The Devil

Freed from a filthy jail, one that sits beneath a nunnery packed with bleeding soldiers, Leszek Teleszyński's delirious Jakub is pulled hither and thither by Wojciech Pszoniak's Stranger, a grinning maniac wrapped in a swirling, black cloak. Despite spiriting Jakub away from a variety of massing dangers, this mysterious meddler still doesn't strike the viewer as being particularly altruistic. Although the specifics of his interest in Jakub aren't immediately apparent, it is clear that this Stranger is unusually focused on the opportunities this newfound freedom represents. He delights in the moral and spiritual decline experienced by Jakub, urging the hapless wanderer towards further and greater indignity. Thomas, a uniformed ally who has kept his wits and is seen sharing Jakub's cell, is instantly blasted with a flintlock pistol by the Stranger, presumably on the suspicion that he may prove to be a leavening influence outside these walls. As the injured upstairs are ran through with Prussian bayonets, Jakub is packed onto a horse with a catatonic nun, played by Monika Niemczyk, then directed towards the remains of his life. 

Structurally, writer-director Andrzej Żuławski's The Devil could be categorised as a mutant strain of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: a supernatural tale in which a disgraced or despondent man is instructed in the ripple effect created by his actions. Whereas Dickens, and later Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, dealt with the stability and goodness (intended or otherwise) generated by the individual, Żuławski's tour is one concerned with terrifying societal upheaval, human savagery then, finally, madness. An increasingly shell-shocked Jakub is, when visiting his former haunts, treated as inexplicable: either a restless ghost who has returned to frustrate those that have prospered in his absence or a figure who inspires a strange kind of sexual idolatry. Repeatedly set-upon, regardless of his relationship to the initiator, it is as if everyone Jakub comes across recognises that he has somehow become unstuck in the natural order and has, therefore, become something transcendent. Every response to Jakub then is premised on making him submit, be that a tongue on his throat or a lash at his back. Possessed of a genuine mania, Żuławski's film is teeming with these violent energies, all firing in every direction. The figures onscreen wrestle and cavort, tearing at each other's clothes; they communicate in shrieks and barks, all while cinematographer Maciej Kijowski's galloping camera struggles to keep pace.