[Rysopis (Identification Marks: None)] is a surprise. The fact that it was made out of pieces of film that normally are thrown into the trash basket after the professor has seen them shows that Skolimowski did not enter [film] school in order to learn something, but in order to realize a prepared plan and show his maturity. But what is even more important, Skolimowski for the first time presented in Rysopis an almost complete repertory of his way of thinking as well as his repertory of possibilities.

The title of the film suggests an explanation of its content. These are indeed the identification marks of the author: his autoportrait, a description of his daily life, of his love complications, a collection of casual reflections woven by student Leszczyc about himself. Leszczyc was played by Skolimowski himself, and he used the name also in his next film Walkover. It seems to be for Skolimowski a cryptonym used in his autobiography. Because Identification Marks indeed is his autobiography…. [In] a situation when all ideals, programs, and theses fail, documents become significantly meaningful—documents on human philosophies, reactions, impulses—even those that cannot be explained rationally.

Simultaneously, in Identification Marks, and more so in Skolimowski's next film Walkover, a second aspect came up: attempts to discipline these observations and confessions in the confines of social reality—which could be influences from the Czechoslovak film. (p. 30)

Skolimowski maintains in his public statements that he is under the influence of the Czechoslovak film…. [It] constitutes a confession of an almost complete change in orientation. Such a declaration could never have been made, for example, by [Andrzej] Wajda or [Wojciech] Has. Does it find a justification in the films of Skolimowski?

His heroes—the one from Identification Marks as well as those from Walkover or The Barrier—are undoubtedly blood-brothers of their contemporaries from Western films. But they live differently, and face different problems. All of Skolimowski's films are involved with the moment of choice and decision….

[In] Skolimowski's later films the same question arises: to accept or not to accept a society with all its rules and demands. However, the question is not posed in an abstract society—but in an actual Polish reality. The director does not hasten to give an answer. His fullest expression is given in The Barrier. The dominating factor of this film is the fierce polemic with the older generation. The vision of this generation is contained in two images in the film: the anonymous mass of people absurdly stamping in one place, and the mighty choir in ridiculous newspaper-hats, singing an inarticulate, pathetic song. This is how Skolimowski sees the same people whom, not so long ago, Wajda portrayed in the harrowing light of burning barricades. What is he saying? Up to now not much: a feeling of his own individuality, expressed best in a lyrical love, and also his attempts to find a new moral scale. The hero from The Barrier, like the hero from Identification Marks and Walkover, will return to the school he ran away from, and will become a doctor. But what kind of a doctor?…

Skolimowski's creativity testifies to the intricate ways in which the face of the new generation of filmmakers is being formed—ways that lead from "sensitivity" to attempts at independent thinking. (p. 31)