The Third Part of the Night

Remarkably, this was Polish director Andrzej Zulawski's debut feature. Coming from a family full of actors, directors, poets, writers, and general great thinkers, Zulawski strides into this film with confidence, focus and a craft that takes the majority of directors years to perfect. I was interested in this film after reading about the rather strange plot line, and having a keen interest in Polish cinema, notably the work of Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda. And I'm pleased my I followed my curiosity, as the film is a hypnotic and nightmarish piece of cinema that encourages discussion, interpretation and repeat viewings, something that I find with only a few films, especially straight after the first viewing.

The film begins in a remote countryside house in Nazi-occupied Poland, where Michal (Leszek Teleszynski) stays with his wife and children, until the Nazis come along a murder everyone while Michal lies hidden in the woods. He journeys back to Lwow where he joins the resistance, almost instantly being tracked down and almost murdered. He manages to escape when the pursuers mistake an innocent bystander wearing similar clothes to be him and shoot him dead. Michal comforts the dead man's wife, while noticing that the mysterious woman bears an uncanny resemblance to his own dead wife. Being a typhus sufferer, Michal decides to put his misfortune to use and earns money becoming a lice feeder, strapping small boxes full of the bloodsuckers down his legs to let them feed, which are later used to develop a vaccine.

What stems from the relatively normal opening scene can only be described as a chaotic descent into instability, as the story moves along slowly and confusingly. The decision to use the same actress (Malgorzata Braunek) to play multiple roles is never clearly explained or made clear. The obvious and initial reason would apparently be the inability of Michal to let go of his wife's death, seeing her everywhere, but as the film goes on, you wonder about the mental stability of our hero, or even ponder if this (or indeed the whole film) is just a product of his typhoid-addled brain. Scenes randomly blend into the next, and you have no idea where the film is going or will end up. It is truly a mentally tiring experience, and all the better for it.

Zulawski seems to be fascinated with lice and the feeding process that the film depicts. He films in close detail, with some effectively loose- hand held work, how the lice are packed together in a tiny box, with a mesh screen in place to allow the creatures to feed through. Later, during the vaccination process, we are treated to a microscope POV of the lice being carefully placed on a petri dish one by one, only to be torn open by a pair of tweezers to extract their infected blood. Do the lice represent our protagonist, or the nature of the human race? Or perhaps it's a commentary on the war and the destruction of the Nazi party? No answers are clear with the film, and is best enjoyed as an interpretive piece of art cinema. I use the word 'enjoy' loosely, as when the climax approaches, it almost becomes a piece of psychological horror, one that genuinely disturbs in a way that only a true artist can achieve.

It will not appeal to everybody, but no matter what your view or opinion, it will no doubt have a profound effect on the emotions and the brain, and will linger for a long time.

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The film jumps between time-lines and characters in a somewhat confusing manner with dead figures re-appearing throughout the film, so trying to give a detailed story-line is somewhat pointless. The dialogue is extreme and sometimes absurd, but that only adds to the atmosphere of a character being eaten by lice and perhaps in a fever. The lice thing is based on fact - Polish resistance fighters were happy to put themselves forward for scientific experimentation with lice (in an effort to eradicate typhoid), as no German soldiers would go near them if their cards said that they were involved in the programme. The lice in any case are a symbol of war - people sucking the blood out of each other etc. A chaotic and incoherent film, but amazing first-time direction from Zuwavski. It is all filmed in hand-held camera (usual stuff now, but extremely unusual back in the early 70's), so there is a lot of movement. The film was made in Krakow and the city looks nothing like is now - an empty desolate filthy city of dilapidated grey building. Very Kafka-esque indeed, with stark bleak colours. I liked the film for atmosphere and cinematics, but many will not if they concentrate on the story and often somewhat obscure dialogue.The film was a big thing when it came out in Poland with huge queues to see it by the public - it has lost its relevance today and looks VERY dated (ie. as does all Polish 1970s cinema), but is still an interesting view.

The Third part of the night is set in Poland during the second world war, which, as you will probably know, was infested by the plague of Nazism, and latterly equipollent Communism. The film starts with a quotation from Revelations Chapter VIII, which delineates the havoc that will be wreaked upon the earth when the Big Guy decides it's time to wrap everything up. There are seven trumpets being blown, the first four we are told about, and they wreak chaotic damage to earth, generally in thirds: a third of the rivers are turned to wormwood, one third of ships destroyed... Anyway the fourth trumpet makes it so that for a third part of the night the moon and stars will not shine, so that's basically what the German occupation of Poland is, the Third Part of the Night.

Most of the film is set in the city of Lwow, which was then part of Poland, but now has been made part of Ukraine and is called Lviv. That was Joe Stalin's doing, part of his Polish Holocaust.

The film starts though in the countryside with a violent act that is a quotation of the violence at the start of Menilmontant if I have seen things correctly. Michal the main character, a ghost-faced unibrowed typhus sufferer loses his family and returns to Lwow, where he attempts to become part of the resistance. It turns out that the resistance centers around a research institute. The folks there exist to feed lice. The way it works is that you put a strap around your bare leg and slot in these matchbox size containers full of lice that feed from your blood through a wire mesh. These lice are used to breed typhus, and the vaccine is then prepared from their guts. One guy gets home from work, strips naked and starts scratching himself and whimpering. Not the most pleasant scene. Involving yourself in this process gave you great papers though, because the Germans took one look at your papers, and were then scared of catching typhus from you and so left you well alone.

After losing his wife, Michal comes across a woman who looks exactly like her (a plot device Zulawski also uses in La Femme Publique). It's not clear why this device is used, but it could be a misogynist motif, ie. he's incapable of seeing the woman for who she is, he may also be having a traumatic hallucination, which would mean that there is a woman but she doesn't look like his wife. This *hallucination* of a movie is mainly anchored around this plot, providing some sort of bearing for the viewer.

You won't see a normal moment in the entire movie, everything is topsy turvy, every scene is either in a shattered building, or of a normal building full of shattered people. It's a nightmarish movie, like a dance of death. Dance is an appropriate word because the film uses hand-held camera a lot (though Zulawski in an interview has stated that the cameraman he found had a very steady hand, and he was obviously proud to find him), and the shot dances around, with some circular shots, zooms you never see coming, really it's very alive.

What really is the Zulawski strength though is directing actors, he managed to coax scenes of incredible intensity out of Malgorzata Braunek (as Michal's wife) and Jerzy Golinski (Michal's father). I've seen almost nothing like it, though another Polish film springs to mind, Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Mother Joan of the Angels. The actors handed themselves over to Zulawski, giving them his complete trust, Braunek in particular in one scene at the institute connected with some deep innermost primal emotions.

The cellar shots at the institute are the bleakest shots you're likely to see in cinema, and remind me only of paintings, and bizarrely of the shots of test chambers in Alien 4.

The only big stumbling block for most people I believe would be the music, which is very out-of-place jazz (three quarters of the way between mellifluence and dissonance), and has taken me a while to get used to.

Having seen two other movies by Zulawski, that forgotten artist, I'm starting to distinguish a style, some themes and his conception of human emotions. He doesn't care to develop a clear story, he has a way of surprising us continually through the exploitation of the characters which cover all the range of emotions. He can take any human and expose them to supernatural occurrences until they goes mad; they live in a constant nightmare. His actors occasionally go in a real trance and purge themselves of all emotions, crying and laughing simultaneously. It seems as if he is dissecting humans and beneath all that flesh and terror there lies a spirit, alone and in darkness.

Near the end someone cites the Apocalypse, and goes something like this: and then they will search for death and they won't find it. And that seems as the center point to the movies I've seen. In a way you can say he believes in an eternal return of the soul, but what he longs for is tranquility in death and so life to him is just a terrible passing, and so it is occasionally for many.

About the movie, well, it can be mistaken for some supernatural horror flick, some will be repelled by the style others will embrace it. But to me his movies are more of the overall experience and the way they linger in our subconscious as an infernal palace which we try to discredit and judge unreal, but which we inhabit.

Just watched the excellent Second Run DVD release of this film, and I was not disappointed. He must be one of the most underrated directors alive at the moment. In each of his movies (I have only seen two others) he manages to create an amazing cinematic velocity, you are not sure about the meaning and of the plot twists, but you are defenseless against the intensity of the camera-work, editing, performances and staging. He uses film in the way I usually find most interesting, to convey dream states and give fragmented views into other worlds, in that sense he is like Bergman when he was at his best. I can't help comparing the two since Bergmans recent passing and my seeing this film happened almost simultaneously...Watching this film is like experiencing someones nightmare, based in a gritty reality but at the same time far removed from it, and also managing to convey political issues in a non-realistic way. Which is the way I prefer, not ramming it down the audiences throats, but keeping it in the subtext for you to explore if you want.