Hysterical Excess and Inhuman Ecstasy

Andrzej Żuławski remains one of cinema's great uncompromising visionaries. Though Possession has achieved cult status, the rest of his extraordinary body of work—from The Third Part of the Night and The Devil to On the Silver Globe, Szamanka, and Cosmos—continues to be too little known. Hysterical Excess and Inhuman Ecstasy is the first book to examine every feature film in Żuławski's career, tracing the obsessions that unite them: ecstatic love, political repression, surrealism, romantic despair, the grotesque, and the emotional extremes that made him one of the most singular filmmakers of the twentieth century.

Drawing on literature, history, philosophy, and close analysis, Samm Deighan reveals the deeper patterns beneath Żuławski's notoriously explosive cinema, illuminating the artistic, cultural, and intellectual currents that shaped his work without sacrificing the visceral power that continues to astonish audiences. Whether you are discovering Żuławski beyond Possession for the first time or returning to his films with fresh eyes, this book is an essential guide to a filmmaker whose cinema remains as exhilarating, unsettling, and transformative today as ever.