The Saragossa Manuscript
Wojciech Has, 1964, 182 min

“Admired by the likes of Luis Buñuel, David Lynch, Lucrecia Martel and Jerry Garcia – who spearheaded its 1997 restoration – The Saragossa Manuscript fully deserves its legendary status as one of most unclassifiable and extraordinary cult/art films of the postwar European cinema. Has' oneiric trance film famously uses a Russian doll structure to leap across time and space, following its unlikely hero across a series of bleak, frightening yet strangely exuberant, landscapes, largely set in a dream Andalusia. Grim and ecstatic, febrile and hypnotic, Has' Gothic fantasy is a heady affirmation of the power of the cinematic imagination to create and destroy entire worlds. Almost as legendary as The Saragossa Manuscript is its haunting electroacoustic score by Polish master composer Krzysztof Penderecki.” – Harvard Film Archive

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Part of our Histoire(s) du cinéma series