The Hourglass Sanatorium

Original title: Sanatorium pod Klepsydra

19731973
2h 4min

Józef visits his dying father at a remote mental institution, where time itself doesn't seem to exist, and the line between dreams and memories becomes indistinguishable.Józef visits his dying father at a remote mental institution, where time itself doesn't seem to exist, and the line between dreams and memories becomes indistinguishable.Józef visits his dying father at a remote mental institution, where time itself doesn't seem to exist, and the line between dreams and memories becomes indistinguishable.

7.6/10

3.9K

Director
- Wojciech Has
Writers
- Wojciech Has
- Bruno Schulz(story "Santorium pod Klepsydra")
Stars

Top credits

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See more at IMDbPro

Awards
- 2 wins & 1 nomination

A1 movie poster - 59 x 84 cm or 23 x 33 inches

Jan Nowicki in Sanatorium pod Klepsydra (1973)

Director
- Wojciech Has
Writers
- Wojciech Has
- Bruno Schulz(story "Santorium pod Klepsydra")
All cast & crew
See more cast details at IMDbPro

The film depicts its protagonist, Joseph (Jan Nowicki), traveling through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father in a sanatorium. When he arrives at the hospital, he finds the entire facility is going to ruin and no one seems to be in charge, or even caring for the patients. Time appears to behave in unpredictable ways, reanimating the past in an elaborate artificial caprice. —Mr Bongo

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Genres
Parents guide
- Add content advisory

Trivia
Despite the communist authorities' ban on the film, it was in secret sent to Cannes in film cans with false inscriptions on them. Because of this incident, Has couldn't make any movie for the next 8 years.

Top review

10/10

Bizarre and haunting

Based on a story collection of the same name by Bruno Schulz, who was shot by the Gestapo in 1942, this movie is one of the rare cases of a congenial adaptation of modern fantastic literature. It's a demanding movie and it is impossible to extract something like a plot line. There are various changes in between time and space, but once you get involved with the narrative, they seem perfectly logical. Also, there are many highly impressive sequences and settings - i have read somewhere (i can't give no reference right now, sorry) that it was the most expensive movie ever made in Poland, and maybe it still is. It certainly is one of the best. And, by the way, there is one scene with a room stuffed full of mannequins that looks like an inspiration to a similar sequence in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", which is a great movie of its kind, but was made some years later and did much better at the box office.

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