The Devil – Andrzej Żuławski | #film

The Devil – Andrzej Żuławski

‘A political horror film’ by Andrzej Żuławski shot in 1972. Suppressed by communist censorship for more than a decade, it was not premiered until 1988.

Andrzej Żuławski had already written the script for The Devil, his second feature-length film, before the production of his debut The Third Part of the Night, and published a short novella about the Devil who leads the unfortunate Jakub down the wrong path in the volume Piekielnicy (Infernals). In an extended interview conducted by Kletowski and Marecki, the director said:

This is the only film work of mine that I have dared to print with purely literary texts, precisely because there is a great discrepancy between the film shot and the text itself.

When Żuławski began preparations for the film, the concept for the picture changed significantly. The Devil, who on the pages of the novella was a terrifying, inhuman creature, was gradually humanised. The director’s original idea that the film’s Devil should wear a terrifying mask was forgotten.

‘The horror lies in the man, not in the trappings of that man.’ – said Andrzej Żuławski in the interview quoted above, and his The Devil was a testament to this way of thinking.

For Żuławski wanted to make a horror film about humanity, about the evil hidden in people and lurking to be unleashed and given expression. Żuławski’s evil did not come from outside, but resounded like the protagonist’s inner voice. The Devil, in Wojciech Pszoniak’s masterful interpretation, was merely the midwife of evil, not its source.

Żuławski made Jakub (Leszek Teleszyński), a young man imprisoned for attempted regicide, the main character of The Devil. When the Prussian army enters Greater Poland in January 1793, Jakub and a nun are led out of prison by the Stranger (Wojciech Pszoniak). This mysterious man hands Jakub a razor, commanding him to go into the world and purge it of wickedness.

This is how the story told by Żuławski began. A horror film completely different from those we are used to in Hollywood cinema. In Żuławski’s work it is in vain to look for a happy ending in which the protagonist restores the broken order of the world. The director was more interested in the disintegration and drowning of his characters in the depths of madness. Thus, he suspended his film between reality and fiction, between the horror of reality and the madness of the insane protagonist. On the sidelines of the story, Żuławski entered into a polemic with the Polish Romantics – Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki (the character Jakub is a reference to Słowacki’s Kordian), asking about the limits of madness and the rationality of the world.

But The Devil was an unusual picture not only because of its cinematic form. Żuławski’s film is in fact a ‘political horror film’ which, under the guise of horror, hides a story about Poland in 1968. After the events of March 1968, when an antisemitic campaign inspired by General Moczar’s faction broke out in Poland, Żuławski decided to make a film about the political events of the time. Because of censorship, however, it would have been impossible to make a film about Moczar’s and Gomułka’s people, about the student protests and antisemitic resentments that were aroused in Polish society at the time. So he created a film allegory. A story about revolutionary fever and how easy it is to turn from an idealist into a victim of manipulation.

The communist authorities, who originally allowed the film to be made, shelved it after seeing the finished version of The Devil. The film was accused of an excess of violence and erotic scenes, but the political meaning of Żuławski’s work was more important than these. The work had to wait 16 years for its cinema premiere and was not released to the public until 1988. Before this happened, however, Żuławski was forced to leave Poland – deprived of the chance to make films in his country, he left for France to continue his career there.

Translated by: Patryk Grabowski
Edited by: Alex Carnegie

The Devil. Poland 1972, Written and directed by: Andrzej Żuławski. Cinematography: Maciej Kijowski. Music: Andrzej Korzyński. Starring: Leszek Teleszyński, Wojciech Pszoniak, Małgorzata Braunek, Iga Mayr, Wiktor Sadecki.