Possession (1981)

Director:

Andrzej Zulawski

Writers:

Andrzej Zulawski (original screenplay)
Andrzej Zulawski (adaptation) ...
(more)

Release Date:

27 May 1981 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Horror

Tagline:

She created a monster as her secret lover!

Plot:

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife...

Plot Keywords:

Affair | Toilet | Religion | Falling Through A Staircase | Monster

Awards:

5 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Isabelle Adjani	...	Anna / Helen
Sam Neill	...	Mark
Margit Carstensen	...	Margit Gluckmeister
Heinz Bennent	...	Heinrich
Johanna Hofer	...	Heinrich's mother
Carl Duering	...	Detective
Shaun Lawton	...	Zimmermann
Michael Hogben	...	Bob
Maximilian Rüthlein	...	Man with pink socks (as Maximilian Ruethlein)
Thomas Frey	...	Pink sock's acolyte
Leslie Malton	...	Sara, woman with club foot
Gerd Neubert	...	Subway drunk
Kerstin Wohlfahrt
Ilse Bahrs
Karin Mumm
Herbert Chwoika
Barbara Stanek
Ilse Trautschold
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Harry Riebauer	...	Man at the conference (uncredited)
Dragomir Stanojevic-Bata Kameni	...	Taxi driver (uncredited)

Directed by
Andrzej Zulawski

Writing credits
Andrzej Zulawski		(original screenplay)
Andrzej Zulawski		(adaptation and dialogue) &
Frederic Tuten		(adaptation and dialogue)

Produced by
Marie-Laure Reyre	....	producer

Original Music by
Andrzej Korzynski

Cinematography by
Bruno Nuytten

Film Editing by
Marie-Sophie Dubus
Suzanne Lang-Willar

Art Direction by
Holger Gross

Costume Design by
Ingrid Zoré		(as Ingrid Zore)

Makeup Department
Ronaldo Abreu	....	makeup artist
Laurence Azouvy	....	assistant makeup artist

Production Management
Harald Muchametow	....	unit manager
Jean-José Richer	....	production manager (as Jean-Jose Richer)
Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt	....	unit manager
Knut Winkler	....	unit manager

Art Department
Peter Alteneder	....	props
Wolfgang Kallnischkies	....	props
Barbara Kloth	....	assistant art director
Mario Stock	....	props

Sound Department
Norman Engel	....	sound
Karl-Heinz Laabs	....	sound
Jacques Maumont	....	sound mixer

Special Effects by
Charles-Henri Assola	....	special effects
Daniel Braunschweig	....	special effects
Carlo Rambaldi	....	special effects: the creature

Stunts
Willi Neuner	....	stunts
Miomir Radevic-Pigi	....	stunts (as Radevic Miorier)
Dragomir Stanojevic-Bata Kameni	....	stunts (as Dragomir Stanojevic)
Herbert Wiczorek	....	stunts

Camera and Electrical Department
Dieter Ahlich	....	electrician
Manfred Bogdahn	....	electrician
Ulrich Clauss	....	still photographer (as Ullrich Clauss)
Dieter Dentzer	....	electrician
Andrzej Jaroszewicz	....	camera operator
Peter Kalisch	....	assistant camera (as Peter Kalisch)
Idislawe Kielar	....	assistant camera
Pascal Marti	....	assistant camera
Pat Miller	....	electrician
Ernst Simoneit	....	grip

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Barbara Lutz	....	wardrobe
Helmut Preuss	....	wardrobe

Editorial Department
Jutta Omura	....	assistant editor
Sabine Prenczina	....	assistant editor (as Sabine Marang)

Other crew
Henry Dutrannoy	....	accountant (as Henri Dutrannoy)
Christiane Helle	....	continuity
Jürgen Holzheider	....	accountant
Ernestine Kahn	....	dialogue coach
Eva-Maria Schönecker	....	assistant to the director

Production Companies

• Gaumont
• Oliane Productions (co-production)
• Marianne Productions (co-production)
• Soma Film Produktion (co-production: Berlin)

Distributors

• Gaumont (1981) (France) (theatrical)
• Limelight International (1983) (USA) (theatrical) (cut version)
• Rugged Films (1985) (USA) (theatrical) (cut version) (retitled re-release) (as "The Night the Screaming Stops")
• Vestron Video (1986) (USA) (VHS) (cut version)
• Daiei Eiga (1988) (Japan) (theatrical) (cut) (censored)
• Anchor Bay Entertainment (2000) (USA) (DVD) (PAL speed-up master)
• Anchor Bay Entertainment (2000) (USA) (VHS) (PAL speed-up master)
• Works Editora (2004) (Brazil) (DVD)
• Umbrella Entertainment (2005) (Australia) (DVD) (PAL speed-up master)
• TF1 Vidéo (2009) (France) (DVD) (PAL speed-up master)
• Stingray (2010) (Japan) (DVD) (PAL speed-up master)
• Bleeding Light Film Group (2011) (USA) (theatrical) (35mm) (uncut version) (re-release)
• Excesso Entertainment (2012) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• AV Hits Home Video (19??) (Brazil) (VHS)
• VTC (????) (UK) (VHS) (as VTC Entertainment)

Other Companies

• Oliane Productions  music publishing (as Oliane)

Also Known As:

"The Night the Screaming Stops" - USA (reissue title)

Runtime:

France:127 min | UK:118 min | USA:80 min (cut) | Argentina:120 min

Country:

France | West Germany

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:18 | New Zealand:R18 | Chile:18 | Argentina:18 | Australia:R | France:-16 | South Korea:18 | Sweden:18 (video rating) | UK:18 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Gaumont

Trivia:

Sam Waterston was considered for the role of Mark.

Quotes:

Anna:Goodness is only some kind of reflection upon evil. That's all it is.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Roz (2006)

"The only thing to fear is God"

This film doesn't do anything in halves, it doesn't abide by the mock humility of an understated/minimalist film that says "I am important but I'm not gonna show it to you". I generally love overstated/baroque movies as much as I like overactors (Kinski, Bette Davies, Nic Cage) but Possession goes beyond Gothic, it flaunts itself in violent anarchy even when it knows it's not being important. It's a movie in a constant state of violent flux, a chaotic maelstrom of emotion threatening to rip apart at the seams by force of its own negativity, an excess of emotion and abundance of expression. I don't know what Zulawski is trying to say through the film about his own divorce from wife and country and political system, like Eraserhead it's something so personal that it pierces through bottoms of the soul to come out at the other end and speak for things that touch all of us.

Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani see their marriage come crashing down and the film is not merely the death and burial but the wake before and the mourning after. I don't like how Zulawski uses Isabelle Adjani to play different characters very calculated to be different sides of the same person, but then again I don't like movies that do that, it's like a very easy way to a quick symbolism (Ashes of Time, another film I saw recently, does that too). And I don't like who the monster turns out to be, for the same reason, and also because the monster, bloody and deformed, is a better parable of all the bile and hatred and oppressed furious anger felt the character who nurses it to life. The symbolism is too clear almost.

But the rest of the film you watch in stupefied silence. Possession is like a woman in the grip of hysterics running around an apartment tossing and breaking things and cutting herself up with a meat knife, arms flailing like an armature of a tentacled beast ready to tear itself out from a human body.

What Zulawski does here is perfectly illustrated in one scene: the couple have one of their terrible rows in the apartment, the woman storms out, music cue plays then stops, and we get the impression the scene has played out, we expect the cut. But then Zulawski has the camera track behind the man as he chases the woman down the stairs of their apartment and out in the street, pulling at each other and yelling in the middle of an empty intersection, then a truck carrying beatup cars comes rolling by, cars falling crashing down from it. Like the wail of a banshee, Possession is demented and frightful.

It's a movie that doesn't happen in the same place as other movies. Sometimes it gets hard for me for example to differentiate the look and feel of one noir from the other, one NYC crime flick from the other. Like Don't Look Now with its Venetian labyrinths, this has a sense of place and a malevolent presence in that place. It happens in that part of the city where other movies don't know how to go, the streets are different, the buildings and apartments look curiously different, and when an apartment catches on fire, there's a strange old woman down in the street corner yelling things about God ("giving the light clear, getting it back dirty") and cackling maniacally as though an end to the world is very close at hand.

Both Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani give performances of a lifetime. Neil is going through the motions though, except for his 'going mad in a hotel room' scene in the beginning, his madness is external, pantomimed. Isabelle Adjani lives it though, feels and breathes it. She gives perhaps the most outstanding female performance I have ever seen. Her scene in the subway station, all spasmodic intensity and wordless cries, affected me physically like no other, at once monstrous and immensely sad.

This movie is a nervous breakdown and an agnostic lament against an absent indifferent God captured on celluloid. The tagline for the American release reads "She made a monster her secret lover", but this is not that type of film. This is like few films ever made, before or after, and is done with the ferocity of someone going mad in four walls, now perhaps clawing at the walls with blood and bile and staring at his designs as though there might be pattern and order there.