Possession (1981)

Andrzej Zulawski made Possession in the aftermath of several stressful events in his life. Not only had he recently divorced his first wife, Małgorzata Braunek, but he had also been forced to leave his home country of Poland after its government had more or less banned his films, including halting production on his science-fiction epic On the Silver Globe.

It was no wonder that Possession would reflect much of Zulawski's emotions at the time; the sense of alienation in its gloomy Berlin setting, and more bluntly with its premise of a dysfunctional relationship that, over the course of the film, literally turns monstrous

The film's monster, an entity that over the course of the film transforms into a doppelganger of Sam Neill and has sex with Isabelle Adjani, represented the subtext of loneliness and love turned sour. Frederic Tuten, who adapted Zulawski's script into English, said about the entity;

'She loves something that she created. She loves something who loves her in the strangest aberrant way, but still loves her in the way that she wants to be loved. I think that as a metaphor is so interesting, that our loneliness that can create something that nurtures our love. (...) That somehow in our most despairing abject pain and loneliness, somewhere is a creation of something that comforts us. That's the part I understood about making that film.'

However Zulawski had never worked with elaborate special effects in his career, and according to producer Marie-Laure Reyre, at first he was unsure if the film even should have a monster!

'At the beginning, we weren't sure that the monster should be seen. It was a big decision to show or not to show...or maybe, just show a little as in Rosemary's Baby, when you never fully saw that was happening, but you certainly felt it.'

Zulawski changed his tune later on, with Reyre remembering that he used golems as his inspiration for the entity's look. 'The creature wasn't easy. Andrzej knew what he wanted. He showed me pictures that he had cut out of magazines that gave some idea of how such a creature could look. Among those were various pictures of golems statues from Prague.'

Then came the matter of finding who could realize such a creature, with Zulawski and Reyre making unsuccessful offers to effects artists in Britain, France and Germany. It wasn't until they saw a certain Ridley Scott movie that they found their man.

'Some day we went to New York and saw Alien there. (Zulawski) immediately said, 'That's the guy we need for our monster!'. So of course we got in touch with Giger right on the spot. But Giger told us that he didn't have the time for our project, because he was already working on two other films. But since we were already in New York, we should try and get in touch with Carlo Rambaldi directly. (...) So we went to LA where, thanks to Giger who had organized everything, we met with Rambaldi.

Carlo Rambaldi had provided special effects for several Italian films, before Dino De Laurentiis took him to the USA where Rambaldi's career was now based in. Possession did not have the lavish budget of films he had recently worked on, such as De Laurentiis' infamous King Kong or Alien, but he took the job thanks to admiring Zulawski's films and the script.

Reyre recalled, At first, he did ask for a lot of money. So we explained, this was a European film, not a big American budget. We did not have the kind of money he should receive. So, we spoke quite a long time and then he said, "Okay, I'll do it."

He liked the story. He liked Andrzej. He liked Andrzej's film a lot. And I think he also trusted me. But it was not easy at all to start building this special effect in Los Angeles when we were shooting in Germany.'

Reyre and Zulawski both would visit Rambaldi's workshop in Los Angeles to check on his progress designing the entity. 'Zulawski went six times to the United States to see the maqutte and followed 'the birth' of the entity. So he knew how it was. Me too, because I'd been going to Los Angeles as well. I was pleased with it. Very pleased.'

Rambaldi and Zulawski with the design drawings and maquettes for Possession.

Reyre remembered an amusing incident when Rambaldi arrived in Berlin, taking his creations with him to prep for shooting. 'We went back to Europe but we constantly had to check the development of the beast, or rather the beasts since there were several.

A lot of designs, drawings and miniatures were sent around for that reason. When we came to Berlin to prepare the scenes, the finished beast was to arrive for shooting. I think I'll remember that day for my whole life, when we went to pick up Carlo Rambaldi at Tegel Airport in Berlin.

He arrived with five or six wooden coffins which were all as big as the monster. I was there with the executive producer, Jean Jose Richer. The customs officers were very curious and wanted to know what these were.

The coffins were opened, and all you could see were these sort of tentacles, these pieces of rubber. I was still startled, even though I had seen the drawings and witness the development. I had also been to LA several times, the last time just two weeks before.

But these things, made of plastic and other strange materials, to see them in these crates, it was absolutely surreal. The customs officers also looked started and quickly closed the crates again. They probably thought that we were crazy!

Reyre recalled how filming began shortly afterwards, and how the low budget restricted the shooting schedule.

Five or six days later, we started shooting the scenes. It was a lot of work, since we made the film on a small budget. Back then it took a lot of time to shoot a film with special effects. Everything had to be prepared: the lighting and the infernal machines had to be set up correctly. I have to say that Carlo was great and Andrzej was very patient. He knew that we only had a small budget and therefore were quite constricted, so we had to adjust the schedule to our budget. Andrzej strictly adhered to the schedule and Carlo Rambaldi also.

Rambaldi with one of the tentacle rigs.

Again, Zulawski had zero experience with filming special effects, and so evidently didn't have an understanding on how taxing they could be for the effects artists.

In a rather taciturn comment about Rambaldi's request for a larger schedule, he recalled how he forced Rambaldi to spend sleeplness nights making the entity.

'I never got the monster that I wanted, never. Rambaldi came from Hollywood to Berlin and said, “Listen, for the scene when you encounter the monster for the first time, with a close-up, I need two weeks.” And I had like two weeks to finish the whole film; I had five weeks to shoot the whole film. I said, “Carlo, it’s impossible.” So he brought a big pile of rough material, pink condom stuff-we couldn’t do anything, he got very red in the face, and I said, “Listen, you are an Italian and not an American, now you have to do something.”

Because we couldn’t do absolutely anything with his monster. So he worked all through the night and locked himself in, and he did it with sticks and film stock woven together-it wasn’t what I had in mind, but the idea was there. The whole story revolved around the monster that Rambaldi was supposed to build up. The monster had stages of development: there was the first outpouring of this thing from Adjani in the subway; then the same stuff had to lay in the tub in her apartment, starting to shape itself into something; and each time you see it, it becomes more and more like a human form, and you see that she forms the husband, but it’s very fuzzy.

I tried to give some life to this idea, which is basic to the film, but I didn’t get to show it in the way I would have loved to show it. (...) Therefore the whole thing is, I won’t say ruined, but this way didn’t work with the film.'

Reyre was much more gracious about Rambaldi's contributions to Possession, crediting him as the one to have actually finalized Zulawski's vision.

'Zulawski never knew exactly what he wanted, not until we found Rambaldi. He was the first person who understood what Zulawski required. Zulawski had the idea but didn't know how to put it on paper. He knew how he wanted to use it in the film, especially at the finish, but Carlo was the first special effects person we met who could complete this idea in reality.'

The infamous scene where Adjani is found having sex with the entity, was achieved via a stunt performer being attached to the tentacle rigs. Reyre remembered how hard it was for the stuntman. 'It was something quite heavy, he was In a very uncomfortable situation'.

Sources:

• The Other Side of the Wall: The Making of Possession (2009)
  
• Starburst Magazine #44 (1982)
  
• 'My Dinner with Andrzej' interview on Metrograph.com