Movies - The Hour-Glass Sanatorium

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	Movies - The Hour-Glass Sanatorium

The Hour-Glass Sanatorium or "The Sandglass" are English titles for Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą, a film released in 1973, directed by Wojciech Has (well known for his surreal epic The Saragossa Manuscript).

Has adopted the story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą) by Bruno Schulz for the screenplay of this demanding film. The film presents a poetic, visually refined "journey through the convolutions of time" as experienced by the protagonist, Joseph (Jan Nowicki). The young Joseph finds himself travelling through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father in a sanatorium. When he arrives at the hospital, he finds the entire facility is going to ruin and no one seems to be in charge, or even caring for the patients. Time appears to behave in unpredictable ways, reanimating the past in an elaborated artificial caprice. Among the many occurrences in this visually potent phantasmagoria; Joseph re-enters childhood episodes with his eccentric father (who lives with birds), is arrested by a mysterious unit of soldiers, reflects on a girl he knew in his boyhood and brings historic wax figures to life with names from a postage stamp album. Throughout his strange journey, an ominous blind train conductor reappears like a death figure.

In transferring the literary source to film, Has also added a series of reflections on the Holocaust that were not present in the original novel, reading Schulz's prose through the prism of the author's tragic death during World War II and the demise of the world he described. This approach has been considered an excessive indulgence by some critics, inspired creative license by others. The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1973.

Credits

Screenplay: Wojciech J. Has
Cinematography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Jerzy Maksymiuk
Art Directors: Jerzy Skarzynsk, Andrzej Plocki

Cast

Joseph: Jan Nowicki
Jacob: Jozef Kondrat
Mother: Irena Orska
Dr. Gotard: Gustaw Holoubek
Adela: Halina Kowalska
Rudolph: Filip Zylber
Bianca: Bozena Adamek
M. de V.: Jerzy Przybylski
Train Conductor: Mieczyslaw Voit

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