User reviews

Influenced perhaps by such works as The Canterbury Tales, Don Quixote, and The Arabian Nights, 'The Manuscript Found In Saragossa' is seen as one of the monuments of 19th century European literary culture. In recent years arguably it has influenced such writers as John Barth and Robert Irwin (The Arabian Nightmare for instance). A baroque work, full of stories, of stories within stories, and again stories within stories within stories, featuring gypsies, Moors, scientists, occultists, lesbian princesses, the spirits of hanged men, the Wandering Jew and etc, with characters interchanging and reappearing in different guises, Potocki's book was never going to be an easy translation to screen.

The task was taken up in 1965 by director Wojciech Has and writer Tadeusz Kwiatkowski, and the results in his original cut ran to over three hours. Seen today, and belatedly issued in the UK, The Saragossa Manuscript is a remarkable discovery, one that any serious cinephile should experience at least once.

The story concerns one Alphonse von Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski - an actor more familiar to some perhaps from Wadja's films like Ashes And Diamonds) and his attempts to travel through the Sierra Morena to Madrid in the 18th century: a milieu redolent, at first, of the dashing bawdry of Tom Jones but which soon blazes a complex metaphysical path of its own. His story is found by a Belgian officer in the embattled Spanish town of Saragossa, in the form of a manuscript with alluring pictures, left in an abandoned house. Von Worden, it turns out was this discoverer's grandfather, it's his thwarted attempts at making progress, and the confusing diversions which interrupt the way, as well as their final effects upon him, that make up the protracted story which follows.

The Saragossa Manuscript falls into to two parts, set over five days, both of which include von Worden (the second half less so) who is frequently just as disorientated as the viewer as the narrative unfolds. The first part centres largely around a haunted inn, where von Worden is seduced by a pair of alluring Moorish princesses, confronted by the demonic ghosts of hanged men, lectured by a hermit and his Igor-like assistant, captured outside by the Inquisition and so on... usually incidents concluding with our unlucky hero disappointed, left to awake next morning chastened but still unlearned at the foot of the gallows.

One of the most interesting things about the film is that, although days are shown passing in regular fashion, von Worden's experiences blur and conflate time into one disorientating experience, so that the passing of hours eventually has no meaning. Instead the audience is confronted with a circular narrative and narratives therein, unfolding like a series of repeatedly opened Russian dolls. How transient life and ambition can be we realise; and how little we really understand about the world we are in, ultimately presented here as a mirror of deception, rather than a veil of truth.

Action in the slightly longer part two settles down a suspiciously cabalistic manor and a vaguely Faustian sanctum, which shortly accommodates story telling gypsies, perhaps those after all to whom the incompetent Inquisition seen earlier ought be better directed. The events told here are more related to love and honour than before, being largely recollections of events in Madrid, but which reach new convolutions as each new character in a yarn has a further account to add to the already swelling narrative flow. Clearly to be seen in the light of the themes of sic transit gloria of the first part, the semi-farcical love trysts of part two seem less weighty and morally significant, although by the end of the film its clear that the effects upon the individual of a final connectiveness cannot be avoided.

As suggested above, The Saragossa Manuscript suggests a lot and at length about what's real and which is a dream, and then of taking life as a necessary mixture of both. The transience of human concerns, and an ultimate, underlying interconnnectedness calls into account the foundations of human reason. Whether or not such topics are given justice, even in the full three hours of screen time, and in a narrative some have seen as more confusing than deeply profound is another matter. As some critics have noticed, there's a sardonic air to Has' movie which detracts from the seriousness of it all, and which allows the film's creators a detachment from their subject matter.

Such a wholly modern interjection of tone is distinct from the original. Cybulski's hero is a man who rarely, if ever, learns the lessons he is so grievously taught, even while they are repeated to him in different ways. This while the semi-farcical, if complicated, love interests of the second part generally reflect a bawdy ignorance of greater matters, rather than insisting upon their inevitable presence. (Interestingly, having said that, this adaptation actually finishes on a darker note than the novel, where von Worden is rewarded at the end, presumably having been successfully initiated into life's mysteries).

But one can see why the film continues to attract admirers; shot in widescreen black and white, frequently making use of a memorably stone-broken, skull-littered, undulating landscape (the uncertain geographies of which echo the manifest internal confusions of von Worden) with bleached bone-coloured rocks, claustrophobic inns and the litter of the charnel house, the first half in particular is especially striking. The director also favours slow tracking movements through his cluttered landscapes. Perhaps these suggest the journey of an objective observer, who eventually hopes to cut through complexity to a revelation, just as the camera crawls through visual confusion to find its final, explicable, subject.

"The Saragossa Manuscript" is a brilliant work, by turns (or simultaneously) mysteriously spooky and wildly funny. Its unusually long running time does not get tiring because it is so full of variety and unfailing inventiveness. The stories of a crowd of distinctive characters intermesh into a unity that is not obvious at first, but slowly grows clearer -- one of the ideas that can be gathered from the movie is precisely that of the interdependence of people who would seem to have little in common, whether Christian, Jew or Moslem. It's a profoundly humanistic idea.

This theme is the contribution of the novelist Jan Potocki, a Pole living in France when he wrote "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa" at the beginning of the 19th century. One of the main strengths of the movie is also mainly Potocki's, the creation of a Spain of dreams, full of romance, mystery, lively humor, and eroticism (the novel found difficulty in being published originally, and the author was criticised for his libertinism). As vividly brought to the screen by Wojcech Has, this Spain is a place that a viewer will want to return to repeatedly.

Has, however, strongly emphasized the phantasmagorical elements in the novel. The atmosphere that he creates, and the visual style that supports it, are another major asset of the movie. The images of the haunted Sierra Morena are consistently touched with strangeness but not overburdened. I think especially of one shot where the tumbled white rocks look just like bleached bones -- an effect that wouldn't have worked so well if the movie had been in color. In keeping with this shift of emphasis, the adaptation contributes a new ending to the story, which is entirely appropriate; it comes from a distinctly twentieth-century sensibility.

Add to this a uniformly skillful cast (special recognition goes to Slawomir Lindner as the elder Van Worden) and you have a movie that I can't recommend strongly enough.

Although I usually try to avoid very long movies, I was glad I took the time to watch this one. Based on Jan Potocki's marvelous, somewhat `enlightened Gothic novel', this is another congenial literary adaptation of Director Wojciech Has; it's a shame this is the only one of his movies easily available. The film tells of a young soldier traveling through Spain and meeting a lot of strange characters that all have their own stories to relate. Of course, the series of interlocked stories-within-stories may appear complicated, but there is always the opportunity to just lean back and enjoy the story being told right now; or to look at the diagram in the great DVD Edition to make things clear. And surely there doesn't seem to be a central thread if you don't watch the end of the movie. (How useful would a review of, say `The usual Suspects' be, if you didn't watch the ending?) And, by the way, there are a lot more stories and framing devices in the novel… It's no wonder that (Danger! Pretentious name-dropping ahead) this is one of Luis Bunuel's favorite movies, the structure of some of his later films, especially `The Milky Way' and `The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' bear a lot of resemblance. And there's a scene in `Monty Python's Life of Brian', in which the Pasheko – Character reappears. (It's too close to be a coincidence.) To cut a long story short: If you prefer films with a straight forward narration; this one's obviously not for you. But if you're open minded and like to see a highly original, imaginative epic, try it.

i have a really low threshold for boredom, and while i saw this on the bigscreen, in a real theatre, i was spellbound. i didnt know what to expect, but it was mesmerising. i didnt try intellectualise it, but it was impossible to pick apart. just see it. put your head into the time period that the story is trying to convey. caveat: i think apocalypse now is an amazing film. redux was great. when i walked out of the theatre after seeing saragossa, i couldnt speak for hours. do yourself a favor and at least give this one a shot. try and see it on the big screen if you can.

"The Saragossa Manuscript" is a very entertaining film that two or three viewings will eventually allow you to understand fully. Its style mixes an easy congeniality and libertine spirit à la "Tom Jones" (1963) with elements of sophisticated comedy and slapstick commedia dell'arte, all delivered by an expert cast and imbued with a tangible sense of fun and mystery.

Its story centers around the efforts by a brave officer in mid-XVIIIth Century Spain to distance himself from ghosts or evil spirits that visit him every night and take the form of two charming Muslim sisters who want to be his lovers and bear his children, even in succubi form, and insist that he convert to Islam. Those erotic (and heretic) reveries also have something to do with devilry and all things forbidden and his encounters with those women are encouraged by the mysterious figure of the Cabalist (another forbidden science) and his sister Rebecca and severely repressed by roaming members of the Catholic Inquisition. This framing story is the pretext for a series of very involving and amusing moral tales told in flashback by several participants, who all echo each other and whose moral seems to be that all religious and social prohibitions and ghost stories should be taken with a grain of salt. In this ocean of mystery and gothicism stands the figure of Don Pedro Velasquez, a mathematician who befriends the hero and who seems the only character to believe in the cold light of reason (foreshadowings of Polanski's "The Fearless Vampire Killers").

After several viewings, the only point in the film which remains mysterious is why Frasqueta's lover (Pena Flor) should appear with a bloodied face when he climbs in her bedroom through a window, a fact the viewer has to provide his own backstory for and which could be evidence that the original film was even longer than the 182 minutes at which it clocks in on the restored DVD edition. (Personal theory: Pena Flor really was Frasqueta's lover and the band of thugs Frasqueta hired to deceive her husband into believing he had paid to have his wife's lover killed really did attempt to kill him before he paid them to kill her husband instead.) Well, that and the fact that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, an early fan of the film and one the persons responsible for its restoration, was fond of quoting a scene from the film that doesn't seem to exist anymore (a character's confrontation with Death at the foot of his bed, which, according to DVD Savant, could come from the 1960 Mexican film "Macario")...

A WORD ABOUT THE DVD: This film was restored thanks to the efforts and money of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and the above-mentioned Jerry Garcia, and the collaboration of the director. It was shot in Dyaliscope, the French CinemaScope equivalent, which is always projected at a standard 2.35:1 ratio. This "enhanced for widescreen TVs" DVD shows an image with a ratio of 2:1, which means that the picture information is still squeezed by a ratio of 15 % in relation to the way it should be shown normally. In this presentation, the picture is "fish-eyed" and the characters and animals appear too slim. There is no way around this problem if you watch it on a 4:3 television set. However, if you own a widescreen TV, you can set-up your DVD player as for a standard 4:3 TV monitor and gently unsqueeze the resulting picture with any one of the "cheater" modes provided by your TV model to approximate a 2:35 presentation. There is no way of knowing if this drawback is the result of simple ignorance (mistaking the 2:1 squeeze of Dyaliscope with a 2:1 projection ratio) or of a compromise allowing to use the greater part of the TV screen in both 4:3 and 1.77:1 TV sets. It took me along time to figure out this problem and I am glad to share this little trick with you.

Before I start gushing about this film, keep in mind that I rarely see European (let alone Polish) films, and I rarely see "vintage" films. The few "art houses" in Denver typically show films, like Crouching Tiger, which are intended for US audiences and distributed to regular first-run theaters in most major cities. Since I don't study the listings religiously, nor do I always have 10 bucks to blow on a film, I rarely encounter films that challenge the norms of either mainstream Hollywood or the recent Hollywood-controlled "indie" film industry. Needless to say, this film floored me. I was immediately amazed by the vividness of its black-and-white imagery. While b/w has become an overused technique to depict bleakness, this film reminded me just how little all the high-tech Hollywood production methods actually use the medium of film itself to its fully expressive potential. This film is visually stunning in its images' depth, textures, and light. The next thing that struck me was how outrageously funny the film is--funnier than I could have imagined a 40 year-old movie from a culture about which I know almost knowing. Three hours later, I didn't want the film to end. Its cycles of absurd story lines, surreal dialog, and engaging imagery were utterly new and engrossing to me. Despite my Luddite tendencies, I have vowed that when this film is released on DVD, I'll go out and get a player just to see this film over and over again. Perhaps then I'll have more critical comments--for now, just WOW.

Upon finding a book that relates his grandfather's story, an officer ventures through Spain meeting a wide array of characters, most of whom have a story of their own to tell.

The film was released in Poland uncut at 182 minutes, but it was shortened for release in the U.S. and UK at 147 minutes and 125 minutes, respectively. During the 1990s Jerry Garcia, together with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, financed a restoration and subtitling of an uncut print of the film. The restored film, re-released in 2001, is commercially available in VHS and DVD formats.The film is among 21 digitally restored classic Polish films chosen for Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

I don't even know that this needs a review. It is a great film, although a bit long for the casual viewer. When you have Scorsese and Coppola both endorsing a film, that is a great sign. Then throw in Luis Bunuel, and you know you have something special. But Jerry Garcia? I highly doubt any other film can claim such a diverse range of fans.

I saw this one on TV many years ago and I was captivated! In the second change I had, I recored it on video and when my cassete was destroyed, I made a hopeless search in the internet, only to find that soon I could buy it on DVD. And I did. I just can't get away from this masterpiece of cinematography. Based on a book, clearly inspired from the 1001 nights, telling a story inside a story, inside a story (I love this), with a lot of Jorge Louis Borges magic I guess, celebrates the true joy of cinema, where nothing is more important that watch the film itself! The story is incredible, but just, doesn't matter! All I want with this one, is to see it again and again, not trying to understand the dark parts of it, or the connections between the stories, or to find my way out of the labyrinth that is build around you as you continue more inside its plot, but just to loose myself in it, be a part of it, and not wish to get out.

Not for everyone, but probably a great choice if you don't like Chuck Norris too much!

A beautifully shot film with incredible costume and set design. The story within a story within a story gives it a dreamlike quality that is very engaging, but 3 hours is too much for a film with such a loose narrative. Once I reached 2hrs 30 I was done. I liked the characters, but had little investment in the outcome of their stories.

Certainly worth watching as there is a lot of merit here, but if I return to it, I'll watch it in sections only, not in it's entirety.

People have loved storytelling since the beginning of time. Stories that captivate us, stories that give us chills, stories that excite us, and stories that make us think are all great, but some stories do all of these such as The Saragossa Manuscript (Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie). The Saragossa Manuscript is quite possibly one of the best Polish films ever made and is one of my favorites. Based on the novel written by Jan Potocki, this classic Polish movie directed by Wojciech Has is not straightforward, but rather resembles a complicated tapestry.

During the Napoleonic wars in Spain, two soldiers from opposing sides become fascinated by the same object. A French officer finds a manuscript on the second floor of a tavern, but the town is soon captured by the Spanish. The Spaniard, seeing the importance of the tome, translates it to the Frenchman who is unable to read the book as it is written in Spanish. The book describes the adventures of one of the Spaniard's ancestors, Alfonse Van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski). Humorously, when the Spanish troops tell their commander "we are being surrounded" he only tells them "close the door, you are letting in a draft." Alfonse Van Worden is trying to pass the Sierra Morena Mountains of Spain in the 18th century on his way to Madrid. But his passage is no simple task, as ghosts, gypsies and inquisitors complicate his voyage. On the hillside is an inn that is cared for by people who too afraid to spend the night there themselves. Van Worden disregards the superstitious people, only to be taken to a basement of the inn by a mysterious woman. In the basement, he meets two beautiful Moorish princesses that want him to be their husband, but quickly make him drink from a chalice made from a human skull. He wakes up on the hillside some distance from the inn near two hanging men with many skulls strewn about the ground.

When Van Worden wakes up, he makes his best effort to continue to Madrid, but ends up meeting a number of people and is always delayed. The people he meets tell him their story, and the people in the story tell their story also. Like a nesting egg, the movie becomes a story in a story in a story. The stories interlink and overlap, each filling us in with details the others where not aware of. While it nearly resembles a horror with creepy ghosts and ghouls, the story is also amusing and funny with curious tales of exploits and adventures. The Saragossa Manuscript also has en erotic side with gorgeous women at every turn. While parts of the story resemble a horror, the rest is like a romance or even a comedy. The Saragossa Manuscript is a sophisticated film brimming with mystical and occult elements.

Anticipating Pasolini's TRILOGY OF LIFE, Polish tastemaker Wojciech Has's THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT is an enterprising matryoshka-structured miscellany of tales, affirmatively tackling Jan Potocki's 1815 novel THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, after a succinct frame story set in the town of Saragossa during, the rest of the narrative jumps 100-years back to the 18th Century Spain, where our token protagonist Alfonso van Worden (Cybulski), the captain in the Walloon Guard, fetches up in a haunted inn where he meets two beautiful girls Emina (Czyzewska) and Zibelda (Jedryka), who claim that they are his cousins and both will marry him with alacrity if he converts to Islam. But the next day, Alfonso wakes up in the gallows and the girls have vanished, he encounters sundry characters hereafter, a hermit priest (Opalinski) trying to cure a possessed one-eyed man Pacheco (Pieczka), who has had his own mishap with two beauties, a team of inquisitors, a posse of gangsters (whose leaders appear to be resurrected from the gallows), and recounts stories of his duel-avid father (Lindner). Only when he meets a cabalist Don Pedro Uzeda (Pawlikwoski), the locale changes to the latter's castle, where additional characters are introduced including a great raconteur Don Avadoro (Niemczyk), from his tale, the film segues into a labyrinthine tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale-and-so-on pattern, which requires keen attention to keep tabs on who is who, during a catenation of (mis)-adventures among noblemen.

Whereas each snippet is garnished with ample ridicule and a beguiling naivety, for want of a tie-in with a contemporary viewer's more level-headed receptacle due to its removed time-line and sketchy caricature, acquired taste is prerequisite to savor its foolery and follies, not to mention the cast's theatrical acting style doesn't quite help to split the difference between its frivolous fodder and an indiscriminate process of assimilation required to its spectatorship.

Laden with numinous symbols and memento mori, skulls (a skull goblet is a salient prop), gallows, cadavers, etc., Wojciech Has' expressively dreamed up saga blithely oozes with a mythic allure that would well keeps a more high-brow audience hooked, it proffers an array of religious, ethnic, occult inclusion (cabalism, Muslim, Islam, Romany), and its awe-inspring monochromatic cinematography, elaborate period costumes and settings, plus a rhapsodic symphonic score, either of them alone is worth allotting 3-hour of our lives to revel in its grandeur, if, either mysticism or romp is your cuppa.

I am a lover of spooky movies. Let me say, without intellectual mumbo-jumbo, that the scenes involving the succubus sisters with Alfredo are absolutely terrific, with the most incredible mood, surreal atmosphere, and gorgeous women.

However (yes, there is a 'however'... or two)... the film doesn't take this to its logical conclusion. While some may find the incessant flashback-into-present origami/napkin-folding storyline to be exhilarating, I found it to be tedious. Blame it on my film-watching habits, if you like... when a movie is interesting, and I begin to get involved and engrossed, I'm not inclined to being ripped out of the hypnotic state I'm in. If you want to say that the director meant it this way, or that "it follows the book," that still doesn't excuse setting the table and then not serving dinner.

I *did* watch the entire 3-hour director's cut, and I *did* understand every aspect of the film, all of the subplots, and the tie-em-up finale. I "get" the black-and-white significance, and even "dug" the Polish actors as caballeros. But it just didn't move me.

Particularly annoying was the subplot concerning Suarez and Moro. Call me lowbrow, but the slapstick antics of that segment did not cause me to chuckle, but to bristle.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment came after I had already accepted that the film would drag, but promised myself that some life-altering messages might be thrust my way. Alas for me, none did. No humanist credo, no foibles to examine. Just a few vague moments of spine-tingling thrills, and some very pretty females. Not enough to warrant 180 minutes.

So, get your index finger ready to give me a low score, because I don't recommend this as a chiller, nor a comedy, nor even an "event," but only for aficionados of puzzling foreign films.

Oh boy. I first saw this about thirty years ago, and have caught it twice since. Other than a slight reservation concerning its length, I find it a delight, and would love to see it again. In form, it resembles the Gothic novel that was popular at the turn of the 19th century, with its nested plots and bizarre ambiances and characters. The novel on which it's based was recently published in an English translation, and proves to be a delight as well--literate, witty, and dizzying. The photography and design of this film are breathtaking, and I think it's definitely worth a viewing, if, as, and when it comes around. I advise strongly against looking for Inner Meaning. It's kind of like seeing an exhibition of Magritte paintings; sometimes a flaming tuba is just a flaming tuba.

Beautifully executed frame tale in the tradition of Decameron and Canterbury tales. the network of stories presented during Napoleonic Wars weaves together the tales and adventures of a young officer Alfons van Worden in the king's Walloon guard on his way to Corduba during the end of the 18th century.This is one of my favorite movies and is a masterpiece of film narrative. the story meshes together the tales of a cast of colorful characters met by the protagonist Alfons van Worden. Top performances from some of Poland's renowned actors and some aspiring actors who owe the success of their later careers in no small part to their performances in this movie.

Perhaps more than any other film, Saragossa Manuscript begs for multiple viewings. A fascinating way to watch this movie is to simply see it as space unfolding. At the highest level the structure is a set of interconnected stories which loop back on one another. Each story is a separate, nested world with a narrator who serves as a portal. This is not unlike current theories in physics about the multiverse, with separate worlds that wormhole into and out of one another, connected by black holes.

Also, the frame by frame construction of the film is deeply spacial. The setting of the Sierra Morena seems to have not a single flat surface and the camera is often askew to accentuate this. Elaborately constructed sets are filled with boundaries and connections. Characters interact thru barred windows and seem to constantly flow into and out of doorways and windows. There are many long narrow corridors and alley ways. The camera captures ascending and descending stairways and shots are wide angle to create a feeling of great depth. Often action is focused on a figure in the foreground while another character secretly slips into or out of the room thru a doorway in some distant corner.

This unsettling and masterful manipulation of space is in large part what propel the story so convincingly, since the many boundaries and connections determine which relationships are consummated and which things remain forever out of reach.

I last saw this film at the Electric Cinema Club in Portobello Rd London over 25 years ago, yet it had such an impact on me I can still remember it clearly and with great affection. It certainly is a film that can on each viewing reveal something new. Does anyone know if it would be available on video? After 25+ years of thinking about it I may be able to solve the mystery.

'Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie' (or as it is also known as,'The Saragossa Manuscript)is one of those strange little films that originally had a limited release in the U.S. (and a version cut by just under an hour.at that). This film,however came to the attention of Grateful Dead founder,Jerry Garcia,while attending a screening (in a questionable state of mind,I'm sure),back in 1966. He was so blown away by this film that he wanted others to see it,but that open window of opportunity was closed by the time he alerted his friends. He searched for years to get the American rights to distribute it out of his own pocket. Sadly,by the time of his death,news had arrived from Europe that a 35mm print of the original directors cut (which ran just over three hours)had become available. In memory of Garcia,the film's American distribution was handled by Francis Coppola & Steven Spielberg. Just why did Jerry Garcia go crackers over this film? Well,for one, this is a very surreal & psychedelic film,taken from the 19th century novel by Jan Potocki,which is about a very strange book that falls into the hands of a Flemish Captain,during the Napoleonic wars,and the effects it has on him (as well as anybody else who comes upon it). Wojciech Has directs a top notch cast of Polish actors,including the great Zbigniew Cybulski (star of many a prolific Polish film,including Wajda's Ashes & Diamonds,and others). Tadeusz Kwiatkowski's screenplay brings out the best in what is probably a difficult novel to make the transfer to the screen. This is the kind of film that one does not need the use of psychedelic drugs to get the utmost effect from (but probably wouldn't hurt). Not rated by the MPAA, this film does contain a bit of graphic violence,and a bit of mature content.

Sorry but I'm really not going to jump on the bandwagon with this one. What could had been a great but foremost entertaining, epic movie, just wasn't.

That's really the biggest problem of the movie; it just isn't very entertaining. The movie started out alright and it actually looked like this was going to be a likable adventure movie but it very soon turned into one that consisted only out of a bunch of uninteresting characters, sitting down and talking to each other.

And that's all this movie was to me really; talk, talk, talk! And that for 3 hours long. No, I found very little enjoyment in this movie, though I still can't rate it poorly, since it's definitely a good looking movie and got skilfully put together, by director Wojciech Has.

I loved the fact that the movie looked as if it was going to be an adventurous story of almost epic proportions, in perhaps the same style as an ancient Greek tale, filled with strange situations and unusual characters that had to be dealt with. But imagining my disappointment when the movie started heading into a totally different and far less interesting direction. I expected to love every second of this movie but I ended up counting the seconds for this movie to end.

In that regard this movie really reminded me of the movie "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp", which is also an highly rated one by about everybody else but is one I just couldn't like. It's similar because both are movies that present themselves as big, long, adventurous, fun movies, that however in my opinion totally forgot to deliver on its entertainment. What they also have in common is that their main character really isn't that interesting or likable. I like Zbigniew Cybulski (the Polish James Dean) and all but I just couldn't really like his character in this movie.

I wouldn't exactly say that I was bored with this movie, it just was one that couldn't ever really interest me. Not with its story, not with its characters, not with its humor, not with its entertainment, not with its settings. In other words, with nothing really. I won't start yelling that I want these 3 hours of my life back but I will say that 3 hours is a long time for watching a movie that I never really liked.

One thing I did like was the way the movie looked. Even though I didn't liked the movie very much it still was obvious to me what a talented director Wojciech Has was. He had a very visual and a bit of a surreal approach, which he added to the movie. Who knows, maybe I'll still end up loving some of his other worked, since I'm normally also actually quite fond of Polish cinema.

There is nothing really horrible about this movie. It just was one I never got into and cared about, mostly because it to me never became interesting and/or entertaining enough.

6/10

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As "The Hourglass Sanatarium", The Saragossa Manuscript whirrs a complex web of crazy sequences. It is a fantasy masterpiece. A journey you want to experience again and again and again. Surrealism is a highly sporadic film subgenre, and the Polish director Has has mastered it. With its amazing envoirmental prop and costumes "The Saragossa Manuscript" drives you away from reality and drops you in an infinite world of towering, neverending oddities. Amazing! it is a dazzling experience with its intricate, convoluted beauty. And its enigmatic meaning can be interpreted to the extent, only determined by the viewer's imagination.

The Saragossa Manuscript (Polish: Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie, "The Manuscript found in Zaragoza") is a 1965 Polish film directed by Wojciech Has, based on the 1815 novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki. Set primarily in Spain, it tells a frame story containing gothic, picaresque and erotic elements. In a deserted house during the Napoleonic Wars, two officers from opposing sides find a manuscript, which tells the tale of the Spanish officer's grandfather, Alphonso van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski). Van Worden travelled in the region many years before, being plagued by evil spirits, and meeting such figures as a Qabalist, a sultan and a Romani person, who tell him further stories, many of which intertwine and interrelate with one another. Amazing!

A soldier in the Napoleonic wars discovers an ancient book written by his ancestor, filled with many continually diverging tales.

This is one of those films most famous for not being seen by many people, and while it is a handsome thing to look at, with moments of undeniable charm, I can't really say most people have missed out on all that much.

'The Saragossa Manuscript' is a three hour shaggy dog story that could easily have been edited down to 80 minutes and not have lost anything of any value. While it has islands of humour and a small number of fantastic images, none of the characters mean anything to us, and it's never all that funny, so the overall story becomes very boring very fast. And while it is a delightful premise, and the fundamental framework it rests upon ingenious and imaginative, just about everything else about it is padding: there's nothing to learn from it, it has no wisdom about the true nature or purpose of stories to impart to us and there aren't any real surprises along the way.

So it's a story about stories, but not a very good story in itself, and I guess that's the crux of the problem, all in all.

"The Saragossa Manuscript" is certainly an authentic masterpiece. Although its' duration is nearly 3 hours, the interest of the spectator does not fade in any part of the film. It is a fairy tale which contains several stories, something that could cause a confusion to the viewer. Here, we speak of something completely different. The narration flows so well that leads to the interference of the sub stories naturally, with no need of cheap tricks, which are very often used by many modern filmmakers at their vain attempts to imitate "Pulp Fiction". The artistic part is excellent and acting is brilliant from all the participants. Highly recommended!!! Νevertheless, its' fame is not so well spread as it deserves and possibilities of bumping into it is only at late night screenings of a national TV network or at a marginal cinema theater.

This could have been one of the all time great films, and maybe the best adaptation ever, but for me it failed, and because the idea of the book would work so well in film its failure, for me, makes it even more disappointing.

For the book was not perfect, though great, the book suffered from using a technique which does not hold very well with the written word, the coarse editing and stop start endless descriptions of time and place disrupt any sense of poetry/flow and thus dull its overall purpose, making it very clinical in tone. However, these techniques, which fail with words, are exactly what make films flow and turn them into poetry, and this film flowed beautifully and effortlessly between scenes, leaving the core of the story unblemished and indeed enhanced by the sudden changes.

Where as the book was heavy this film was light.

But unfortunately instead of continuing the string of stories into a deep maze (like the book) it merely took a handful of the best bits, reworked the narrative and completely changed the ending, leaving a very weak and simple film behind (completely unlike the book).

If this had the guts to be several hours longer, take a lot more of the book and follow its narrative then it would of completely solved the flaws of the book and out done it in every respect.

So on the one hand you have a book which technically fails but in ambition succeeds and on the other hand a film which technically could of succeeded but fails in ambition.

This book, for me, was a film before film, but its film version lacked guts: jan potocki asked his readers to devote many evenings to reading his book, unfortunately the makers of this film didn't have the confidence to demand more than a few hours from its viewers. Such a shame.

on a side note the score is excellent, and very humorous, but like the film, and maybe because of the film, wasn't taken to any great depths. i would of loved to of seen the Velasquez story followed and heard Penderecki's scoring to the Saraband scene 'forget science and reason all you need do my son is learn to dance the Saraband'. ohwell.