The Worst Film Ever

Purely Joyful Movie!

Perfectly adorable

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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

"Sanatorium pod klepsydra" is a surreal assault on the senses and perhaps one of the most beautifully shot Polish movies ever made.It's based on the remarkable collection of stories 'Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass' written by Bruno Schultz.Our protagonist Josef(Jan Nowicki)travels on a dilapidated and mysterious train to visit his father at a decayed sanatorium in the middle of the Polish countryside.His journey into a tangled world of real and imagined experiences begins.Extremely stylish and surreal mind trip is the best way to describe "Hourglass Sanatorium".Filled with elaborate set-pieces and philosophical dialogue the world imagined by Bruno Schultz is truly one of its kind.The sleazy shots of half-naked women are a nice touch and the glimpse into Jewish culture is fascinating.A must-see for fans of bizarre and unusual cinema.The wax mannequins sequence is stunningly beautiful.9 out of 10.

I didn't even know about existence of this gem, I came across it by chance. Long time ago I've read short story by Polish writer Bruno Schulz named Sanatorium under the Clepsydra and appreciated it greatly so I was lucky to find this excellent film adaptation. A son goes to visit his ill father in some mysterious sanatorium – in reality his father died but in this bizarre sickbay he continues to live due to some shift of time backward. In fact all the times there are merged and he meets himself younger and sees his old dead mother and takes part in all kinds of affairs occurring someplace between nightmare and reverie. The Hour-Glass Sanatorium perfectly opposed the passage of time as if this film itself has been placed into some timeless capsule.

It is amazing that so many people can see this film without realizing that its subtext and central subject is the Shoah (Holocaust); its unspeakable and incomprehensible enormity in the mind, especially in Communist Poland where the memory of that history was somewhat suppressed. This is really the best fictional treatment of the Shoah on film, because of its indirection in dealing with this terrible subject. It is simultaneously an adaptation of a literary work by a victim of the Nazis, Bruno Shulz, who explored the world and imagery of the unconscious, fantastic and dreams like no other. It is probably the best evocation of this world ever committed to film. The film will be tedious to some, but those willing to immerse themselves in it will emerge, like the protagonist, forever changed by the experience. By the way, this film is NOT set in prewar Poland, but in some indeterminate time after the war. Where Shulz was the prewar victim haunted by memories of his father and childhood, the protagonist in this film is the postwar survivor haunted by the fate of his own father's generation - and world.