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Insert trying to insert but t can't in this new fat format alex Viewed at the Lodz film school this turned out to be a one-of-a-kind masterpiece known in Polish as "Sanatorium pod Klepsdydra", or in English as "Sanatorium under the Hourglass". In Poland the hourglass, which marks time by allowing sand to sift one grain at a time from an upper chamber to a lower one through a narrow opening, is associated symbolically with the sands of human life running out, and is often seen as a symbol accompanying obituary reports. The film is based on a highly symbolic novel, dealing among other things with the death of Jewish culture in Poland -- written by the Polish-Jewish writer, Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by the Gestapo in WW II. While literary adaptations are quite common in Poland, this bizarre Schulz tale was long considered to be so abstract as to be unfilmable. Has not only found the images and the narrative style to bring Schultz's words to the screen, but in the process created a film that is so spectacular that it out-Fellinies Fellini in "Juliet of the Spirits" - in short, one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. "Klepsydra", one of the most extraordnary films ever made in Poland, is about a middle aged man who comes to visit the sanatorium where his aged father has recently passed away and there encounters the father's ghost who leads him through a series of personal and philosophical revelations as they move from room to room in the gloriously cluttered premises. Cobwebs and junk are everywhere, but this is the debris of the collective unconscious. Early in the picture the bemused visitor - played by handsome actor Jan Nowicki, who radiates a bit of the aura of a Polish Paul Newman -- dons a golden fireman's helmet which he then wears throughout, an odd touch which we soon accept as par for the course in these fantastically colorful surrealistic surroundings. Towards the end of the film the man finds himself wandering through the dreamy streets of a resurrected Jewish village and is swept up in a traditional public celebration of some kind which is going on all around him. This is presumably a reference to writer Schulz's own Jewish childhood in Drohobycz, but in Has' film it becomes a mystical epitaph for the entire Jewish culture of Poland which was ruthlessly eradicated during World War II. The entire atmosphere of the film is dreamlike -at times a little nightmarish -but never off-putting, because Has' narrative style keeps things flowing and the visuals are so lush that the eye is constantly delighted. All-in-all a unique, dazzling, and thought-provoking motion picture

Viewed at the Polishfilm sch Viewed at the Lodz film school this turned out to be a one-of-a-kind masterpiece known in Polish as "Sanatorium pod Klepsdydra", or in English as "Sanatorium under the Hourglass". In Poland the hourglass, which marks time by allowing sand to sift one grain at a time from an upper chamber to a lower one through a narrow opening, is associated symbolically with the sands of human life running out, and is often seen as a symbol accompanying obituary reports. The film is based on a highly symbolic novel, dealing among other things with the death of Jewish culture in Poland -- written by the Polish-Jewish writer, Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by the Gestapo in WW II. While literary adaptations are quite common in Poland, this bizarre Schulz tale was long considered to be so abstract as to be unfilmable. Has not only found the images and the narrative style to bring Schultz's words to the screen, but in the process created a film that is so spectacular that it out-Fellinies Fellini in "Juliet of the Spirits" - in short, one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. "Klepsydra", one of the most extraordnary films ever made in Poland, is about a middle aged man who comes to visit the sanatorium where his aged father has recently passed away and there encounters the father's ghost who leads him through a series of personal and philosophical revelations as they move from room to room in the gloriously cluttered premises. Cobwebs and junk are everywhere, but this is the debris of the collective unconscious. Early in the picture the bemused visitor - played by handsome actor Jan Nowicki, who radiates a bit of the aura of a Polish Paul Newman -- dons a golden fireman's helmet which he then wears throughout, an odd touch which we soon accept as par for the course in these fantastically colorful surrealistic surroundings.

Towards the end of the film the man finds himself wandering through the dreamy streets of a resurrected Jewish village and is swept up in a traditional public celebration of some kind which is going on all around him. This is presumably a reference to writer Schulz's own Jewish childhood in Drohobycz, but in Has' film it becomes a mystical epitaph for the entire Jewish culture of Poland which was ruthlessly eradicated during World War II. The entire atmosphere of the film is dreamlike -at times a little nightmarish -but never off-putting, because Has' narrative style keeps things flowing and the visuals are so lush that the eye is constantly delighted. All-in-all a unique, dazzling, and thought-provoking motion picture

DYBBUK -- THE JEWISH EXCORCIST



In Poland today, "Dybbuk" is regarded as much a Polish film as a Jewish one and is often revived.

Michal Waszynsaki's "The Dybbuk", Poland, 1937, is probably the most widely known, if not necessarily the best liked, of all Yiddish films. Like Ulmer in America Michal Waszynski was an accomplished mainstream director with numerous non-Jewish films to his credit, but this film is considered his masterpiece even by the Poles. The prominent Warsaw writer, Alter Kacyzne, worked on the screenplay of what is easily the spookiest Yiddish movie ever made.

In the opening scene two young Hassidim, close friends, vow that if they both have children one a boy and the other a girl, these children will marry. An ominous other worldly messenger (Meshulach), who appears and disappears at will, warns that no-one has the right to vow for unborn children. Already the die is cast. One of the friends is lost in a storm rushing to the bedside of his wife who is giving birth to a boy. The wife of the other Hassid dies in childbirth leaving a girl behind. Eighteen years pass. The boy, Chonen, is now an impoverished talmudic scholar. The girl, Leah, has been adopted into a wealthy family. Chonen becomes a tutor in the same family. The two are immediately drawn to each other and fall in love but are unaware that they were promised to each other long ago. The solemn vow is broken when the girl is betrothed to another.

Chonen, versed in the arcane mysticism of the Kaballa, invokes Satan's aid but dies in the process. On Leah's wedding day Chonen's spirit enters the new bride's body as a "Dybbuk" and possesses her. To the horror of all, only his voice comes out of her mouth. The famous rabbi of Wielopole is called in to exorcise the evil spirit from the girl's body. Only when the spirit is threatened with excommunication from the Jewish community, even in the other world, will the Dybbuk leave the body of his beloved, but, when he does she too dies to join him forever in the Other World. An impressive work with many ritual set pieces, this is a one of a kind Yiddish film of The Occult. A classic originally written in Russian by the Jewish playwright S. An-Sky. "Dybbuk" has been performed in many languages on the stage and was remade as an Israeli-German film co-production in 1968. If "The Golem" is the Jewish Frankenstein the Dybbuk, rich in ancient mysticism and folklore, must surely go down in film history as the Jewish Exorcist. (The Hollywood "Exorcist" was made, incidentally, by a Jewish director, William Friedkin).

One of the things that made the film so impressive were the professionally choreographed ritual dances, and an eminent Jewish historian, Dr. Meyer Balaban, was hired to assure accuracy in the presentation of religious detail. Lili Liliana and Leon Liebgold (he, of "Yidl Mitn Fidl" and "Tevya" ) are the star crossed lovers and not long after, as if to confirm their heavenly union in the film, became man and wife offscreen in flesh and blood.

Avrom Marevsky is the Great Exorciser, and Max Bozhyk also appears, but the role that is likely to remain longest in memory is that of The Ominous Messenger as played by Isaac Samberg. Waszynski, a Ukrainian Jew whose original name was Moishe Waxman, was only 33 and Polish cinema's reigning wunderkind when he directed "The Dybbuk" in 1937. In Poland today, "Dybbuk" is regarded as much a Polish film as a Jewish one.