Ryszard Pracz
The main character, nicknamed "Teddy Bear" by his friends and acquaintances, is a manager of a sports club in Poland. One day he is detained at the border just as his sport team is off to a tournament. It appears that somebody has torn out a few pages from his passport. It occurs to him that perhaps his ex-wife has done it in order to get her hands on their joint account in a London bank. Therefore, he has to get to London as soon as possible in order to transfer the money to a different bank. The solution is taking part in a movie, made by his friend. The script requires a double role, thus the search for another actor is announced. The double has to apply for the passport, and that is solved through a girlfriend who agrees to play the dope's new fiancée. At the engagement party he is slipped a drug, and Teddy Bear runs off to the airport with the false passport. On the plane, however, he meets his ex-wife...
The young couple love each other. The boy is in constant work which will fit him, and in the end becomes a petty thief who cannot pay his debts anymore and decides to steal from homes where he pays scheduled visits to lonely housewifes. The girl works a nurse but is too sensitive in extreme cases. Running parallel to their story is a metaphor involving a castaway on a junkyard, who tries every means possible to get rid of the dog which becomes attached to him. In the end he attaches sticks of dynamite to the dog, but he breaks loose and the explosion wipes them both.
Wlodek is a young man stuck in a dead-end job at the local library who lives with his harridan wife and critical in-laws in a small apartment. When Wlodek draws the interest of a library patron, the beautiful young woman encourages him to strive for better things in his life and professional career. Together, the two take off for a three-day affair, but surprises could await Wlodek upon his return home.
Sampson is one of several Andrzej Wajda films harking back to his youth during the Nazi Occupation of Poland. Many of these concern not only the struggle between good and evil, but also between passive and impassive. The hero is a Jewish youth. He, like his family, has always been silent and undemonstrative in the face of prejudice. Now he stands up for his right to survive, and in so doing represents the fighting spirit that culminated in the 1943 Warsaw Uprising. It was originally titled Samson, but re-spelled as Sampson upon its American release to avoid confusion with a sword-and-sandal epic of the same name.
