The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)

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.

Director:

Wojciech Has (as Wojciech J. Has)

Writers:

Tadeusz Kwiatkowski, Jan Potocki (novel)

Stars:

Zbigniew Cybulski, Iga Cembrzynska, Elzbieta Czyzewska

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Zbigniew Cybulski	...	Alfonse Van Worden
Iga Cembrzynska	...	Princess Emina
Elzbieta Czyzewska	...	Donna Frasquetta Salero
Gustaw Holoubek	...	Don Pedro Velasquez
Stanislaw Igar	...	Don Gaspar Soarez
Joanna Jedryka	...	Zibelda
Janusz Klosinski	...	Don Diego Salero
Bogumil Kobiela	...	Senor Toledo
Barbara Krafftówna	...	Camilla de Tormez
Jadwiga Krawczyk	...	Donna Inez Moro
Slawomir Lindner	...	Van Worden's father
Krzysztof Litwin	...	Don Lopez Soarez
Miroslawa Lombardo	...	Van Worden's mother
Jan Machulski	...	Count Pena Flor
Zdzislaw Maklakiewicz	...	Don Roque Busqueros

Storyline

In the Napoleonic wars, an officer finds an old book that relates his grandfather's story, Alfons van Worden, captain in the Walloon guard. A man of honor and courage, he seeks the shortest route through the Sierra Morena. At an inn, the Venta Quemada, he sups with two Islamic princesses. They call him their cousin and seduce him; he wakes beside corpses under a gallows. He meets a hermit priest and a goatherd; each tells his story; he wakes again by the gallows. He's rescued from the Inquisition, meets a cabalist and hears more stories within stories, usually of love. He returns to Venta Quemada, the women await with astonishing news.

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Plot Keywords:

oneiric | topless female nudity | deception | napoleonic wars | inquisition | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Fantasy

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Details

Official Sites:

Mr Bongo Films

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish

Release Date:

9 February 1965 (Poland)

Also Known As:

El manuscrito encontrado en Zaragoza

Filming Locations:

Olsztyn, Slaskie, Poland

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$13,377

Company Credits

Production Co:

Kamera Film Unit

Technical Specs

Runtime:

182 min 175 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Luis Buñuel, who seldom viewed movies more than once, liked this film so much that he saw it three times.

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Quotes

Alfonse Van Worden: I must have been put to sleep with a potion and taken to the gallows.
Donna Rebecca Uzeda: Then you got under the Zota brothers' gallows?
[he nods]
Donna Rebecca Uzeda: And found them both hanged?
Alfonse Van Worden: Do they, by chance, have the habit of coming down?
Donna Rebecca Uzeda: Very often, usually at night.

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Alternate Versions

Originally released in a cut version in the US, the film was restored to it's original 182-minutes running time and premiered at the New York Film Festival in September 1997. The restoration project, supervised by Edith Kramer, was initially sponsored by Grateful Dead's leader Jerry Garcia and later completed by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. The restored version includes a dedication to Jerry Garcia.

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Connections

Referenced in Chuck: Chuck Versus Bo (2012)

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Soundtracks

Ode to Joy
Taken from "Symphony No. 9 IV movement ('Finale')"
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven

User Reviews

Sarogassa see it

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.