The Third Part of the Night
| The Third Part of the Night | |
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Original Polish release poster
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| Directed by | Andrzej Żuławski |
| Written by | Andrzej Żuławski Mirosław Żuławski |
| Starring |
Małgorzata Braunek Leszek Teleszyński Jan Nowicki |
| Music by | Andrzej Korzyński |
| Cinematography | Witold Sobociński |
| Edited by | Halina Prugar-Ketling |
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Production
company |
Polski State Film
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Release date
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Running time
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105 minutes |
| Country | Poland |
| Language | Polish |
The Third Part of the Night (Polish: Trzecia część nocy) is a 1971 Polish avant-garde horror film directed by Andrzej Żuławski.
The film is set during the occupation of Poland during World War II. German soldiers slaughter Michal's wife, son and mother. Michal and his father avoid death by remaining in the forest. Michal decides to join the resistance but before his first meeting, the Gestapo kill his go-between and chase him. During his escape he gets into an apartment of a pregnant woman and helps her with the childbirth. The woman appears to be a doppelganger of his murdered wife. Michal gets a job in the typhus center, where he is guinea pig for lice after being immunized to make more vaccine. He goes to the hospital to end a misery of a man mistaken by him and tortured where he seems to see his own body and is finally reconciled with himself.
The film was released for the first time on [[DVD] by Second Run on March 19, 2007.
Ben Sachs from Chicago Reader awarded the film 4/4 stars. In his review on the film, Sachs wrote, "A sustained nightmare about societal and personal breakdown, it presents one man's descent into madness during the Nazi occupation of Poland, though the story is hard to follow (perhaps by design). Żuławski divulges important information about the characters in short, unexpected bursts, and the plot moves sinuously between the hero's present, past, and dream life. Moreover, the camera is almost always moving hurriedly around the characters, as though the director were having trouble keeping up with his own subjects. These devices can make a viewer feel lost, much as the hero feels in his own experience."
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Wikipedia