THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT (1971) Movie Review

Scare-A-Thon Totals to Date:

Total Movies Watched: 28
Total First Time Views: 19
Amount raised for ALBANY PARK THEATER PROJECT: $2,333.80

The Third Part of the Night (1971) d. Andrzej Zulawski (Poland) (107 min) (1st viewing)

A young man, Michal (Leszek Teleszynski), watches helplessly from the edge of the woods as his mother, son, and wife (Malgorzata Braunek) are senselessly murdered by passing German soldiers during the Polish occupation of WWII. Driven by vengeance, he joins the resistance fighters, but his first assignment goes horribly wrong, with his mission partner killed and his own life saved only due to a freak accident where a neighbor wearing the same beige overcoat is mistaken for Michal and shot by the Gestapo. Astonishingly, the neighbor’s pregnant wife Marta looks exactly like Michal’s murdered bride (again played by Braunek) and, after helping to deliver her baby, Michal and she form a deep attachment. She gets him a job in the typhus center, allowing lice to feed off his blood in order to create vaccine; as a typhus patient, the Nazis leave him alone (as does everyone else), isolating him even further, allowing his pain and delusions to grow.

POSSESSION (1981) movie review

Possession (1981) d. Andrzej Zulawski (France)

Deliberately abrasive and queasy, idiosyncratic Polish director Andrzej Zulawski’s best known film assails its audience from the opening scenes and never lets up for a second, leaving the viewer exhausted, exasperated and exhilarated. Returning home from a vaguely defined military mission, Sam Neill is alarmed to find that his relationship with wife Isabelle Adjani has disintegrated into complete hostility and disgust. He soon discovers that she has taken up with several lovers, one of which might not be entirely...human.

BEAST (2011) movie review

Beast (2011) d. Boe, Cristoffer (Denmark)

A rough, raw and mystifying dissection of a crumbling marriage, but this is one domestic drama you’re not likely to see on the Lifetime channel. Scraping the same gut-level, non-realistic emotional scar-tissue terrain as Cronenberg’s The Brood or closer yet, Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, the ferocity between former soul mates Nicolas Bro and Marijana Jankovic is so visceral it cannot be contained by a conventional narrative. Instead, it operates on a metaphorical level, depicting body-horror events (which may or may not be happening) that leave viewers reeling in disorientation and fascinated revulsion. It’s an incredible high-wire collaboration between writer/director Cristoffer Boe and his three leads (Nikolaj Lie Kaas is equally effective as Jankovic’s adulterous partner) – the onscreen events are defiantly ambiguous and non-realistic, but they perfectly nail the off-balance feeling of a once raging love now cooled. Recommended.