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The Saragossa Manuscript

1965, Movie, NR, 155 mins

The Saragossa Manuscript: Review

SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT, THE | MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA | REKOPIS ZNALEZIONY W SARAGOSSIE
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There are eight million stories in the naked city, and almost as many folded into this elegant, gorgeous and slyly funny adaptation of the early 19th-century novel by Jan Potocki. The framing story involves a Belgian soldier, Capt. Alphonse van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski, often called the James Dean of Poland), who takes refuge from battle in an abandoned barn and finds a marvelous book. It recounts the escapades of an adventurer named Gomelez (Cybulski again) as he tries to navigate some haunted hills en route to Madrid. Gomelez repeatedly ignores warnings not to stay in any deserted inns and therefore encounters all manner of supernatural spirits, notably a pair of seductive Muslim princesses (Iga Cembrzynska, Joanna Jedryka) who insist that he's their long-lost cousin and the man they're both going to marry. That sounds fine to him, except that he keeps awaking from their visits on the same rocky hillside, under the same makeshift gallows, near the same rotting corpses of a pair of bandit brothers. And on top of that, everyone Gomelez encounters has a story, and some of their stories involve stories that were told to them... the tale-within-a-tale structure is ultimately quite dizzying, and involves everything from cabalists to demonic possession and the Spanish Inquisition. Kryzystof Penderecki's bizarre score just adds to the general aura of weirdness. Sure, it's long, puzzling and just plain wacky: But what else would you expect from a movie whose most ardent fans included Luis Bunuel and Jerry Garcia? (In Polish, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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