An Andrzej Zuławski Retrospective

Over the last four months, I’ve done what I think might be an internet first: a complete examination of the films of Polish director Andrzej Zuławski from his short films, The Story of Triumphant Love and Pavoncello in 1969 (though ...

Zuławski spent the majority of the ‘80s making films in France that focused on the nature of performance and centered on unusual, if compelling female protagonists — La femme publique (1984), L’amour braque (1985), and Mes nuits sont plus belles ...

Considering the output of the first half of director Andrzej Zuławski’s career, up through the mid-’80s with films like Possession (1981), La femme publique (1984), and L’amour braque (1985), I’m sure at the time no one could have guessed that ...

In Andrzej Żuławski’s unusual career full of cinematic outliers and revolutionary masterpieces, there is nothing quite like his lone opera adaptation, Boris Godounov (1989). Admittedly, that’s really saying something. Though it’s perhaps surprising that someone who explored the horror and ...

Effusively romantic and yet profoundly melancholic, Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours (1989) is Żuławski’s almost perversely cerebral take on love — much of the central relationship unfolds through language games and wordplay — though it also contains ...

Arguably among director Andrzej Zuławski’s most difficult films, L’amour braque (1985) resides somewhere at the crossroads of Dostoyevsky’s fraught 1868 novel The Idiot — the credits state that, “The film is inspired by Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and it is intended ...

While literary inspiration played a prominent role in the early career of Polish director Andrzej Zuławski — resulting in outright adaptations in the case of his first two short television films, Pavoncello (1969) and The Story of Triumphant Love (1969), ...

As I’ve been slowly making my way through Andrzej Żuławski’s catalogue for Diabolique, I think the title I’ve dreaded writing about most is the director’s only English-language film and his most well-known, Possession (1981). Made in the wake of his ...

After the reception of The Devil (1972) drove director Andrzej Zuławski out of Poland and into France, he didn’t make another feature film for three years, apparently filling his days in Paris with work as a writer. And though he spent ...

About a month ago, I began what was supposed to be a short retrospective on the recently restored early Polish films of Andrzej Zuławski – The Third Part of the Night, The Devil, and On the Silver Globe, followed by ...