The Saragossa Manuscript 4K 1965 Ultra HD 2160p

At the end of the 18th century, Jan Potocki wrote a novel that even inspired Alexander Sergeyevich to pen the lines “Alphonse mounts his horse…”. Wojciech Has was also inspired by the novel, but unlike Pushkin, he completed his interpretation.

There are different ways to approach the Polish director’s film. You can view it as a simple adventure film—albeit a somewhat drawn-out one—but a very colorful one, or, as they say nowadays, an atmospheric one. However, no matter how unsophisticated a viewer you may be, your intuition should tell you that things aren’t quite that simple. In a certain sense, of course. And what I mean is that culture has accumulated a multitude of different languages (methods, schemes) for describing not only reality but also art. This is where interpretation begins.

First, *The Saragossa Manuscript* has a touch of surrealism. Both the plot and the structure of the novel contribute greatly to this. The protagonist (and, following him, the reader) feels somewhat bewildered as to where he is at any given moment: in someone else’s fantasy, a dream, or reality; whether he is acting of his own accord or being manipulated. Reality loses its distinguishing features. Moreover, the plot is drawn—by some “mystical” centripetal forces—to the same spot in the Sierra Morena mountains. It’s like a somnambulistic wandering in circles.

Second, even though poststructuralism would not gain popularity until the 1970s, and Roland Barthes would write his seminal essay “The Death of the Author” three years after the film’s release, Wojciech Has had already rejected the traditional conception of a work of art by 1964, since it is “told for the sake of the story itself, rather than for a direct impact on reality” (Barthes, 1967). The director eliminates any sources of meaning external to the work that might definitively “decipher” it. Already in the prologue, the viewer learns that the manuscript containing the entire plot has been found, its author is unknown (in the best Romantic traditions), and it is read by minor characters; the ending is not merely left open; it literally illustrates the fundamental impossibility of completion (and yet it is precisely the ending that, as a rule, is supposed to define the work’s meaning); the main narrative, meanwhile, has 5–6 layers of storytelling (a character tells a story in which a character tells a story about a character who tells a story). As a result, all that remains of the traditional work is the Text—a narrative that, despite the film’s physical conclusion, promises to continue. As Barthes wrote, the text, in this case, does not “close” or “come to a halt”; it remains fundamentally open. Everything is left to the discretion of the individual viewer.

On the one hand, such uncertainty gives rise to the gloom of the “mysterious,” since nothing is clear, and the viewer, out of habit, seeks the “Truth.” On the other hand, the realization of what has been said relieves the neurosis of searching for absolute meaning and calls on the viewer/reader to muster a little courage in interpretation. This is a direct step toward postmodernism, but I believe this is precisely what Wojciech Has is illustrating.

And here I would like to return to the intuition I voiced earlier—that things aren’t so simple. It turns out, in fact, that everything is quite simple. The fact is that it’s also possible to interpret this film in terms of “What’s this film about? Nothing at all!” But following the logic I’ve outlined, this says more about the viewer than about the work itself or its physical creator.