With the Cold War getting hotter, conditions in Poland were worsening. Living in this climate of mistrust and hostility, the students of Lodz in the 1960s displayed a much grimmer view of Polish society than those who came before them. Andrzej Trzos's Following Orders is an alarming film about obedience, conformity, and intimidation, while Krzysztof Wojciechowski's Cut-Rate Apollos, about weightlifters, is a wry, pessimistic look at physical culture behind the Iron Curtain. Marek Piwowski's wicked satires include Overture, "very comic, very sad, about boys being inducted into the army," (Lindsay Anderson); and The Fly Catcher, set in a bar with the feel of Brueghelian sprawl. Beneath the lightness of the humor is a kind of desperate loneliness. His contemporary Grzegorz Krolikiewicz was committed to depicting society's outcasts; his film Everyone Gets What He Doesn't Need is a reflection on death and violence. Those who have come to think of Krzysztof Zanussi's films as cerebral will be surprised by his student work at Lodz. His lighter side can be found in The Cavalryman and the Girl, a throwback to American silent slapstick comedy, while his more ambitious Death of a Provincial is distinguished by its almost Bressonian intensity which brings a young man's conversion into higher relief.