Margaret Barton-Fumo has put together the most illuminating Andrzej Zulawski interview since the US press finally started writing about his work in a major way of any kind beyond Possession. In the Film Comment interview a wide range of interesting aspects of Zulawski's work are discussed with brutal honesty by Zulawski marked by subtle observations and parallels made by Barton-Fumo. Most directly connected to the first ever complete Zulawski US retrospective that is now underway is the topic of Zulawski not attending BAM for the opening night screening and the reasons behind that decision. Initially, it was reported that Zulawski would not attend due to health reasons. That in fact turns out not to be the case at all:
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Margaret Barton-Fumo: I’m curious to hear what you think of this retrospective of your films that’s going to be here in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The title of the retrospective, it’s very catchy, but it’s called “Hysterical Excess”—
Andrzej Zulawski: Do you want me to tell you the truth?
Barton-Fumo: Yes.
Zulawski: This is the exact reason I am here in Warsaw and not in New York. I hated it so profoundly, it sounded so base—and I thank you for asking. On the other hand, I understand that these nice good people want to have something catchy. But I’m totally, totally aghast. I’m against this, and this is the reason I never came.
Barton-Fumo: Thank you for your honesty.
Zulawski: [Laughs] My only vice is honesty.
Barton-Fumo: I wanted to ask about it, because one can trace the thinking behind the title. You can see how someone might look at your films and come up with that title, but if you pick it apart, “hysteria” is a word that is commonly associated with Freud and his misinterpretation—
Zulawski: —with women—
Barton-Fumo: Exactly. And “excess” is a word that might be reductive as a summary of your work.
Zulawski: Thank you. I’m glad you think so. Look, I’m so easily bored with cinema. It’s not because I don’t appreciate the effort, the acting, the script writing, or whatever. But most of it is so predictable, after five minutes I know exactly the pattern, the flow, how it will turn out. That’s perfectly all right, why not? But what these people call hysteria is, I guess, a will to provoke a certain kind of awareness, nervousness, open-eyed-ness, I don’t know what to call it. And actors who will reflect a hope on the audience. They won’t be bored. But this clinical term “hysteria” is very hurtful to me.
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It is most unfortunate, though wholly understandable, that Zulawski's feelings are hurt by this marketing choice. As I stated in my last post (prior to the published Film Comment interview), Zulawski does have a long history with the word 'hysterical' being constantly applied in English speaking commentary with respect to his work. Zulawski has clearly never been pleased with that connotation or interpretation, and he most definitely does not agree with 'hysterical' labeling the overarching theme found within his work. The whole interview can be read here and serves as a great partial window into Zulawski's mind and art:
http://www.filmlinc.com/blog/entry/film-comment-interview-andrzej-zulawski
The Third Part of the Night is Zulawski's hallucinatory, apocalyptic, and masterful debut feature film. It is one of the rare debut films in the history of cinema that serves as a distillation of a director's core components. Zulawski's ongoing fascination with the human experience, his signature stylistic form, and a penetrating gaze into a range of emotions are explored minutely from the beginning until the end of this circular film. Zulawski effortlessly taps into a fragmented nightmare world that is all the more frightening given that the surrealistic story that unfolds is based on actual events through which Zulawski's father lived during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Zulawski wrote the screenplay with his father, Miroslaw Zulawski, who was a noted poet.
This fever dream of a film can arguably be broken down into the images seen by one man, lost inside of his mind during his final moments of life. Passages from the Book of Revelation are read aloud by actress Malgorzata Braunek, Zulawski's first wife and mother of their now film-maker son, Xawery Zulawski. Braunek plays the wife Helena while Leszek Telszynski plays the husband Michal. German soldiers furiously and suddenly appear after a series of nature shots play out over the opening titles. The electric rhythm of the film is immediately established. Helena and their young child are violently killed. This opening scene haunts the rest of the film as Michal's sense of reality becomes progressively more distorted and dreamlike. It is a war story unlike any other.
Michal flees the murder scene only to encounter a pregnant woman who bears an unmistakable resemblance to his now deceased wife. An uncanny relationship develops with this woman. Meanwhile, Michal reports to a medical center where strange lice-feeding experiments for vaccination occur. Taking part in the lice-feeding experiments helps Michal to escape death from the ongoing war. Zulawski brilliantly finds ways to disorient the viewer in an ever-increasingly delirious manner. Hallucinations are interwoven into the heart of the story, and it becomes apparent that the visions Michal experiences are integral to his juxtaposed 'reality.' If all of this sounds like a political horror film, it most certainly is. Since this is a Zulawski film, it is many other things as well.
Zulawski directs The Third Part of the Night with a brazen level of confidence for a first time director. It is both visually and narratively audacious as an oblique form of cinematic storytelling. Rules are set aflame. This arresting film conjures both hideousness and beauty. The sustained tone is increasingly bleak and surreal. Countless astonishing images and sequences fill the screen. Andrzej Korzynski's awesome score further expands upon the sense of dread and strangeness. Like Zulawski's directorial mastery on display, Korzynski also demonstrates his brilliance as a composer and provides the archetype for what would become a longstanding collaboration between the two men. Korzynski's trademark styling and juxtapositions are rendered in ways that serve and enhance the visuals. Effected woodwinds are isolated, tense orchestras sound, a droning fuzz guitar reappears and eventually freaks out all together over the end credits. The Third Part of the Night recalls Dario Argento in his finest form as a film-maker who is able to show stories unfold in ways that had never been seen before. The most striking difference between the two directors is that Zulawski, unlike Argento, is dynamic in both storytelling and triggering deeply emotive performances that resonate long after the light dims out of the projector.
The Third Part of the Night is even more fascinating when surveying Zulawski's filmography. For instance, the staircase scene and the use of doppelgangers both reform ten years later in Possession. These self-referential echoes become more intriguing considering Possession is a film that documents a private drama that was directly inspired by the deterioration of Zulawski's marriage and family with the star of The Third Part of the Night, Malgorzata Braunek.
Seeing The Third Part of the Night theatrically at BAM was an ecstatic experience. Having only viewed the film on DVD in the past, Zulawski's coruscating camera work and unique gifts as a visual storyteller glimmered in the incredible new print.
