Lampa is a student film that Roman Polanski has somewhat disowned on grounds he hasn’t chosen to reveal. It is nonetheless one of his most haunting works—and a clear influence on Steven Soderbergh’s best film, Bubble (2006).
The title refers to the kerosene lamp by which a toymaker meticulously works in his shop, which is populated by dolls and doll parts, one with a conspicuously broken face, and punctuated by the sound of a cuckoo clock. There’s no dialogue; Polanski draws us into a silent world where the toymaker, or Polanski, or we could be dreaming. It is somebody’s chilling nightmare—likely, friend Mindy Aloff suggests, a metaphor for Polanski’s wartime experiences.
We peer into the empty head of one of the dolls, into which the toymaker deposits something with tweezers. When he restores the doll’s hair, we are surprised to discover that the doll is a girl-doll. The camera’s eerie perusal of the dolls helps draw us into a sense of their being alive. This becomes especially true after the toymaker departs and shutters the shop. No longer does his presence compete for our attention. We are riveted to the dolls, perhaps ferreting out any sign of life.
Fire breaks out. We recall a cigarette with which the toymaker may have been careless. But what we see makes the origin of the fire impossible to determine. It seems to just happen. The incineration of the dolls is a horrible thing to contemplate.
Just as the camera had entered through sidewalk and road traffic at the beginning, it now withdraws without showing the ultimate horror. Therefore, we must contemplate the outcome. Although we glimpse consuming fire through slats, the people walking in either direction notice nothing. They don’t look. Perhaps they dare not look.
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Dennis Grunes 