A door handle and its striker plate line up into the shape of a cross before anyone steps through it — A Murderer opens on an image, not a face.
What is A Murderer about?
The frame lingers first on hardware: a door handle and the striker plate beside it, angled so the two together form a cross. Only then does the door swing open, and a figure in a dark trench coat steps into the room. The visitor crosses toward a bed where a shirtless man lies sleeping, unaware of the presence closing in on him. The short cuts off at that point of approach, holding on the threat implied by the coat, the stillness of the sleeper and the geometry of that opening shot rather than showing what happens next. Nothing about the visitor's identity or intent is spelled out in words; the crime genre framing does all of the work through composition and pace alone, in a runtime too brief for a single line of dialogue.
About the cast
No performers are formally credited for this short.
Context & significance
A Murderer is a Polish production directed by Roman Polanski, built in the crime genre around a single suspenseful approach rather than an investigation or resolution. Its extremely brief runtime places it alongside a small cluster of very short films from the same period and country that treat menace as a matter of image and timing, favoring a held shot and a deliberate camera angle over exposition or a spoken setup.
Watching A Murderer on Ktime
A Murderer streams on K-Time with a free account login, sitting among a broader catalogue of short and feature-length international cinema assembled for the Farsi-speaking audience. No plan or price is needed to browse this page, only a signed-in account to start playback.