Andrzej Żuławski’s The Devil (Diabeł) #1

Director: Andrzej Żuławski. Screenplay: Andrzej Żuławski. Cast: Leszek Teleszyński, Wojciech Pszoniak, Małgorzata Braunek, Iga Mayr, Monika Niemczyk and Wiktor Sadecki. Year: 1972 www.andrzej-zulawski.com International audiences unfamiliar with Polish politics might not know or care that his horror film was based on actual events from the turbulent 1960s, during which communist authorities provoked a group of Warsaw students into staging anti-censorship protests. This gave the powers that be an easy excuse to crack down on dissidents, leading to mass arrests and, in the process, striking a blow for free speech. Zulawski used this incident as the basis for his film, hiding it in costumes and throwing in a monster, but he doesn’t depend on viewer familiarity with a specific incident; instead he paints a world of fear, oppression, and suppressed outrage that could happen anywhere, anytime. www.film.org.pl When Zulawski filmed The Devil, he told the Polish authorities he was making a period film set in the 18th-century, when the Prussians were invading Poland and killing everyone wholesale. The film opens during a hysterical prison break where a shell-shocked, brooding young man named Jakub (Leszek Teleszynski) is led away from captivity by a grinning, vaguely satanic man in black (Wojciech Pszoniak). Everyone around them is shrieking in hysteria, frantically trying to escape or wish themselves elsewhere, and moments later soldiers appear blasting everyone in sight with their …
Video Rating: 4 / 5