The film tells the story of a man who jumps off a train into a sparsely populated town. He is "a crazy guy who drops into a kind of ghost town and tells various cockamamie stories, and the citizens aren't sure if they remember him or not".^[2] The crazy man "claims to have hidden in this town during the war", and he confronts a number of people, being "alternately hostile, tender, understanding, accusing, cowering, [and] passive-aggressive"; but the townspeople do not seem to remember him.^[3]

The film is "mostly a lot of curious confrontations, both intellectual and earthy, conveyed in a fluid camera style with disorienting transitions".^[4] The film uses a "graceful combination of fluid camera work within each scene and disorienting jump cuts between scenes, which give the whole thing its dreamlike flow". The film depicts a Poland which is "irrevocably haunted" by war. In the film, the "memories of a wartime execution are no longer flashbacks but appear as a series of nightmarish dreams, edging closer and closer to reality". The film is "a commentary on the complex fate of his generation".^[5] It has been described as Kafkaesque.^[6]

• Zbigniew Cybulski as Karol Kowalski vel Malinowski
• Gustaw Holoubek as the Host
• Marta Lipińska as Helena
• Irena Laskowska as Cecylia
• Wojciech Siemion as the Artist
• Włodzimierz Boruński as Blumenfeld
• Andrzej Łapicki as Pietuch
• Jerzy Block in the role of the Old man
• Zdzisław Maklakiewicz as Rotmistrz
• Iga Cembrzyńska

The score by Wojciech Kilar includes a "stately, delicate piano piece" during the opening credits. While there is "no background music during the film", the climax of the story depicts a town festival at which a "small band of piano, drums, double-bass, guitar, clarinet and trumpet" plays a "beautiful waltz" and the "title dance, the salto", which has a "driving rhythm".^[7]

• Salto at IMDb