The Hourglass Sanatorium

Jozef boards an old, decaying train; the passengers are asleep and the conductor is blind. Where he gets off there is a sanatorium, and his father is inside. The doctor explains: here we have pulled time back, so your father is dead elsewhere but has not died yet here. Jozef starts wandering the building and every door opens onto another time: his childhood, his father's shop, the war, dead people and events that never happened. The film is built as memory rather than narrative. There are no transitions; the camera leaves a room and walks into another year. The density of the sets is deliberate: every frame holds dust, fabric, candles, clockwork toys and crowds. Wojciech Has directed, from Bruno Schulz's story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Jan Nowicki plays Jozef. How it reached Cannes is a smuggling story: the production was officially banned, and a print was taken out of the country in cans with false labels on them. It won the Jury Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, and Has was punished with an eight-year ban from making films. Who it is for: anyone who likes cinema that runs on dream logic and Central European literary adaptation. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a story to follow. The narrative is deliberately loose, it runs long, and the visual density becomes exhausting after a while.