The Third Part Of The Night (1971)

The first featue film of Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, who was the man responsible for the all time horror classic 'Possession'. Set in Poland during the German invasion of WW2, the film is an unsettling and frenzied attack on the senses. Combining past and present events alongside each other the film creates a feverish hallucinatory feeling with death and despare underpinning every scene. Based on a young man, who after a period of illness witnesses his wife, mother and son being murdered by German officers. Moving back to a heavily occupied city he joins a rebel organisation who stay out of the grasps of the Germans, because of their Typhus work and infections of the disease. Creating vaccines for the disease, the work involves strapping boxes of lice to the skin and letting them drink the patients blood. The Germans feared this and the disease so much they left these people to it. Harboring rebel activity it also was advantageous work because it warrented extra rations and a better way of life. Meeting another woman who resembles his dead wife and helping her give birth to her son (in what seems an actual childbirth), the film whirlwinds out of control. Is fairly difficult to keep up with at times, but thats the intention. Based on Zulawski's fathers real accounts of the time the film is totally ingrossing. Trademark performances dragged from the soul of the cast only add to this. A film thats really not for everyone, but if you have a nose for world cinema definately worth a watch.
7/10