{"id":12845,"date":"2018-11-15T21:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T03:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=12845"},"modified":"2018-11-14T23:20:36","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T05:20:36","slug":"the-devil-1972-andrzej-zulawski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/12845","title":{"rendered":"The Devil (1972, Andrzej Zulawski)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/9378\">Possession<\/a><\/em> and <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/11231\">Cosmos<\/a><\/em>, I&#8217;ve been anxious to watch more Zulawski.  There&#8217;s a World War II drama, a space-travel sci-fi cult thing, a love triangle story, and this one, with which I informally kicked off SHOCKtober this year.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image18\/thedevil2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>A nervous, wild-eyed stranger arrives at a convent in total bloody chaos where two political prisoners are being held.  He kills Thomas, saves Jacob, kidnaps a nun and rides the hell out of there, but everywhere he goes is about as hysterical as the convent, and Jacob starts murdering people with a knife.  He buries his father, attacks his friends, murders his mother, gets injured in a duel, deliriously gives up his co-conspirators to the stranger, then is killed.  The nun takes out the devil, who transforms into an animal as he dies.  It&#8217;s all very intense, and I didn&#8217;t always follow it (nor its political allegory which got it banned), but it&#8217;s definitely something else.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jacob and the stranger:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image18\/thedevil1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Jacob&#8217;s mom with snake:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image18\/thedevil5.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Jacob and the nun costarred in Zulawski&#8217;s feature debut <em>The Third Part of the Night<\/em> the previous year, and devil Wojciech Pszoniak was in Wajda&#8217;s <em>Danton<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Jeremiah Kipp (director of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/9534\">The Minions<\/a><\/em> and <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/4065\">Contact<\/a><\/em>) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slantmagazine.com\/dvd\/review\/the-devil\">in Slant<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Jakub is led home by his dark-clad benefactor, only to discover that everything has taken a turn toward the rancid and horrible. His father has committed suicide, his mother has transformed into a prostitute, his sister has been driven insane, and his fianc\u00e9e has been forced into an arranged marriage with his best friend, who has turned into a political opportunist and turncoat. Leading him through this world turned upside down is the man in black, who continually whispers sarcastic platitudes in the hero&#8217;s ear and inciting him to acts of extreme violence &#8230; As usual for his films, the camera hurtles vertically across rooms and fields and spirals around as the actors pitch their performances at maximum volume.  Society for Zulawski is just a thin veneer used to disguise the horrible sadism and unhappiness lurking inside every human heart.  <em>The Devil<\/em> would make for maudlin, depressing viewing if every scene didn&#8217;t feel like explosions were being set off, sending the inmates of a madhouse free into the streets outside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image18\/thedevil4.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image18\/thedevil3.jpg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Possession and Cosmos, I&#8217;ve been anxious to watch more Zulawski. There&#8217;s a World War II drama, a space-travel sci-fi cult thing, a love triangle story, and this one, with which I informally kicked off SHOCKtober this year. A nervous, wild-eyed stranger arrives at a convent in total bloody chaos where two political prisoners are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,1863,2352,842,332,503],"class_list":["post-12845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-andrzej-zulawski","tag-bad-politics","tag-devil","tag-nuns","tag-snakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12845"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12883,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12845\/revisions\/12883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}