Yet, for all that that movie has been embraced as a full-on classic\u2014no \u2018cult\u2019 qualifier needed\u2014Zulawski\u2019s 13 other pictures remain obscure, even to those who flocked to Possession <\/em>as soon as it became available. While a number of those titles remain extremely hard to get your hands on, others are and have been readily available to stream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This has been the case for a while now with Zulawski\u2019s third feature\u2014his first made outside his native Poland\u2014L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer<\/em> (depending on the translation, Love is the Most Important Thing<\/em> or The Most Important Thing: Love<\/em>). The 1975 \u201cexistential melodrama,\u201d to borrow the phrase used by the world\u2019s foremost Zulawski scholar Daneil Bird in his booklet essay in the film\u2019s Mondo Blu-ray release, has, at one point or another, been hosted by the likes of Kanopy, Mubi, and Criterion Channel (where it is currently available through the end of February). It\u2019s fitting that, of all of Zulawski\u2019s other films, this one should be so easy to watch, since it has always been his best known work in America after Possession<\/em>. Arthouse audiences in the U.S. were first exposed to it in the \u201880s by way of California\u2019s short-lived cinephile Xanadu Z-Channel, while its prevalence in Xan Cassavetes\u2019s 2004 documentary about the history (and tragic end) of that station, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession<\/em>, kept it on people\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So too did its pedigree, it being by far Zulawski\u2019s most star-studded production. Adapted from French author Christopher Frank\u2019s novel of two years prior, La Nuit Americaine<\/em>\u2014the French translation of which is Day for Night<\/em>, a title already taken by director Francois Truffaut two years prior\u2014the film is a prime example of the \u201cEuro-puddings\u201d ubiquitous throughout the 60s and 70s. A French\/Italian\/German co-production, it stars celebrated Austrian idol Romy Schneider, Italian hunk Fabio Testi, French pop star Jacques Dutronc, and, last but certainly not least, notorious German madman Klaus Kinski. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (The seemingly combustible combination of the notoriously volatile Zulawski and Kinski turned out to be, by all accounts, entirely copacetic. At least, neither pulled a gun<\/a> on the other. However, the deadly serious Schieder took an instant dislike to on-screen love interest Testi, a former stunt-man turned stoic\u2014some might say, dim\u2014leading man in spaghetti westerns and giallos, who she considered utterly beneath her in spite of his friendliness and solid work ethic. In one particularly dramatic scene, in which her character thrashes him while in the throes of grief, Schneider very clearly and very painfully wallops him for real.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n A solid critical and commercial success in France upon release, L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer <\/em>makes for a good introduction\u2014or, for those who\u2019ve already seen Possession<\/em>, a perfect follow-up\u2014to Zulawski\u2019s oeuvre, and not just because of its accessibility and familiar cast. While it operates on the same hyperactive dream logic, and contains the same surrealistic flourishes\u2014namely, an abundance of outlandish violence, perversity, and grotesquerie, as well as a preference for heady, often-abstract dialogue with little-to-no interest in narrative exposition\u2014all of which can, at times, make Zulawski\u2019s films difficult to follow, if not downright impenetrable, this is probably his most straightforward effort (although I would argue that all of his films reveal themselves as pretty straightforward upon repeat viewings).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story can be summed up by the title: it’s simply about how the most important thing, out of everything, is love. Granted, Zualwski always hated that title, which was first suggested by some unnamed member of the production\u2019s press office, although he eventually admitted it had grown on him, even if he does take a meta-moment to drag it in his final work, 2015\u2019s Cosmos<\/em>. But however one feels about the title, it\u2019s certainly not misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intentionally convoluted plot centers around a love triangle\u2014a device Zulawski would explore in several subsequent films\u2014between freelance photographer Servais (Testi), down on her luck actress Nadine (Schneider), and Nadine\u2019s depressed cinephile husband Jacques (Dutronc). These three lost souls find their way to one another right as they\u2019re circling the drain: Servais is physically and morally exhausted from years spent paying off his addict father\u2019s debts by shooting smut for a small-time gangster. Nadine is a recovering addict who, having failed to make a respectable career out of her vocation, is forced to take dire roles in sleazy exploitation pictures (such as a vampire flick called Nymphocula<\/em>, about \u201cdykes, a dwarf and a castle\u201d). The two meet when Servaise sneaks unto the set of her latest softcore\u2014or possibly hardcore, it\u2019s never quite clear\u2014production to grab some behind-the-scenes snapshots of a particularly gruesome scene in which her character makes love to a bloody corpse (all while being cruelly berated by a female director). Nadine catches him in the act and confronts him, setting off a chain of events that will end in both tragedy and redemption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Everyone in the film is great\u2014Schneider gives another in a long line of soulful, wounded performances; Testi makes great use of his masculine stoicism while also proving he could handle more complex material; and Dutronc, who would go on to star in Zulawski\u2019s My Nights Are More Beautiful than Your Days<\/em> some 14 years later, makes for the ideal tragic fool. But it\u2019s Kinski who, unsurprisingly, walks away with the film. His performance as the openly homosexual Zimmer finds him moving from deranged camp comedy, to two-fisted gravitas, to heartbreaking tenderness, sometimes in the same scene.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, as in Possession<\/em>, romance becomes a war of attrition and love a throbbing wound (literally, as seen in the gory compositions that bookend the film). Zulawski\u2019s sentiments prove a perfect match for melodrama, but L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer <\/em>isn\u2019t only <\/em>a melodrama. It is also a deeply felt statement\u2014personal and political\u2014from an artist in exile, one that sees him looking both backwards and ahead. There is a real sense of dislocation that can be felt throughout the movie, no doubt stemming from Zulawski\u2019s exodus from Poland following the censoring of his second feature, the infernal historical drama-cum-horror odyssey Diabel <\/em>(Devil<\/em>, 1972), by the communist government after they (correctly) read it as a thinly-veiled criticism the regime. Like several Pole directors before him\u2014including Roman Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski\u2014Zulawski chose France as his new home, although in his case he already had a deep connection to the country, having spent part of his childhood and college years in Paris. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The film also has a surprising air of prescience. In one pivotal scene, Nadine and her theater troupe listen to their director read a critic\u2019s brutal pan, which describes the opening night performance (which Zulawski stages as a really cool-looking samurai epic in homage to Akira Kurosawa) as \u201cExcessive, dark, over the top\u2026expressionistic without reason\u2026a mishmash of contradicting intentions and random ideas to the point of which the only point is chaos\u2026\u201d Zulawski may well have been reading missives from the future, given that there is zero daylight between those lines and the ones that critics would use to describe his work, always too daring, weird, and original to garner middlebrow accolades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Closer to home, the film seems to anticipate Zulawski\u2019s own marital issues, as a couple of years after the release of L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer,<\/em> his wife, the Polish actress Ma\u0142gorzata Braunek (who starred in his first two features), left him for an interloper. This, along with his second and far more brutal clash with his native government\u2014who had invited him back to Poland to work after his L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer<\/em> received international acclaim\u2014<\/em>over his would-be sci-fi epic On the Silver Globe<\/em>, served as the inspiration for Possession <\/em>six-years later. Unsurprisingly, that film comes at the subject of marital fidelity from a much harsher and darker angle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While all of this background adds to the impact of L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer, <\/em>none of it is needed to appreciate the film. Viewers mature enough to handle big swings of emotion without snickering will discover a melodrama unlike any other, while those who found themselves hypnotized by the extremity of Possession <\/em>will have plenty here to keep them entertained, including what might just be the most sinister and hypnotic orgy scene ever filmed outside of an actual porno (eat your heart out, Stanley Kubrick). On an aesthetic and technical level, Zulawski is second-to-none, with L\u2019impotant c\u2019est d\u2019aimer <\/em>featuring the maddeningly complex mise-en-scene and dynamic camerawork that defines all of his films, the latter of which is particularly astounding, given the fact that the Steadicam hadn\u2019t been invented yet. Special mention is owed to Zulawski\u2019s loyal and long-suffering camera operator Andrzej Jaroszewicz for his work on the picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For as ugly as much of what we appears on screen is\u2014and if the film has any major flaw, it\u2019s the way in which its sexual politics vacillate between refreshingly non-judgemental and fiercely reactionary\u2014it also contains plenty of beauty, although it\u2019s hard to say what element is most striking: the way the camera captures the earthy Schneider, her face shorn of any makeup in the majority of her scenes; the deep reds, shadowy blacks and blazing whites of the lighting; the typically breathtaking set design, which looks completely lived-in even as it feels like something from out of a dream; or composer Georges Delerue\u2019s achingly magisterial music, a companion piece to his iconic score from Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s Le M\u00e9pris <\/em>(Contempt<\/em>, 1963).As Western audiences move on from Possession <\/em>in their discovery of Zulawski, they will find a body of work as\u00a0 original and provocative as that of any filmmaker before or since. Volumes could be written about the themes\u2014personal, political, philosophical, spiritual, magical\u2014he explored. But, as anyone who has seen all of his work can tell you, at the end of the day, love really was the most important thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Love is the Most Important Thing” is now streaming on the Criterion Channel.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/most-important-1024x512.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Following his flight from the set\u2014which culminates in one of Zulawski\u2019s trademark wild fistfights\u2014a guilt-ridden Servais barrels headlong into Nadine\u2019s life, openly attempting to steal her away from Jacques, who, we come to learn, saved Nadine from a life of drugs and prostitution but now feels he\u2019s become a burden to her. Servais decides he will become her new savior, borrowing money from the same gangster he only recently got out from under in order to bankroll a production of Richard III <\/em>produced by and <\/em>starring Karl-Heins Zimmer (Kinski), a once celebrated German stage actor now gone to seed, in exchange for her being as cast as Queen Margaret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n