The Saragossa Manuscript

The Saragossa Manuscript, a 1965 film from Poland directed by Wojciech Has, became something of a cult favorite among younger American moviegoers at the time, dovetailing with the psychedelic era of the late 60s. After five decades we can see that it’s more sophisticated than the original fan base might have led us to believe. Attempting to make a film from the huge novel, completed in 1814, by Count Jan Potocki—a work containing over a hundred different tales—was an ambitious undertaking, to put it mildly. Has and his screenwriter Tadeusz Kwiatkowski pared the structure down to about ten major strands, filmed…