A visual and absurd cornucopia. A surreal and powerful adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s short story Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.
Wojciech Has, the filmmaker behind the magnificent and cryptically surreal epic fable The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), turned to an even more absurd literary work a few years later when he took on Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (along with elements from other Schulz stories). The result was The Hourglass Sanatorium, a true high point of surrealist cinema.
The film opens aboard a particularly bizarre train, where passengers lie sprawled in various states of dress and undress, before a blind conductor wakes our protagonist and tells him he must get off. There is no station, and he has no idea where to go, yet he eventually reaches his destination: the Hourglass Sanatorium. He is searching for his father, who is said to be a patient at this remote and decaying palace of treatment. The therapies practised there involve the manipulation of time and keeping patients in a kind of coma. Our protagonist experiences dreams, memories and fantasies merging into a swirling maelstrom of absurd encounters. A deep dive into the wondrous world of the subconscious.
When the film was released in 1973, it was quickly completely banned by the Polish authorities. Such a strange film had to contain extensive system criticism, even if they could not quite identify what it was. Was the film perhaps a critique of the state of public institutions in Poland? When Has managed to smuggle a 35mm print out to the Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize, the authorities were truly angered, and it took ten years before Has was allowed to make another film.
Bruno Schulz, the Jewish author of the original story, died in 1942, shot by a Nazi officer, without having completed his first novel The Messiah (one of the great unanswered questions in Polish literature is what happened to this manuscript). In 1986, the Brothers Quay made the animated film The Street of Crocodiles, based on Schulz’s short story collection of the same name, which has also been adapted into a popular stage production.
The screening is supported by Fundacja PGNiG Grupa Orlen.
NB! Cinematheque screenings are advertisement free, so please arrive on time.
Tickets are sold at Odeon Kino Stavanger.
Running time 2 hours 4 minutes.
Polish, Yiddish and Latin dialogue, with English subtitles.
Age limit 15 years.