Andrzej Żuławski: Three Films (1971-1988): A Triptych of Trauma (Review)

Making their UK Blu-ray debut last week as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label was a set of three landmark films from Polish auteur Andrzej Żuławski. The first is his 1971 debut feature The Third Part of the Night, and the second is his controversial 1972 movie The Devil, which was banned by Communist Polish authorities for sixteen years. The third film – On the Silver Globe – is the movie I suspect will draw many film fans to this set as it’s a bold and ambitious production that was shut down by the powers that be in 1977, only to be completed and premiered at Cannes over a decade later in1988.

As an added bonus, the first 3000 copies of this release also include Kuba Mikurda’s 2021 film Escape to the Silver Globe – a documentary detailing the life of Andrzej Żuławski and the troubled production history of what many regard as his masterpiece. Experimental, uncompromising, unnerving works, laden with symbolism and portent, these films may not be everyone’s cup of tea (I’m not entirely sure they’re mine to be honest), but nevertheless it’s impossible to deny their power and prestige.

As I said, I suspect that On the Silver Globe will attract most potential buyers to this set, so let’s look at that first. An ambitious arthouse take on science fiction, it’s a movie that ought to be mentioned in the same breath as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or Frank Herbert’s Dune and and its associated adaptations from David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve. On the Silver Globe is based on The Lunar Trilogy – a series of books written at the turn of the twentieth century by Jerzy Żuławski, grand-uncle of Andrzej Żuławski. Having grown up with these novels in the family, Żuławski had long harboured a desire to adapt them for cinema.

Following his success in France in the 1970s with films like That Most Important Thing: Love (or L’important c’est d’aimer), Żuławski was tempted back to his native Poland (he’d been forced into exile following the ban on his 1972 movie The Devil), with the most enticing proposition a filmmaker could ever receive – carte blanche to make whatever his heart desired. Naturally, he turned to his grand-uncle’s novels and seized the opportunity to translate his boyhood vision to the big screen.

On the Silver Globe tells the story of a team of astronauts who crash-land on an unnamed planet, having escaped the dystopia of Earth in the far future. Shortly after their arrival on this Earth-like new world, one of the astronauts, Thomas, succumbs to fatal injuries, leaving his colleagues Marta, Piotr and Jerzy alone to forge a new life by the shores of the planet’s ocean. Marta falls pregnant but dies in childbirth, whilst Piotr is attacked and killed by an unseen enemy, leaving Jerzy to live a long life on the planet, surrounded by a feral tribe of Marta’s offspring and who worship him as a God.

When Jerzy is about to die, he sends a video diary of his experiences to Earth, and a scientist named Marek sets out to explore the planet himself. Upon his arrival, the tribe’s priests declare him to be the new Messiah – the man who will free them from the planet’s native, telepathic bird-like inhabitants – the Sherns. Accepting his fate, Marek leads the tribe into an assault on the Sherns and captures their leader Avius, but the attack on the Shern city ends in disastrous failure. Marek’s inability to fulfil the tribe’s prophecy of victory leads them to doubt their previous faith in him, and reaching the conclusion that he is in fact an outcast from Earth society (Marek undertakes the mission because a colleague is having an affair with his girlfriend and it was an opportunity for them to get him out of the picture), the tribe subsequently stone him and crucify him upon the shore.

As you can probably tell from that outline, On the Silver Globe is a religious parable – essentially a science fiction reading of the Bible’s Old and New Testaments, but we’re a world away from Star Wars here. If it was released in the late ’70s, around the same time as George Lucas’ franchise began its long life, On the Silver Globe could have provided a philosophical arthouse riposte to Hollywood’s Saturday morning pictures style thrills and commercialism. It could have proven to be a real game changer for the sci-fi genre, setting off a process that would take in the likes of Mad Max, Blade Runner, Alien and the aforementioned David Lynch adaptation of Dune.

Unfortunately, the Polish authorities who had restored Żuławski to their bosom, mainly in the hope that his international acclaim would rub off on the merits of Communist bloc overall, soon had cause to regret the generous offer they made to him. Location shooting in places as diverse and difficult as the Gobi Desert and Krakow’s Wieliczka’s salt mines proved costly and arduous, and on June 1st 1977, Janusz Wilhelmi – the vice-minister for Cultural Affairs – made the decision to shut Żuławski’s film down, with 80% of the movie in the can.

By a miraculous twist worthy of a Messiah, the reels of unfinished film were not destroyed and the cast and crew – ever loyal to the vision of Andrzej Żuławski – had preserved various costumes and props. This meant that when an offer to complete the film came the director’s way in 1985, Żuławski could remount the production (sort of) to fill the gaps he took to the streets of Poland, shooting footage that would ultimately play over his own narration, and In 1988 the film was finally and warmly premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

It would honestly be a stretch to say that I enjoyed On the Silver Globe, but I did admire its world-building and the astonishing power of its visuals. Creating an alien world using the shorelines of Poland, the aforementioned underground salt mines and the Gobi Desert, then populating it with machete-wielding, warpainted tribes on horseback clad in rags, tubes and bones, unmistakably marks Andrzej Żuławski as a remarkable cinematc visionary. His use of fish-eye lenses are disturbing and disorientating, but also a clear inspiration for the work of a similarly Marmite film-maker operating today – Yorgos Lanthimos. I didn’t like it, but I appreciate it, and I can see why many are quick to hail it a masterpiece, and even though it’s a butchered one, I think that the uneven nature of its complicated production somehow works for the narrative experience overall.

Rewinding back to Andrzej Żuławski’s first film, The Third Part of the Night, you’d be forgiven for expecting something far more mainstream. The film tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Poland, and focuses on a young man named Michal who witnesses the bloody slaughter of both his wife and mother at the hands of the occupiers. Compelled to take his revenge, Michal joins the resistance movement, but stumbles across a woman in labour who is the doppelgänger of the wife he saw murdered before his very eyes. His grip on reality slipping, Michal joins the typhus centre’s lice feeding labs as a guinea pig – a role to help find a vaccination for typhoid. As with On the Silver Globe, this element of the story is based on the memoir of Żuławski’s father who held the very same job during the occupation.

Bad blood is an appropriate metaphor for The Third Part of the Night as it’s a disorientating horror that pitches its audiences headfirst into the turmoil of occupied Poland – a feat that is achieved by Żuławski’s dizzying, pre-steadicam, hand-held camerawork. Żuławski, who had served as an assistant to the great Andrzej Wajda, cited his mentor’s film Kanal (previously reviewed by this writer here), as both a favourite and an influence, but with The Third Part of the Night he announced himself as a fully formed and original voice. The Communist authorities of the time welcomed films that were set during the occupation of WWII, expecting tributes to the might and resilience of one political ideology over another. If they were expecting another Kanal though, then one can only wonder what they made of Andrzej Żuławski’s nightmarish, surreal vision of hellish despair on Earth.

It was his subsequent film, The Devil, that proved to be the last straw for Soviet-controlled Poland. Ostensibly a genre picture, Jakub is a young Polish nobleman during the Prussian invasion in 1793 (one can imagine the expected allegory regarding the Nazi occupation of Poland). He is rescued by a stranger who, in return for the help he has given Jakub, asks for a list of his fellow conspirators. Upon following his mysterious savior, Jakub begins to rue his Faustian pact as he descends into violent insanity.

The Devil is a traditional folk horror of the type that was favoured by Eastern European filmmakers during this period, and the reason for that popularity was its its potential for allegory. Some filmmakers got their coded messages out under the wire, but Andrzej Żuławski was less fortunate as the authorities believed the list of names demanded by the movie’s titular devil to be a metaphor for informing on political dissidents of the ruling Communist party, and promptly banned the film from further distribution – a fate that lasted for sixteen long years. Although this was a devastating action for the film, the knock-on effect for Andrzej Żuławski was even worse, as he subsequently claimed that a close friend with contacts in the ruling party told him that he had just twenty-four hours to get out of Poland. Fearing for his life, Żuławski made the difficult choice to leave his wife, Malgorzata Braunek, and their young son, Xawery (himself now a filmmaker), and head to France, where he achieved impressive works of both critical and commercial acclaim, but the decision to exile himself would leave its mark.

In the accompanying documentary for the limited edition release, Kuba Mikurda contests that Andrzej Żuławski’s exile not only led to the controversy of On the Silver Globe‘s troubled production, it also led to his marital break up with Braunek. Testimonies from many involved in the movie support this theory, including the actor Andrzej Seweryn (Marek), who revealed that many of his character’s thoughts regarding his own relationship breakdown originated from Andrzej Żuławski’s personal diary. One of the intriguing things that I took away from Escape to the Silver Globe was the notion of the two Andrzej filmmakers; Wajda and Żuławski. The latter had learned much about filmmaking from the former, but Mirkurda seems to suggest that what Żuławski didn’t learn from his mentor was where to draw the line.

Whilst Andrzej Wajda himself was a controversial thorn in the side of the Polish authorities – and certainly never shied away from criticising the regime – his work did get released and did find audiences. In contrast to this, Andrzej Żuławski seemed incapable of knowing how far he could push against their restrictions. With his ambitions for creative satisfaction in his native homeland seemingly forever doomed, he found that he was far better served in France

As an admirer of Polish cinema from this period I was surprised to find myself a little cold on Żuławski’s movies, but I still recommend them for anyone who appreciates bold auteurism – although I’m sure that I’m in the minority here. The extras for this impressive set include brand new feature length commentaries, video essays, interviews and a limited edition sixty page collector’s booklet with new writing and archive materials.

Mark’s Archive: Andrzej Żuławski