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An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Possessed’. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into committing a political assassination.Read More »
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At the climax of Harold Pinter’s vaguely allegorical but wholly chilling play The Birthday Party, the broken hero is being taken away by strangers, no doubt to a bad place. The locals, who have no idea what sort of political act of terror is being committed, stand by helplessly, but one of them rises and says, “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!” Even though Pinter never makes a specific point of reference as to what deplorable regime is imposing its will, the viewer intuitively understands the message. So it is with Andrzej Zulawski’s The Devil. International audiences unfamiliar with Polish politics might not know or care that his horror film was based on actual events from the turbulent 1960s, during which communist authorities provoked a group of Warsaw students into staging anti-censorship protests. Read More »
Lucas has invented a new computer language but at the same time he has been informed about his strange terminal illness during which he has been gradually losing his memory. Shortly after that he meets Blanche who acts as a medium in a bizarre traveling show. Dying Lucas follows her to the sea resort where they spend together several days and nights.Read More »
Andrzej Zulawski’s take on Mussorgsky’s opera. Conducted by Rostropovich.
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This is the best opera-inspired film I have ever seen. It’s not what we frequently see: a filming of a theater performance. This is a masterpiece of its own, with the force and drama of Mussorgsky’s music, but added with the insight of a professional film-maker. You will see wonderful scenes and color, with some artistic freedom to achieve cinematographic characters that really makes you understand the inner drama of a complex and appealing historic personage.Read More »
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Andrzej Zulawski’s L’important c’est d’aimer is a film of dishevelled lyricism, bursting with noise and anger; an insane storm-tainted flamboyant opera; a visual symphony with apocalyptic emphasis featuring sleaze-bags, clowns, drop-outs, wimps, bastards, and “puppet shows depicting lives of complete scoundrels and ruined careers.” Where some people will see nothing but a graphic canvas of pain, horror and a bloody parade of violence, others who analyze the darkness will see a call for compassion. This is the story of a fragile woman, Nadine Chevalier, who supports her failure-obsessed companion to the bitter end, and who meets a photographer weighed down by remorse.Read More »
Summary:
A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.Read More »
Ultimately a story about destiny, “La Note Bleue” seems a personal reflection of Zulawski’s experiences, for both he and Chopin were Polish expatriates in France.
The film is highly theatrical and occasionally hilarious, but despite its ups and downs, the movie’s highlight is Chopin’s music, brilliantly performed by Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak.Read More »
Synopsis
A talented young photographer, Claire is hired by a Canadian tabloid magnate, Mac Roi, to improve his company’s image. Claire knows that her mother once had an affair with this charismatic man and suspects that she may be his daughter. She meets Clève, an honest 30-something publisher whose company has just been bought up by Mac Roi. Claire is so taken by Clève’s unassuming charms that she agrees to marry him. But when she takes an interest in Némo, a photographer involved with illicit tracking, Clève starts to become very jealous…
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A short excerpt from the Booklet essay by Daniel Bird
Trzecia część nocy (The Third Part of the Night, 1971) is a film by Andrzej Żuławski, the enfant terrible of Polish Cinema. It is also a film about the Polish experience, but one made by a filmmaker too young to remember the War. It was made in 1971, before the so-called Polish cinema of moral concern of Holland, Kieslowski and Zanussi. It is based (in part) on the life of Żuławski s father, Miroslaw, during the Second World War. It is perhaps the first (and probably the last) film about Weigl Institute in Lwow. But above all else, it is the debut film of one of cinema s true visionaries.Read More »