In terms of conception and execution, Railway Junction is clearly part of the group that also includes the previous year’s The Musicians and People on the Road. Once again, there’s an abiding concern with presenting the lives of working people, though this time there’s no distracting element of musical or acrobatic glamour: these men not only work night shifts at a railway junction but, as the bookending commentary highlights at the start, a freight junction at Tarnowskie Góry that ordinary commuters will never see in action.

The opening shots would grace anything in British Transport Films’ acclaimed output - there’s something ineffably magnificent about low-angle shots of steam trains belching white clouds of smoke across the screen. But most of the film is set behind the scenes as the railway marshallers and dispatchers get to work, with much of the running time taken up with a montage of men and mouthpieces as they bark elaborate instructions over the phone and tannoy.

Just as The Musicians had made use of important lighting innovations, so Railway Junction makes similar advances in sound. According to Mikołaj Jazdon’s notes accompanying PWA’s DVD release, this film was a major breakthrough for Karabasz and his team, because he had access to much smaller and lighter recording equipment, with the result that, in the director’s words, “it became incomparably easier to capture the daily speech and portray people’s individual mannerisms, temperatures and personalities, locked in words, pauses, hesitations, failures, etc.” It’s clear by comparing this film with its predecessors that not only is there much more directly synchronised sound, but it’s also processed and edited in a much more ambitious and creative way.

Although the film is ostensibly less tuneful than its two predecessors, Karabasz nonetheless contrives to create something that sounds convincingly like a musical piece out of the sounds of the dispatch desk, the rhythmical picture and sound editing (courtesy of Lidia Zonn, the director’s wife) becoming strangely hypnotic. We’re never shown the outcome of these increasingly complex requests, or have more than the faintest idea of what they actually mean, but that’s not these men’s concern: their job is to make sure that things run smoothly in that particular time and place. It’s a snapshot of experienced professionals on the job, and it would be unseemly to interfere with their work.

Muzykanci - Karabasz (1960)

A film about a single rehearsal of an amateur brass band made up of Warsaw tram drivers.

To give you an example of how far Polish documentaries came in the five years since the very first black series films, I’m going to end this talk with a complete screening of Kazimierz Karabasz’ The Musicians, a film that is to Polish documentary what Night Mail or A Diary for Timothy are to its British counterpart: both a benchmark and an inspiration. It’s also had a modicum of international recognition thanks to the support of two of Karabasz’ most distinguished pupils. When invited to vote in Sight & Sound’s 1992 poll of the best films ever made, Krzysztof Kieślowski polemically included The Musicians alongside the likes of Citizen Kane and La Strada.

Karabasz’ other protégé, Marcel Łoziński, who also went on to become one of Poland’s greatest documentary-makers, also singled out The Musicians when asked to pick his favourite documentary by the Danish magazine Dox. He said “There are films in which there appears to be nothing, yet it turns out there is everything. There are films, in which it seems there is everything, and yet there is nothing. And very rarely, one encounters films in which there is everything, and it truly means everything. I first watched The Musicians when I was 20 - and I experienced a strange feeling that I had seen something that was not on the screen at all. I could see those people from the tram-drivers’ orchestra in their homes and I could clearly see their wives; I could hear what they were talking about, what they were worried about, what they were laughing at. I could see their flats, windowless kitchens and feathery beds; I could see what pictures were hanging on their walls, see their grandchildren doing their homework and see their Sunday dinners. I could even hear the noise of their neighbours. After that I watched The Musicians numerous times - and the feeling remained. I could always see and hear much more than there really was on the screen. Because on the screen it was merely an orchestra rehearsal and some faces - nothing more. But it was that ‘nothing’ that meant everything to me. And it is still the same today.”