184-185 The Hourglass Sanatorium & The Saragossa Manuscript

[MichaelB]

The Noose is the one whose absence from international distribution (aside from France, Has’s long-term national champions) is truly baffling.

It was refused an export licence at the time, because the authorities didn’t think that a film about an unrepentant alcoholic was an ideal cultural ambassador at a time (1958) when people were only just beginning to discover Polish culture in volume, but that’s obviously not relevant now.

Anyway, for my money it’s the single strongest Polish feature debut between the end of WWII and Polanski’s Knife in the Water, because Has was lucky with his timing; while peers like Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz and Andrzej Wajda had to conform to the tenets of Socialist Realism with their debut features (although Munk’s Man on the Tracks and Wajda’s A Generation are good examples of how clever directors could get around some, but not all, the restrictions), Has had much more freedom.

I was at last year’s BFI Southbank screening of The Noose, and people were absolutely stunned by it; I eavesdropped on assorted conversations as they were leaving, which were variations on a general theme of “why the hell hasn’t that been part of the world cinema canon for decades”?

[49CHOMPS]

The making-if documentary is especially exciting.

YouTube is terrible for searching for any interview of Has. Between all of the Yellow Veil releases, I was beginning to believe there was no footage of the man.

[Orlac]

In my school library, we had a copy of the 1976 book Science Fiction Movies by Philip Strick, and the picture of the scantily clad maidens from this movie (plus Valerie Perrine from Slaughterhouse Five) meant the book was very popular with the lads!

[Maltic]

It's a much better film book than any of the ones in my school library.

There was, though, a reprint of Delacroix's topless Marianne leading the people in one of the encyclopedias.

[videozor]

Newly improved English subtitle translation

This will be welcomed. I did not watch the recent VS edition, but subtitles on Mr. Bongo discs were much inferior to the ones on very old Image DVD.

[MichaelB]

Mr Bongo’s disc was a clone—as in the machine-readable side being literally identical—of the first Polish BD release, so the subtitles will have originated there.

I haven’t seen the Radiance subtitles, but I can confirm that the ones for The Hourglass Sanatorium were different from previous BD releases.