The Saragossa Manuscript

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The Saragossa Manuscript

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The Saragossa Manuscript

Barbara Krafftowna, Elzbieta Czyzewska, Iga Cembrzynska, Iga Cembrzynska-Kondratiuk, Joanna Jedryka

Based on the early 19th century novel by Polish author Jan Potocki, THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT is a brilliant, sexy and extraordinarily imaginative film. Starring the celebrated Zbigniew Cybulski ( Ashe...( read more  read more... )s and Diamonds), the film is ostensibly set at the end of the Napoleonic War. During the heat of battle, Belgian officer Alphonse van Worden (Cybulski) stumbles across an ancient manuscript. As he reads, a labyrinth of stories unfolds and takes the audience on a teasingly twisted trail through time and space. Erotic and supernatural, THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT was beloved by Alexander Pushkin as a novel; as a film, it was a longtime favorite of the Grateful Dead¹s Jerry Garcia. Critics frequently cite the film as one of the great masterpieces of Black and White Cinemascope cinematography. THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT is being presented, in a beautiful new print restored to its complete three hour length, by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, in dedication to the memory of Jerry Garcia.

Id: 11013638

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The Saragossa Manuscript Recent Reviews
  • jimbotender
    September 24, 2009
    jimbotender
    By the Elysian Fields and Hades,the photographic proportions of this film were highly jubilant!The farcical approach helps to create a Dionysian environment and at times,a zany comprehension of non-linear events,in which the ending is unimportant...Wojciech Has prefers to entice ...( read more)us,and sometimes lure us in the trap of hypnosis of a manuscript so enchanting,you'd think it was made for the pleasure of confusion and only...
  • ElCochran90
    November 20, 2009
    ElCochran90
    "- We are like blind men lost in the streets of a big city. The streets lead to a goal, but we often return to the same places to get to where we want to be. I can see a few little streets here which, as it is now, are going nowhere. New combinations have to be arranged...( read more), then the whole will be clear, because one man cannot invent something that another cannot solve.
    - I no longer follow."

    REKOPIS ZNALEZIONY W SARAGOSSIE (1965)


    Director: Wojciech Has
    Country: Poland
    Genre: Drama / Fantasy
    Length: 182 minutes

    Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie,The Saragossa Manuscript,Surrealism,Wojciech Has


    Luis Buñuel, a cinema master who seldom watched movies more than once, was so fascinated by Wojciech Has' masterpiece titled Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie, that he saw it three times. Surrealism is a highly versatile film subgenre, and in this case, the Polish director decides to deliciously construct the most inventive ride of lunacy! Besides being the most film by the director, a fact that clearly indicates that he obtained international recognition, Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie is a film that can be interpreted in several ways. No matter how seemingly retarded the interpretation is, that is the correct one. It was highly influenced by past satirical masterpieces of fantasy, but it also establishes a landmark in unconventional storytelling, unconditional comedy and the importance of artistic subjectivity. With an extremely confusing and attractive mixture of events, incredible incidents, a gorgeous sense of humor, highly implied eroticism and a rarely-seen audacity, this film is arguably the best and most creative Polish work of art, leaving room for philosophical discussion, but smartly adding direct questionings towards the current way of life.

    The film takes place during the Napoleonic wars. It opens with an officer entering an abandoned house and finding a book that relates the story of his grandfather Alfons van Worden, captain in the Walloon guard. On his way of seeking the shortest route through the Sierra Morena, he sups with two Islamic princesses at an inn named Venta Quemada. After being seduced and being called their lost cousin, he wakes up next to corpses in the middle of a gallows. The rest of the movie puts van Worden in unbelievable situations of real and imagined dementia, travelling to unusual places and hearing stories within stories within stories within stories within stories of hilarious anecdotes and unfaithful love. The film obtained a Special Award at the Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain, in the year of 1972 under the category of "Movies of special movie theatres".

    Captain Alfons van Worden repeats that he belongs to the Walloon guard around five times. He is a man of pretentious honor, patriotism and courage, but perhaps it is the force and irony of destiny the one that drives him into a complex web of crazy sequences. Symbolisms abound and their particular meaning is subject to complete relativity. He is seduced by enchanting women who, according to them, have never met a man in their lives, which has led them to express their love to each other. He wakes up under corpses in gallows. He is told an extremely creepy story involving ghosts and violence by a Catholic priest and his supposedly possessed goatherd who stops being possessed under the religious commands of the priest. He wakes up under corpses in the same gallows. At this point, the film makes a clear statement. The mere purpose of the Saragossa Manuscript, considering its constant, unexplainable and senseless apparitions throughout, is to cause confusion and psychological craziness. It is not a mental journey that is supposed to be taken in its most literal form. We do not longer know the relevance of particular events portrayed until they are explained later on in the film and, moments after, the explanation that had been already given is proved wrong... The importance of early sudden and random appearances of characters is explained several segments later.

    Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie definitely contains one of the best, smartest and most complicated screenplays in the entire history of moviemaking. Such creation laughs when pretending to be all over the place when it actually isn't. To understand the unsettled timeline and the deceiving chronology is not a difficult task. The real magic and complexity relies on the work of deciphering the meaning of the aforementioned structure. The film is explicitly divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the small process of surrealistic comedy that is slowly built inside the protagonist's mind, destroying all possible logical interpretation and making blasphemous references towards the modern culture, lesbianism, sexuality, carnality and the Catholic religion. In the second part, the now terrifying manuscript acquires a much stronger presence and a more significant philosophical meaning, and the "captain of the Walloon guard" hears an endless story-within-story narration of impossible experiences that end up making the respective personalities and experiences of the displayed personages to collide in a climax that, at the end, make more sense.

    The possible intention of adapting a surrealist story to the late eighteenth century is unexplained, yet it is utterly irrelevant. It is the gorgeousness, the elegance, the insanity and the delicacy of the characters the ones that make of Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie a vehicle of senselessness. A visually outstanding art direction, a great vastness of character richness, a royal costume design worth of the royal halls of any location in Europe and a superbly written adaptation of Jan Potocki's original novel exalt the grandiosity of a Manuscript that seems to have been made in order to cause unstoppable existential dooms. The film is plagued with talented Polish stars offering very convincing performances and a highly artistic cinematography makes the film to derive the possibility of becoming a top-notch experience set in turbulent times. The futility of war, the implications of violence, the most common consequences of mindless sex and seduction, memorable dialogues, ghastly tales, disturbing imagery, a vaudevillian environment, a delightful use of the Spanish language and an omniscient God orchestrating a complex web of impossible sequences and an opening-credits sequence featuring the paintings of famous surrealists make of this masterpiece one of a kind.

    The influence of Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie is an element that cannot be rejected. It is troubling, scandalous, daring... and also visionary! Surrealism had never been subject to such a multiphacetic and polished Polish brilliance. The multitalented aspects that govern this provocative piece of art from beginning to end seems to be the result of the conglomeration of every single signature of the most famous and visionary poets put into a single feature film of three hours. Time is erased, logic is raped, beauty is distorted, discretion is invited to a party of lavishness and snobbishness, and cinema adopts a new face of inventiveness and intelligence. Repetitive elements emphasize the ridiculousness of the plot and the huge audacity that Wojciech Has had to adopt. A theatrical feeling and a dramatist perspective is briefly shown, but just for the fun of it, like if William Shakespeare had written a play under the influence of a strong hallucinogenic. It is one of the greatest fantasy films ever made.

    100/100
  • exureimundo
    November 7, 2009
    exureimundo
    It's hard to rate this... it was interesting but I remember being a little disappointed by it. However, I read Maxine Hong Kingston's "Tripmaster Monkey" in which a lot is said about this movie and then a day later I find a flyer saying that it is going to play in movie theaters ...( read more)for the first time in like 25, maybe 30 years that weekend. I really liked the short skinny cabalist who had a quetzal feather in his hat that was longer than he was! I should probably see it again.
  • joseywilliams1
    October 24, 2008
    joseywilliams1
    Saw this at the Library Theatre was bedazzled by the combinations of comedy and drama bringing together a brillant piece of surrealism in the 1960's.
  • cdiddles
    September 8, 2008
    cdiddles
    Honestly, one of the best films I've ever seen. The narrative is always prepared to take you someplace else, regardless of whether you want to go.
  • Winehole23
    June 8, 2008
    Winehole23
    Frames within frames within frames.
  • MECreviews
    March 24, 2008
    MECreviews
    This movie had potential, but fell through the cracks. To bad.
  • daghka
    December 19, 2007
    daghka
    Wow, I feel like watching this again, one of the more fascinating, outstanding and brilliant piece of slices of life tpe cinema that is just so magical and charming, this kind of films rarely get made, because you need a geniune human being to make a film like this, one who realy...( read more) and genuinely can put his finger on the most raw and tender emotions of the human being. An epic masterpiece no doubt.
  • lwilson85
    March 7, 2007
    lwilson85
    A never ending film. Variation on variations. Something Borges or Calvino would have loved.
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