Starring: Zbigniew Cybulski, Bogumił Kobieła, Elżbieta Czyżewska, Gustaw Holoubek
Directed by: Wojciech Jerzy Has
Small wonder that Has’ early showpiece has attracted devotees among illustrious film directors including Scorsese, Coppola and Buñuel. Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie (The Saragossa Manuscript) is based on the labyrinthine 1815 novel of the same name by Polish Enlightenment polymath Jan Potocki.
What drives fans to return to this film time after time? It’s the fact that, eventually, the pleasure of getting lost in the multi-layered plot prevails over the headache of thinking through its interpretation. As enigmatic as a painting of the Ferrarese School, the film follows the dream-like journey of Alphonse van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski) into the maze of the Spanish Sierra Morena, here represented by the odd landscape of the Polish Jura. His inner conflict between reason and imagination eventually pushes Alphonse into madness, as the epilogue suggests.
In terms of narrative technique, The Saragossa Manuscript represents a triumph of Baroque wit combined with Surrealist imagery and applied to cinema. The set, overloaded with skulls and tarot-like patterns, is the work of the painter Jerzy Skarzyński, who contributed to many of Has’ imaginative films including Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą (The Hour-Glass Sanatorium, 1973). A master of digressive technique, Has is never afraid of losing himself or the audience in his mould-breaking visual poems.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on March 26, 2012