Trzecia część nocy (The Third Part of the Night, 1971) is a film by Andrzej Żuławski, the enfant terrible of Polish Cinema. It is also a film about the ‘Polish experience’, but one made by a filmmaker too young to remember the War. It was made in 1971, before the so-called Polish ‘cinema of moral concern’ of Holland, Kieslowski and Zanussi. It is based (in part) on the life of Żuławski’s father, Miroslaw, during the Second World War. It is perhaps the first (and probably the last) film about Weigl Institute in Lwow. But above all else, it is the debut film of one of cinema’s true visionaries.

Excerpt from Daniel Bird essay found in the liner notes

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Andrzej Żuławski is one of the true mavericks of European cinema and his wild, imaginative and unique films have won awards at many international film festivals over the years. A nightmarish and surreal masterpiece, The Third Part of the Night is his highly influential debut feature film. Set during the time of the Nazi-occupation of Poland and rich with multilayered symbolism and apocalyptic imagery, it shows one of Europe's most uncompromising and visionary directors at his best.

Considered to be one of the best Polish films of the 1970s, this is its first-ever release on DVD anywhere in the world.

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World War II Poland: a man gets a second chance. Michal's wife and child are killed by German soldiers, but in a nearby town he discovers and stays with a woman in labour who looks just like his dead wife. A complex and surreal work, the film is obsessed with the distinctions between love as self-preservation and self-sacrifice. But it's just as much the hallucinations of a dying man. Images of death are everywhere: endless corridors, figures framed in doorways (and later in coffins), a couple gunned down in bed. Not an easy film to come to terms with because of its cerebral nature and its self-consciousness; a haunting first feature, all the same.

Excerpt from TimeOut Film Guide located HERE