director Wojciech Jerzy Has
screenplay (based on the novel of the same name by Bruno Schulz) Wojciech Jerzy Has
director of photography Witold Sobociński
music Jerzy Maksymiuk
with Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Irena Orska, Halina Kowalska, Gustaw Holoubek, Mieczysław Voit, Bożena Adamek, Ludwik Benoit, Henryk Boukołowski
awards
Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival, 1973
the Grand Prix, the Golden Asteroid, at Trieste Film Festival, 1974
Best Art Direction (Jerzy Skarżyński, Andrzej Płocki) at the 1st Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdańsk, 1974
BRUNO SCHULZ, TREATISE ON MANNEQUINS [TRAKTAT O MANEKINACH]; TRANSL. BY JOHN CURRAN DAVIS
Our creations shall not be the heroes of many-volumed romances. Their roles will be brief, concise, their characters having no long term plans. Often we will take it upon ourselves to summon them into life for only a moment, for the sake of a single gesture or a single word. (…) The Demiurgus was enamoured of refined, perfect and sophisticated materials, but we give precedence to junk. We are simply enraptured by it, entranced by the cheapness, the paltriness, the tawdriness of the material. Do you understand’ – my father asked – ‘the profound meaning of that weakness, that passion for gaudy tissue- paper, papier-mâché, lacquered colour, straw and sawdust? It is’ – he said with a woeful smile – ‘our love for matter as such, for its downiness and porousness, its unique, mystical consistency. (…)
KONRAD EBERHARDT, SNY SPRZED POTOPU [DREAMS FROM BEFORE THE DELUGE], ‘KINO’, 1973, NO. 12
In Has’s film (…) the resuscitation of lost time and the attempts to breathe life into the dead find more dramatic expression than in Schulz’s prose. A constant battle is going on here, a battle with the inertia of objects, with the lethargy of dummies which revive unwillingly and only for a moment. Has animates movement, colours, noises – in other words life. And life, just like those fabulously colourful birds which turn out to be stuffed figures, constantly heads towards immobility and self-destruction.
history periods
