Movies - The Saragossa Manuscript

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	Movies - The Saragossa Manuscript

The Saragossa Manuscript is the English title for Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie, a film released in 1965, directed by Wojciech Has.

Set in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, Alfons (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young army captain who discovers an old book that tells the story of his grandfather, Alfons van Worden, who was a captain in the Walloon Guard. The younger van Worden reads of how his ancestor sought the shortest route through the Sierra Morena Mountains. At an apparently deserted inn, the Venta Quemada, he dined with Moorish princesses, Emina (Iga Cembrzynska) and Princess Zibelda (Joanna Jedryka), who inform the captain that they are his cousins and, as the last of the Gomelez line, he must marry them both to provide heirs. He'll have to convert to Islam, but then delights of all sorts will await him. This gets the good captain's attention, and he drinks with the ladies gladly, only to wake and find himself back in a forbidding countryside, lying next to a heap of skulls under a gallows. He meets a hermit priest and a goatherd; each tells his story; he wakes again by the gallows. He's rescued from the Spanish Inquisition, meets a cabalist and hears more stories within stories, usually of love.

The film is based on a novel of the same name written in French by the Polish author Jan Potocki (1761-1815). Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Luis Buñuel and Jerry Garcia have at various times described The Saragossa Manuscript as their favorite film.

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