongoing Movie Talk series on Cinema, editor Michael Freeman takes a look back at an obscure absurdist short by Roman Polanski that contains many of the themes that became prominent in his feature films.

ORLANDO — Roman Polanski’s absurdist short The Fat And The Lean was made in France in 1961, after the director had been allowed to leave Poland to visit Paris, the city where he was born in 1933. Polanski would soon return to Poland to make the short Mammals and then his first feature, Knife In The Water, and wouldn’t make another film in Paris until The Tenant in 1976.

Ironically, Polanski, a Holocaust survivor, had the lead in The Fat And The Lean and The Tenant, and played a similar character in both: a timid, shy, nervous man who gets emotionally and psychically abused by those around him. While The Tenant is now widely acclaimed as one of the director’s best films, The Fat And The Lean remains one of his most obscure. But the roots of so many later Polanski films, from Cul De Sac to The Pianist, are there in this 13-minute short.

It’s also a film that has been open to multiple interpretations over the years.

What is the short film The Fat And The Lean?

Released in France as Le Gros et le maigre, it’s a silent short comedy that Polanski wrote, directed and starred in, along with André Katelbach as his abusive master — and a goat. Polish jazz composer Krzysztof Komeda provided the score. Polanski made the film just a few years after graduating from The Łódź Film School in 1959.

The plot is a simple one. A submissive servant works hard to please his demanding master, who mostly sits outside his home in a rocking chair while expecting his slave to prepare and serve his meals, bring him well lit cigars, even hold a urinal for him so the master doesn’t have to leave his chair. The master also demands that the servant find ways to entertain him; the servant responds with pantomime, dance routines, and playing the drums. The work is exhausting, and when the servant observes the city of Paris off in the distance, he recognizes it as a place where he can escape his miserable existence.

But when the servant tries to flee, his master offers him a bribe: his own goat. The servant is overjoyed — until the goat causes trouble that includes trying repeatedly to escape, so his master chains the goat to his slave’s ankle. When this makes it even harder for the slave to perform his duties, he tries to escape again — but the master offers to remove the chain if he stays. The slave, overjoyed to be free of the meddlesome goat, now attends to his master’s needs with even more vigor and enthusiasm.

Simple plot — but the comical ending with the slave serving his master in rapid- fire, I must please at all costs motion, is a devastating one, suggesting that social conformity and enslavement to rigid rules and customs can become a “safe” routine for those who lack the willpower or courage to liberate themselves.

How to Interpret The Fat And The Lean?

The short has been interpreted by some critics as an ode to absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett. The influence of the Theatre Of The Absurd was prominent in early Polanski shorts such as this one, Two Men And A Wardrobe and Mammals, and it’s known that Polanski greatly admired a 1957 Polish production of Waiting For Godot; some critics see the master-slave relationship in The Fat And The Lean as a nod to the similar one between Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting For Godot. Polanski and Beckett shared a cynical, nihilistic view that man is in a meaningless universe where tragedy awaits.

Other critics view Polanski’s short as a salute to early silent comedy. Polanski’s servant appears to mirror the antics of Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, while the abusive relationship between Polanski’s servant and master can also be viewed as a more sadomasochistic version of early Laurel & Hardy, of the fat man abusing the skinny one.

The references to early silent movies or to Theatre of the Absurd are visible in this short, but other critics have analyzed it in political terms. Polanski has described his life in Soviet-dominated Poland as one where Communist officials stripped citizens of as many freedoms as possible, everything from using their own Polish currency to banning Jazz music. Only Poles who were members of the Communist Party (and Polanski wasn’t) could get added freedoms, the director noted in his 1985 autobiography, Roman By Polanski. Some critics saw Fat And The Lean as a metaphor for Polanski’s desire to escape Poland permanently, with his servant increasingly eager to avoid the commands of the master, a stand-in for the Soviet government.

What Does Fat And The Lean say about Artists?

But it’s also important to keep in mind that Polanski’s servant is also an artist, and one who must perform to survive. This fits in with the view that Fat And The Lean is a political statement about the stifling artistic censorship imposed by the Communist Party, which wasn’t interested in any film, book or play that didn’t serve to glorify the party’s image and propaganda machine.

But what if the target of Polanski’s attack isn’t just the Soviets, but something else entirely: his audience?

Throughout the film, the master demands that his servant find ways to keep him entertained at all costs — not dissimilar to what movie audiences expect when they demand diversions from filmmakers like Polanski. The more demanding the audience becomes to have their cinematic pleasures met, the harder artists work to satisfy them. So, are the needs of the artist and their audience inherently antagonistic? Do audiences demand more than artists (filmmakers) can deliver, and is it crushing for artists to work hard so charm, only to find audiences sourly expecting more?

One of the most appealing aspects of The Fat And The Lean is just how many different ways this parable can be construed: as a political metaphor, a commentary on the nature of creating art, or a salute to the historic traditions of silent cinema. The short film’s pure and minimalist plot is ideal for finding different ways of explaining or assigning meaning to it.

The Fat And The Lean also fits the pattern of many of Polanski’s later feature films — Cul De Sac, The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Tenant, and Bitter Moon among them — that shift from dark or absurdist comedy to devastating tragedy. This short film is a gem worth discovering.

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Michael Freeman is an Orlando journalist, playwright and author of the terrifying book “Bloody Rabbit”. Contact him at Freelineorlando@gmail.com.

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