If you’re looking for the best in Polish cinema, start with the movies of acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda. His films – The Promised Land; The Maids of Wilko; Man of Iron; Katyn – all were nominated for Best International Film Oscars.

There’s also Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida; Cold War), Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water, his debut Polish-language film before he directed classics like Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby), and Krzysztof Kieślowski (the Three Colours trilogy: Blue; White; Red). All should challenge the mind and make for an entertaining evening. Just don’t focus on Gerard Zalewski, the director behind the numbingly boring, made-for-television 1976 Polish billiards film Zielone – minione…, which translates to Green, Bygone…

Ploddingly paced and reeking of overacting, the movie follows a young landowner who returns home to handle a large inheritance. While home, he becomes fascinated by billiards and gambling at the local men’s club. His overconfidence and foolhardy attitude quickly produce a severe gambling addiction and, more problematically, a sizable financial debt owed to some of the local plutocrats. His bad luck and mounting obligations eventually lead to a tragic, though hardly shocking, denouement. Let’s just say when I wasn’t dozing off from boredom, I was annoyingly distracted by the close-ups of the large beads of sweat that seemed permanently grafted to the young landowner’s anxious countenance.

Though Green, Bygone… is plagued with problems, including its clunky and instantly forgettable title in Polish and English, there are two specific aspects that make the film noteworthy.

First, the billiards. For a 65-minute film, there is a surprising amount of billiards on the screen – specifically, Straight Pyramid, a version of Russian billiards that is popular across Russia and several former Eastern Bloc countries, including Poland. In Straight Pyramid, any ball may be used as the cue ball. Players can pocket the ball they struck if it hits another ball first, with the goal being to carom the struck ball off one or more other balls into a pocket. Each frame continues until 14 balls are pocketed, similar to Straight Pool; these 14 balls are then re-spotted into an incomplete pyramid.

The billiards sequences are hardly energetic – certainly you’re better off tuning into Mariusz Skoneczny winning the EEBC Pyramid Tour – but at least it’s exposure for a variant of billiards that is rather uncommon on the screen. (Other examples include the movie Klassik and “The Game Must Go On” episode of the animated series Kikioriki.)

Second, and far more surprising, it’s one of the few billiards films that is adapted from the fiction of a famous author – in this case, the 1855 short story “Notes of a Billiard-Marker” (or “Recollections of a Billiard-Marker”) by Leo Tolstoy. In Tolstoy’s original story, a billiard marker (the person who keeps score and manages the table at a gambling hall) does the narrating, but otherwise, it’s a pretty loyal adaptation. Unfortunately, the powerful themes on display in Tolstoy’s story – the combination of overwhelming guilt, social ruin, and financial loss leading to despair and suicide – get both watered down and over-dramatized in Green, Bygone…

Whether Tolstoy’s story would have fared better under more capable or better-financed directorial hands is hard to know, but borrowing from one of the most influential writers in history gives Green, Bygone… at least a scintilla of respect.

Of course, The Hustler is the most successful and recognized billiards film adapted from a literary work, but the author Walter Tevis is hardly a heavyweight like Tolstoy. Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Billiard Ball” was adapted into a short film (The Billiard Ball), but that was by two students from the University of Akron. Billiards at Half Past Nine, the German novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Böll, exists as a film, but let’s face it, this is a #fakebilliardsmovie, not exactly about the sport. To my knowledge, neither Alphonse Daudet’s “A Game of Billiards” nor Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” has made its way to the silver screen. And, sadly, last I checked, none of the books on my Top 10 Wishlist of Billiards Screenplay Adaptations has been greenlit, or even optioned.