Wojciech Jerzy Has
1925 - 2000Has made his debut with Harmony (Harmonia, 1948), a medium-length feature, and began making full-length feature films in 1957. In 1974, he was appointed as professor in the directing department at the National Film School in Łódź. Throughout his long and prolific career, he directed such notable films as The Saragossa Manuscript, The Doll and The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (also known as The Sandglass).
Early on in his career, Has gained a reputation as an individualist who avoided political overtones in his art. He produced his most important films throughout the period when the Polish Film School was at its most prominent; however, his work possessed its own stylistic feeling that was independent of the over policial themes that dominated the prevailing Polish School. In practically every film, Has sought to create hermetic environments, in which the problems and storylines of his protagonists were always of secondary importance to the particular world he had created, characterized by an accumulation of random objects that formed unique visual universe.
Has's oeuvre is commonly associated with Surrealist painting in Polish criticism. This is reinforced by the director's dream poetic and his use of objects, which are also characteristic of many canvasses by the Surrealists. Has also created a number of intimate psychological dramas during his career, such as How to Be Loved and Farewells, focusing on damaged individuals who have difficulty settling into life. In his work, he was fascinated by outsiders and people incapable of finding their place in reality.
Two currents remain evident in Has's output: one was his cinema of psychological analysis, the other his films of visionary form, in which he most often used the motif of a journey.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sanatorium pod klepsydrą
Wojciech Has
Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat
A young man named Josef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father Jakob. On his arrival, a sinister doctor informs him that his father had stopped breathing but hasn't died yet, perhaps due to Josef's arrival which may have halted time in the sanatorium. Josef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.
The Hourglass Sanatorium
How to Be Loved
Wojciech Has
Barbara Krafftówna, Zbigniew Cybulski
An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator.
How to Be Loved
Pożegnania
Wojciech Has
Maria Wachowiak, Tadeusz Janczar
The story takes place before World War II and centers on Pawel, a member of a conservative, middle-class family, and his love for Lidka, a taxi dancer. Social conventions and the lovers' inability to defy those forces Pawel and Lidka benefit. Times change, war breaks out, leading to Pawel sent to Auschwitz while Lidka marry his cousin. Their love has survived and conventions are no longer the issue.
Farewells
Lalka
Wojciech Has
Beata Tyszkiewicz, Mariusz Dmochowski
Set in the 19th century Warsaw. The indolence of aristocrats who, secure with their pensions, are too lazy to undertake new business risks, frustrates Wokulski. His ability to make money is respected but his lack of family and social rank is condescended to. Because of his "help" (in secret) to "the doll's" impecunious but influential father, the girl becomes aware of his affection.
The Doll
Nieciekawa historia
Wojciech Has
Janusz Gajos, Gustaw Holoubek
A well-known professor of medicine finding himself at the threshold of autumn of his life, takes stock of his achievements and experiences. "In the end it ends with what has been known for a long time: that conscious life without a fixed worldview is not life, but torment, horror. - wrote Anton Chekhov in one of his letters summarizing "An Uninteresting Story". The protagonist, Professor Nikolai Stepanovich, is a character characteristic of Chekhov's entire oeuvre - a Russian intellectual from the late nineteenth century, depressed by boredom and a sense of his own uselessness and the meaninglessness of his existence.
An Uneventful Story
Niezwykla podróz Baltazara Kobera
Wojciech Has
Rafał Wieczyński, Michael Lonsdale
Story about the young Balthazar thrown from one remarkable event to the other. On his way through a plague hit the landscape, he meets the Kabbalists, priests - and himself.
The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober
One Room Tenants
Wojciech Has
Beata Tyszkiewicz, Zdzisław Maklakiewicz
A subjective adaptation of a well-known autobiographical novel by Zbigniew Unilowski (screenplay by Wojciech Jerzy Has with dialogues by Stanislaw Dygat). The adventures of the tenants of a sublet room in a Warsaw townhouse inhabited mostly by students and novice writers, presented against the social context of the 1930s.
One Room Tenants
