Gems from the Past
Saragossa, Wojciech Has’ complex (c0nvoluted for some) Polish epic is based on Jan Potocki’s 1815 novel “The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.”
Set primarily in Spain, it tells stories that are imbued with gothic, picaresque and erotic elements.
In a deserted house during the Napoleonic Wars, two officers from opposing sides find a manuscript, which tells the tale of the Spanish officer’s grandfather, Alphonso van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski).
Van Worden traveled in the region, being plagued by evil spirits, and meeting such figures as a Qabalist, a sultan and a Romani person, who tell him further stories, which intertwine and interrelate with one another.
The film was a relative success in Poland and Eastern Europe upon its release. It later achieved critical success in the U.S., when filmmakers Scorsese and Coppola rediscovered it.
During a battle in the Aragonese town of Saragossa, during the Napoleonic Wars, an officer retreats to an inn, where he finds a large book with drawings of two men hanging on a gallows and two women in a bed. An enemy officer tries to arrest him but ends up translating the book for him; the second officer recognizes its author as his own grandfather, who was a captain in the Walloon Guard.
A flashback recounts the tale of the ancestor, Alfonso van Worden, who appears with two servants, seeking the shortest route through the Sierra Morena Mountains.
The two men warn him against taking his chosen route because it leads through haunted territory. At an apparently deserted inn, the Venta Quemada, he is invited to dine with two Moorish princesses, Emina and Zibelda, in a secret inner room. They inform the captain that they are his cousins and, as the last of the Gomelez line, he must marry them both to provide heirs. However, he must convert to Islam. He jokingly calls them ghosts, despite having told his servants with great bravado that ghosts do not exist. They seduce him and give him a skull goblet to drink from.
He then finds himself back in the desolate countryside, lying next to a heap of skulls under a gallows. He meets a hermit priest who is trying to cure a possessed man; the latter tells his story, which also involves two sisters and a different kind of forbidden love. Alfonso sleeps in the hermitage’s chapel, hearing strange voices at night.
When he wakes and rides off, he is captured by the Spanish Inquisition. He is rescued by the two princesses, aided by the gang of the Zoto brothers (two of whom had appeared dead on the ground near the gallows). Back in the inner room, the two princesses become amorous with Alfonso but they are interrupted by Sheikh Gomelez, who forces the captain at sword point to drink from the skull goblet.
Again Alfonso awakens at the gallows, but this time a cabalist is lying next to him. As they ride to the Cabalist’s castle, they are joined by a skeptical mathematician, who remarks, “The human mind is ready to accept anything, if it is used knowingly.”
This ends part 1 of the film.
Part 2 is primarily filled with the tales told by the leader of gypsies who visit the castle. “Frame story” or “tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale” only begins to describe the complexity–some of the inner tales intertwine–so that later tales shed new light on earlier experiences recounted by other characters.
Multiple viewings of the film are recommended to comprehend the plot, as well as identify the appearance of certain characters before they are “introduced” by the gypsy raconteur.
Alfonso is told to return to the Venta Quemada, where he meets the two princesses. They bid him farewell and the Sheikh gives him a large book for writing the end; the Sheikh explains that the adventure was a “game” designed to test Alfonso’s character.
Alfonso wakes under the gallows again, but his two servants are nearby – it is as if they are about to begin the journey that he has just “dreamed”.
At the small inn in Saragossa, he writes until someone tells him that the two princesses are waiting for him. Laughing, he flings the book aside to its original position =, and rides out to join the princesses.
The film was released in Poland uncut at 182 minutes, but it was shortened in the U.S. and U.K. to 147 minutes and 125 minutes, respectively.
At one point the American rights were owned by a butcher in Chicago. By the 1990s, there was only one known subtitled print in the world and it was incomplete.
As it interweaves the rational with the supernatural, Saragossa becomes a celebration of cinema storytelling due to Chinese-box structure that dazzles with its intricate beauty–still an oddity decades after initial release.
Cast
Zbigniew Cybulski as Alfonse Van Worden
Iga Cembrzyńska as Princess Emina
Elżbieta Czyżewska as Donna Frasquetta Salero
Gustaw Holoubek as Don Pedro Velasquez
Beata Tyszkiewicz as Donna Rebecca Uzeda
Joanna Jędryka as Princess Zibelda
Bogumił Kobiela as Señor Toledo
Zdzisław Maklakiewicz as Don Roque Busqueros
Leon Niemczyk as Don Avadoro
