Trzecia część nocy (The Third Part of the Night). 1971. Poland. Directed by Andrzej Żuławski. With Leszek Teleszyński, Małgorzata Braunek. 35mm. In Polish; English subtitles. 105 min.
In Nazi-occupied Warsaw, a man whose wife and child were killed by German soldiers descends into a nightmarish labyrinth of resistance fighters, assassinations, lice, medical experiments, romance, and doppelgängers. Once an assistant to Andrzej Wajda, celebrated for his films about Polish identity and struggle, Andrzej Żuławski developed a drastically different aesthetic vision. Best known for Possession (1981), about a dying marriage that explodes into psychological mayhem, Żuławski often goes where no one else dares, depicting delirium, hysteria, and trauma in extreme forms. The hallucinatory world Żuławski constructed in The Third Part of the Night, his directorial debut, announced the arrival of a singular artist who has since enjoyed a cult following as intense as his films.