The Saragossa Manuscript (film)

Infobox Film | name =The Saragossa Manuscript
caption =
director = Wojciech Has
producer = Kamera Film Unit
writer = Jan Potocki (novel)
Tadeusz Kwiatkowski
starring =Zbigniew Cybulski
Iga Cembrzynska
cinematography =
music = Krzysztoff Penderecki
editing =
distributor = Film Polski
released = 1965
runtime = 182 min
language = Polish
budget =
amg_id = v108871
imdb_id = 0059643

"The Saragossa Manuscript" is the English title for "Rękopis znaleziony w Saragosie", a Polish film released in 1965, directed by Wojciech Has.

While the film was released in the in Poland uncut at 182 minutes it was shortened for release in the U.S. and UK at 147 min. and 125 min. 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.

Plot

Set in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, Alfons (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young army captain who discovers an old book that tells the story of his grandfather, Alfons van Worden, who was a captain in the Walloon Guard. The younger van Worden reads of how his ancestor sought the shortest route through the Sierra Morena Mountains. At an apparently deserted inn, the Venta Quemadda, he dined with Moorish princesses, Emina (Iga Cembrzynska) and Princess Zibelda (Joanna Jedryka), who inform the captain that they are his cousins and, as the last of the Gomelez line, he must marry them both to provide heirs. He'll have to convert to Islam, but then delights of all sorts will await him. This gets the good captain's attention, and he drinks with the ladies gladly, only to wake and find himself back in a forbidding countryside, lying next to a heap of skulls 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 Spanish Inquisition, meets a cabalist and hears more stories within stories, usually of love.

Novel

The film is based on a novel of the same name written in French by the Polish author Jan Potocki (1760-1815).

Trivia

* Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Luis Buñuel, Lars von Trier, Harvey Keitel and Jerry Garcia have at various times described "The Saragossa Manuscript" as their favorite film.
* "The Saragossa Manuscript" is one of the very few films in which Polish stage and screen legend Zbigniew Cybulski does not act while wearing his customary Wayfarer dark glasses.
* The film was shot near Częstochowa, Poland, and in Wrocław, Poland.

See also

*Cinema of Poland
*List of Polish language films
*The Hour-Glass Sanatorium; another unusual film by director Wojciech Has
*List of surrealist films
*The Saragossa Manuscript

External links

* [http://www.thesaragossamanuscript.info Ultimate Saragossa Manuscript Fansite- Info, original articles etc]
*imdb title|id=0059643|title=The Saragossa Manuscript
* [http://www.globalenglish.info/saragossamanuscript/index.html Martin A. Schell's excellent Saragossa Manuscript website]