The Saragossa Manuscript

Please meet the lovely ladies of Islam

1965

Review: August 12, 2008

Director: Wojciech Has

Starring: Zbigniew Cybulski, Iga Cembrzynska, Elzbieta Czyzewska, Gustaw Holoubek

Yes indeed.

THE SETUP:

Book figures prominently into many intriguing mysteries.

DISCUSSION:

Either this was recently re-released or was playing in town or something, because I remember reading how it was such a bizarre masterpiece, full of almost surreal setpieces, so of course it went right onto my list. The one drawback being: it’s three hours long.

This is a Polish film from 1965, adapted from a novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. The movie was cut down to about two hours and released various places, but Jerry Garcia [yes, THAT one] and Martin Scorsese and someone else financed a restoration of the full three-hour cut, and that’s what we have here.

We open in Spain during the Napoleonic wars. There’s a battle, and some soldier ducks into a house, where he soon finds this book. In it, he sees images of two women in an embrace, and two men hanging from a gallows. Then a bunch of guys break in and arrest him, but he tells them to buzz off, he’s reading this book. The arresting officer sits down and starts reading it too, and he is able to translate it. He says it is about his father. They read it together, and we enter the story.

Now this is my first viewing of this extremely complex and convoluted film, so what you’re going to get here is really the best I can piece together from one viewing. This Captain, Alfonso, is accompanied by two servants, and needs to get to Madrid. He says the quickest way to do that is to pass through Venta Quemada, but they warn him not to go through there, that’s where devils and witches reside. He goes anyway. Soon one of the servants is gone, and Alfonso is convinced that he deserted. He wanders alone under two men hanging at the gallows, and soon comes to an inn. The place seems deserted, but soon a strange woman appears and says that these two sisters would like him to dine with them. He goes down to meet them. They are Tunisians, and are Moslem. They react in horror at a Catholic pendant he wears. They say he is the first man they have ever seen, and that they are lovers. They have permission to marry one man between them, and he will be that man. They tell him that he will see them in his dreams only, and by the way, he must convert to Islam. He wakes under the gallows, stretching out his hand and touching two skulls.

So Alfonso wanders around Venta Quemanda some more. The score is very effective and off-kilter percussion noises, and you will notice that he keeps passing by a distinctive rock, that half looks like it has a face carved into it. He wanders into a monastery kind of thing, where an old priest can tell that he has been met by the two sisters, and is in effect tainted. Alfonso tells the story of his own father, who also wandered through those parts. There was a whole thing where he ran another carriage off a road, and ended up in a duel over it, but killed the other guy. Soon after he’s lying on a cart being pulled through the area. He complains about his intense thirst, eventually saying that he’d sell his soul for a drink of water, when who should appear but one of the sisters, with a jug full of water? He ends up marrying her, and this turns out to be Alfonso’s father and mother.

Back in the present day, this one-eyed servant who is said to be possessed tells his story, in which he also falls in love with a mysterious woman, one of two sisters, etc., and wakes up under these gallows next to these two skulls.

So as far as we can piece together so far, it’s about this possessed place ruled over by these two sisters and these two dead men at the gallows, who are said to come down and make mischief among the living. We have several layers of stories-within-stories, eventually going as much as five layers deep, but all of which ultimately relate to these two women who bewitch and confound people, who almost always end up waking under the gallows. This is all told in unsettling compositions in crisp B&W, and at times the whole thing is actually quite scary and horrifying. I would definitely place the first half of the movie in the Horror section. Anyway, I tell you all of this because the movie is going to start veering off in a different direction.

SPOILERS > > >
Alfonso is invited to the castle of a man who lives in the region. The man tells his sister [who he lives with] that he didn’t expect to return so soon, so in effect he and she KNEW Alfonso was coming and have something in store for him. They clothe Alfonso in a robe that has supernatural signs all over it. At one point Alfonso sees the book from the beginning, with the pictures of the two sisters and two men at the gallows. He is amazed, but his host takes the book away while he’s not looking, chiding his sister for leaving it out, saying it would be disastrous if he had read the ending. Then the gypsies arrive.

One of the gypsies tells a long story about when he was a boy, and he went to Madrid. His father forbids him to use the title Don, to use his sword, and to enter into any agreements with the Moros family. The son goes to town, where he meets this injured guy, lying in bed, who tells him another story. It all gets really confusing in here, but basically [you did see we’re in the spoiler zone, right?] the gypsy has left a guy who is prostrating himself on the church steps, because he believes that he has heard the voice of the dead, and this damns him forever. Then the gypsy hears another story, which reveals that the voice the one fellow heard was actually not supernatural, but quite mortal. This releases the guy prostrating himself, who realizes he’s not damned at all. Similarly, it is soon revealed to Alfonso that this whole thing was just a test to determine his courage and steadfastness while they wait to see if he impregnated both women on the first night. So everyone he had met so far had been plants, and the whole thing a charade, which explains why the guy with the castle had the book and talked about how they could have ruined it if Alfonso had read to the end. Alfonso is then given a feather and told he can write his own end to the story. He can now marry both women, but must still convert to Islam.

The movie ends as he walks through a mysterious Islamic portal to the two women on a beach. He wakes by the gallows again, and heads back into Venta Quemanda, where we see two men hanging in the distance.

This is mostly read as actually happening—that he really is released from the spirit world and it was all a test—by people who have seen the more far more often than I have. So I have to defer to them, although I saw the whole thing about him enduring a test as just another story, and found his walk through the Islamic portal as his fully entering into the spirit world. When he heads back into Venta Quemanda, I took it as this thing will jus continue to repeat. But those more informed than me don’t have this interpretation, so…
< < < SPOILERS END

It was good—I’m very glad I saw it. I would say that the first hour is probably the most disturbing and entrancing, and once it was over I definitely felt that a whole hour could have been cut out without missing too much—which is, of course, exactly what happened. Although since I read the detailed outline of the film online [worthwhile, if you see the film], describing the plot closely and all the people and themes that recur throughout the film, which you wouldn’t notice the first time through, it does seem that the whole last hour—which seems to drift further from what one thought was going on—turns out to be quite vital.

Nevertheless, the first hour is quite unnerving and scary, with great photography, unsettling compositions, and a creepy feeling of dread hanging over the proceedings. Great when you want something else that’s a little creepy and decidedly artsy, and a wonderful selection for you, a good friend or two, and a bong. It wasn’t championed by Jerry Garcia for nothing.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Definitely. It's fascinating, and quite oblique at first, but [I am told] rewards intense study.