Mr Bongo Films presents the next installment from the wonderful director, Has, following on from the hugely successful ‘Saragossa Manuscript’. Winner of the Special Jury Award, Cannes 1973, this surrealist headspin of a film has been compared to the best works of Gilliam, Greenaway, Bunuel.

The Hour-Glass Sanatorium is an adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s story collection ‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’. Schulz was seen as the Polish Kafka, he was killed by the SS in the war

The film depicts its protagonist, Joseph (Jan Nowicki), traveling through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father in a sanatorium. When he arrives at the hospital, he finds the entire facility is going to ruin and no one seems to be in charge, or even caring for the patients. Time appears to behave in unpredictable ways, reanimating the past in an elaborate artificial caprice. The many occurrences in this visually potent phantasmagoria include Joseph re-entering childhood episodes with his eccentric father (who lives with birds), being arrested by a mysterious unit of soldiers, reflecting on a girl he knew in his boyhood and bringing historic wax figures to life with names from a postage stamp album. Throughout his strange journey, an ominous blind train conductor reappears like a death figure. Has also adds a series of reflections on the Holocaust that were not present in the original novel, reading Schulz's prose through the prism of the author's tragic death during World War II and the demise of the world he described.

Hourglass is a mind-blowing work, the cinematographical equivalent of all Mahler's symphonies put together. Derek Elley, International Film Guide, 1971
Hourglass... a fundamental milestone in the history of the cinematographical language, is an absolute masterpiece. Jacques Siclier, Le Monde, 1986
Amazing NY Times 1983
A Classic Washington Post 1980

Format: All regions PAL DVD9
Running Times: 124 mins
Rating: 15
Sub titles: English

AWARDS
Special Jury Award - IFF Cannes, 1973
Grand Prix "Gold Asteroide" - IFF Trieste, 1974