"A man falls out of a rushing train; his body and face are so mutilated that identification is impossible. Yet three people at the scene of the accident--a doctor, a railway official and a young stowaway--are convinced that somehow they had met the deceased previously. Through a series of flashbacks, Kawalerowicz sketches a fascinating portrait of a mysterious wartime Resistance leader, The Shadow, with whom each had had contact; each had also narrowly escaped death when someone among their Resistance comrades had betrayed them. Tightly constructed and crisply photographed, The Shadow moves away from the standard 'partisan film' formulas, with their often simplistic glorification of the anti-fascist struggle, to a more complex, disturbing vision of the Resistance as a moment of total moral and political upheaval." Richard Peña, The Film Center