Possession (1981 film)
Encyclopedia
Possession is a 1981 cult
horror film
directed
by Andrzej Żuławski.
) 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.
. 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.
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.
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.
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
."
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."
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.
Cult film
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
by Andrzej Żuławski.
Plot
Mark (played by Sam NeillSam Neill
Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....
) returns home to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
to find his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Adjani
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French film actress and singer. Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Awards for Best Actress with five, for Possession , One Deadly Summer , Camille Claudel , Queen Margot and Skirt Day...
) 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
Heinz Bennent
Heinz Bennent was a German actor.Bennent was born in Stolberg, Rhineland, and served in the Luftwaffe during World War II. His career began after the end of World War II in Göttingen. He moved to Switzerland in the 1970s, where he lived until his death at age 90...
). What follows is a series of horrific, compelling and surreal events.
Cast
- Isabelle AdjaniIsabelle AdjaniIsabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French film actress and singer. Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Awards for Best Actress with five, for Possession , One Deadly Summer , Camille Claudel , Queen Margot and Skirt Day...
as Anna / Helen - Sam NeillSam NeillNigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....
as Mark - Margit CarstensenMargit CarstensenMargit Carstensen is a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.-Theater career:...
as Margit Gluckmeister - Heinz BennentHeinz BennentHeinz Bennent was a German actor.Bennent was born in Stolberg, Rhineland, and served in the Luftwaffe during World War II. His career began after the end of World War II in Göttingen. He moved to Switzerland in the 1970s, where he lived until his death at age 90...
as Heinrich - Johanna HoferJohanna HoferJohanna Hofer was a German film actress. She appeared in 34 films between 1926 and 1982.-Selected filmography:* The Last Illusion * Before Sundown * The Pedestrian...
as Heinrich's mother - Carl Duering as Detective
- Shaun LawtonShaun LawtonShaun Lawton an English playwright, poet, actor and singer/songwriter born in the iron-ore mining village of New Marske in North Yorkshire.-Early days:...
as Zimmermann - Michael Hogben as Bob
- Maximilian Rüthlein as Man with pink socks (as Maximilian Ruethlein)
- Thomas Frey as Pink socks' acolyte
- Leslie Malton as Sara, woman with club foot
- Gerd Neubert as Subway drunk
Movie background
It was filmed in Berlin, West GermanyWest Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. 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
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
, horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
, or suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
, 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.
The film was also very controversial when first released and heavily edited for distribution in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. After an initial limited theatre release in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, 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.
Critical reception
Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
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
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
black-and-white Repulsion
Repulsion
Repulsion is a 1965 British psychological thriller film directed by Roman Polanski, based on a scenario by Gérard Brach and Roman Polanski. It was Polanski's first English language film, and was shot in Britain, as such being his second film made outside his native Poland. The cast includes...
, though only because Miss Adjani is required to slice up as many male victims as Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
did in the earlier, far better film.
Michael Brooke of Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
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
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
Antichrist
Antichrist (film)
Antichrist is a 2009 arthouse-horror film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It follows horror film conventions and tells the story of a couple who, after the death of their child, retreat to a cabin in the woods where the man experiences strange...
, David Cronenberg’s
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...
The Brood
The Brood
The Brood is a 1979 Canadian horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg, starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle.The film depicts a series of murders committed by what seems at first to be a group of children...
and Ingmar Bergman’s
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
Scenes from a Marriage
Scenes from a Marriage
Scenes from a Marriage is a 1973 Swedish TV series written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The story explores the disintegration of a marriage between Marianne, a lawyer, and Johan, a professor over a long period, using a restricted cast, a naturalist, hyper-realistic cinematic...
."
Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
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
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
as background - they all abound in this horror-cum-political-cum - psychological tale."
Awards
In 1981, Isabelle AdjaniIsabelle Adjani
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French film actress and singer. Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Awards for Best Actress with five, for Possession , One Deadly Summer , Camille Claudel , Queen Margot and Skirt Day...
won the award for Best Actress
Best Actress Award (Cannes Film Festival)
The Best Actress Award is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival. It is chosen by the jury from the 'official section' of films at the festival. It was first awarded in 1946.-Award Winners:-External links:* * ....
at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
for Possession and Quartet
Quartet (1981 film)
Quartet is a 1981 Merchant Ivory Film, starring Isabelle Adjani, Maggie Smith, Anthony Higgins and Alan Bates, set in 1924 Paris. It premiered at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and was an entry for the Selection Officielle...
. Adjani also won the year's César Award for Best Actress
César Award for Best Actress
List of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Actress .-Winners and nominees:...
for her performance in Possession.
External links
- review at rottentomatoeshttp://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1016589-possession/
- Possession review at The Film Walrus
- Review at SpinningImage UK reviewer
- Review at Soiled Sinema