Andrzej Zulawski, 75; rebellious film director . NEW YORK - Andrzej
Zulawski, a Polish director who blended surrealism, horror, and psychic
excess in the emotionally savage films "The Important Thing Is to
Love," "Possession," and "My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days,"
died on Wednesday in Warsaw. He was 75. The cause was cancer, a
spokesman for the Polish Film Institute said. Mr. Zulawski, known
primarily to a small art-house and film festival audience, made no
concessions to logic, ordinary human motivations, or audience
squeamishness in directing his overwrought films, for which French
critics created the adjective Zulawskien, meaning over the top. In
"Possession" (1981), the only film by Mr. Zulawski to be released
commercially in the United States, Isabelle Adjani played a woman who,
as her marriage disintegrates, indulges in a mad affair with a
squidlike creature that evolves into a simulacrum of her husband,
played by Sam Neill. In one of the film's most memorable moments, she
throws herself against the walls of a metro underpass in West Berlin
and convulses, with fluids oozing from every orifice. The critic J.
Hoberman, writing in The New York Times in 2012, described Mr. Zulawski
as "an auteur to be approached with trepidation. He added: "His movies
are seldom more than a step from some flaming abyss, with his actors
[and audience] trembling on the edge. Typically shot with a frenzied,
often subjective moving camera in saturated colors that have the
over-bright feel of a chemically induced hallucination, these can be
hard to watch and harder to forget. Mr. Zulawski remained unruffled by
the critical turmoil his work engendered and sublimely indifferent to
what he considered the shortcomings of audiences. "To please the
majority is the requirement of the Planet Cinema," he once said,
responding to criticisms of "Possession. "As far as I'm concerned, I
don't make a concession to viewers, these victims of life, who think
that a film is made only for their enjoyment, and who know nothing
about their own existence. Andrzej Zulawski was born in Lwow, then part
of Poland and now, known as Lviv, part of Ukraine. His father,
Miroslaw, was a writer who fought with Polish resistance forces during
World War II and later served as Poland's representative to UNESCO in
Paris. Mr. Zulawski studied film at the Institut des Hautes Études
Cinématographiques in Paris while taking courses in political science
at the Sorbonne. In 1960, returning to Poland, he became an assistant
to the director Andrzej Wajda. After directing two short films for
television, "Pavoncello" and "The Song of Triumphant Love," he made his
first feature-length film, "The Third Part of the Night" (1971). Based
on a novel by his father, it dealt with the Nazi oc'cup'ation of
Poland, dramatized in lurid, nightmarish terms with few specific
historical references. He followed with "The Devil" (1972), a
slaughter-fest set in the late 18th century, with an antiroyalist hero
who embarks on a killing spree. Government censors blocked its release,
and Mr. Zulawski was invited to leave Poland for France. "The Important
Thing Is to Love" (1975), about a passionate affair between a
photographer and an actress reduced to appearing in sexploitation
films, caught the attention of French critics and earned its star, Romy
Schneider, a best actress César, the French equivalent of an Academy
Award. Buoyed by the film's success, Mr. Zulawski returned to Poland to
make the film version of "The Moon Trilogy," a work of science fiction
by his great-uncle Jerzy Zulawski. Titled "On the Silver Globe" and
mounted on an epic scale, it followed the adventures of marooned
astronauts contending with telepathic humanoid birds, amphibious mud
people, and their own mutant descendants. Polish censors halted
production just as the film was nearing completion and ordered it
destroyed. From rescued negatives, Mr. Zulawski cobbled together a new
version, with a running time of more than 2½ hours, in the late 1980s
when the political situation in Poland had changed. While making "Mad
Love" (1985), loosely based on Dostoyevsky's novel "The Idiot," Mr.
Zulawski fell in love with his star, Sophie Marceau, with whom he went
on to have a long-term relationship and collaborate on three more
films, "My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days" (1989), "The Blue
Note" (1991), and "Fidelity" (2000). The couple separated in 2001. Mr.
Zulawski leaves their son, Vincent; a son from his first marriage,
Xawery, who is also a filmmaker; and a third son, Ignacy. Mr. Zulawski
abstained from cinema for 15 years before making "Cosmos" (2015), based
on a novella by Witold Gombrowicz, with yet another top-list actress,
Sabine Azéma, in the starring role. Sometimes described as a
metaphysical noir thriller, it tells the story of two friends who
become fixated on a young woman and a maid at a country inn run by a
retired couple. Mr. Zulawski wrote several novels as well as two
memoirs about his breakup with Marceau, "About Her" and "Infidelity,"
both published in 2003.
