| Possession | |
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original film poster |
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| Directed by | Andrzej Żuławski |
| Produced by | Marie-Laure Reyre |
| Written by | Frederic Tuten Andrzej Żuławski |
| Starring | Isabelle Adjani Sam Neill |
| Music by | Andrzej Korzynski |
| Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten |
| Editing by | Marie-Sophie Dubus Suzanne Lang-Willar |
| Release date(s) | May 27, 1981 |
| Running time | 97 minutes (edited version) 123 minutes (original cut) |
| Country | France West Germany |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1,113,538[1] |
Possession is a 1981 cult horror film directed by Andrzej Żuławski.
Contents |
Mark (played by Sam Neill) returns home to Berlin to find his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) is leaving him for unclear reasons. He initially suspects an affair and hires detectives to track her, but gradually discovers clues that something far stranger is afoot. Instead, his wife leaves him and her lover, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent). What follows is a series of horrific, compelling and surreal events.
It was filmed in Berlin, West Germany. The director has stated that he wrote the screenplay in the midst of a messy divorce. Viewers have found it difficult to properly classify it as drama, horror, or suspense, though elements of all three are present in the movie. Some reviewers have interpreted Possession as an intense drama focusing on the effects of marital problems and stress upon children.
The film had a modest total of 541,120 admissions in France. [2] The film was also very controversial when first released and heavily edited for distribution in the United States. After an initial limited theatre release in the United Kingdom, Possession was banned as one of the notorious Video Nasties, although released uncut on DVD in 1999. It gradually developed a minor cult following among arthouse aficionados.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "Possession is a veritable carnival of nose bleeds. Because the three leading characters - Anna, her husband, Marc (Sam Neill), and her lover, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) - all knock each other violently around, they play most of their scenes in one state of bloodiness or another. At times, the living-color Possession recalls Roman Polanski's black-and-white Repulsion, though only because Miss Adjani is required to slice up as many male victims as Catherine Deneuve did in the earlier, far better film.[3]
Michael Brooke of Sight & Sound commented, "Although it’s easy to see why it was pigeonholed as a horror film, its first half presents what is still one of the most viscerally vivid portraits of a disintegrating relationship yet committed to film, comfortably rivalling Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, David Cronenberg’s The Brood and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage."[4]
Variety said, "Possession starts on a hysterical note, stays there and surpasses it as the film progresses. There are excesses on all fronts: in supposedly ordinary married life and then occult happenings, intricate political skulduggery with the infamous Berlin Wall as background - they all abound in this horror-cum-political-cum - psychological tale."[5]
In 1981, Isabelle Adjani won the award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Possession and Quartet. Adjani also won the year's César Award for Best Actress for her performance in Possession.
Special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi assisted in creating the tentacle creature featured in the film.
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