Duality as a creative principle in the films of A. Żuławski

Abstract

The cinema of the controversial Polish director Andrzej Żuławski changed and morphed in synchronicity with his personal transformations over the years; however, the use of duality remained a consistent principle in his artistic approach, which also contributed to the polarized reactions that his films usually provoked from their audience. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, also examined opposites and identified two basic instincts underlying every human action: the life instinct and the death instinct. I find a correlation between Freud’s theory of opposing instincts and the core themes in Żuławski films, which I identify as the theme of Love and the theme of Death. In my thesis I will endeavor to approach an analysis of two of Żuławski’s films through the prism of dualism contained in the pair of his most exploited themes. Although the thematic duo of Love and Death prevails in most of Żuławski’s films, I have deliberately chosen The Third Part of the Night and Possession as the basis of my analysis, since I find it fascinating how the duality concept is evident not only in the content of each film separately but also in the way these two films correlate.