Alexei Sayle on Zbigniew Cybulski

From an article on Polish cinema the great man wrote in last Saturday's Guardian:

This charismatic young actor styled his hair in a luxuriant black quiff, wore a leather biker jacket and tinted sunglasses. Later I read that he had to wear them because he'd fought in the Warsaw Uprising – the three month long insurrection against the Nazis – where the guerillas moved about in the sewers, so he couldn't take bright light. Which, even if it wasn't true, was a brilliant excuse to wear shades after dark. 

In Ashes and Diamonds Zbigniew Cybulski not only got to wear an outfit that was completely wrong for the period, but he also got to carry a German 9mm MP 38 submachine gun all the time – which was pretty much my dream. 

There was, too, an air of doomed romanticism around Cybulski, because the year before I came upon him he had, like James Dean, lost his life in an accident. Though unlike the Hollywood star, who was killed at the wheel of his Porsche, Cybulski died in true socialist fashion, running for a train.