Made in 1982, shelved for five years. Story opens with Lucja Krol's husband under the tram. She gives birth to her fourth son on the floor of their new apartment. Neighbor Wiktor, a communist intellectual, befriends the poverty-stricken family but is soon arrested and sent to jail. During the war Lucja narrowly escapes a Nazi roundup at the black market. Her sons hold ardent Communist meetings in their apartment, with her blessing. Lucja works hard, but without complaint. After the war, Klemens is inexplicably arrested, accused by the new regime of being a collaborator. Wiktor, now a high-ranking party member, trying to defend him, himself falls into disgrace. Klemens is tortured to "confess" and dies in jail, a Communist to the end. Lucja is never told about his fate.
A well-known professor of medicine finding himself at the threshold of autumn of his life, takes stock of his achievements and experiences. "In the end it ends with what has been known for a long time: that conscious life without a fixed worldview is not life, but torment, horror. - wrote Anton Chekhov in one of his letters summarizing "An Uninteresting Story". The protagonist, Professor Nikolai Stepanovich, is a character characteristic of Chekhov's entire oeuvre - a Russian intellectual from the late nineteenth century, depressed by boredom and a sense of his own uselessness and the meaninglessness of his existence.
The film deals with the a clandestine Olympiade held in a German POW camp during WW II, housing many Poles, but also French and Brits. A spit and a Polish German lieutenant is added to the staff of a prison camp. He sees a Pole, the acknowledged leader of the Polish prisoners, against whom he had competed during the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He asks the Pole to train with him but is refused; the Pole points out out that he is a prisoner and nothing more. But that plants the seed and the Pole proposes and Olympics 40 to be held among the prisoners. They ingeniously make a flag and medals, set up a number of races; a croaching hop race is unwittingly organized by a German prison guard who uses it as a torture. The German lieutenant knows that something is going on but cannot find out. Finally the Germans realize the idea and the Polish chief is sent to concentration camp but the others disobey the orders.
