DVD History

Novel

Jan Potocki – Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse (1761-1815)

Written in French by a Polish Aristocrat anywhere between 1797 and 1815, Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse is a late enlightenment / pre-Romantic novel playfully sending up the prevailing literary clichés of the time.

Translated back into Potocki’s native Polish in 1847, parts of the original French version were then lost, requiring translation from the Polish into French when a French language version was (re-)issued in 1989. The first English version was released in 1995.

Polish writer Tadeusz Kwiatkowski adapted his script for Wojciech Has’ film from the Polish language version.

Google Book Search – Read Excerpts from Novel

Film

Wojciech Has (Dir.) – Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie 1965

Filmed in Cinema scope, the original version of Wojciech Has’ film The Saragossa Manuscript ran at exactly 3 hours (180mins.). However, when released for distribution in the US in 1965, American distributors cut the film by 1/3 believing it too long (125mins.). English subtitles were added by an anonymous translator.

Despite this the shortened version screened in underground and student cinemas still succeeded in gaining a cult following, including well known names such as Jerry Garcia (leader of The Grateful Dead) who first saw the film in San Francisco and remarkably was also familiar with the book.

It was in the early 1990s that Garcia decided to contact Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive to obtain a copy for the archive, offering to put up the required funds on the condition that he could view the film whenever desired. Unfortunately, the day after the film arrived in 1995 Garcia died, and to make matters worse the version delivered was not the original 180m version but an unknown 152m version.

Upon further research it was then found that the original 180min. negative had been destroyed and in fact only a single copy of the original edit was left in existence belonging to the film’s director Wojciech Has. This copy was Has’ personal copy and was a print, not a negative.

In the meantime, the Pacific Film out of the blue received a phone call from Martin Scorsese who along with Francis Ford Coppola financed the restoration of Has’ 180min version. It is this restored version that deputed at the 1997 NY Film festival and from which a digital master of the original full length R?kopis znaleziony w Saragossie was finally made.

DVD

In 2002 a limited edition release of The Saragossa Manuscript on DVD occurred in the US via distributor Image Entertainment. This DVD was the first DVD release from the newly restored digital master and was changing hands for $65 upwards second hand and $100-200 new on Amazon.com in 2008.

In 2008 The UK’s Mr Bongo Films acquire distribution rights. In the Mr Bongo DVD release, the picture quality and sound have been further cleaned up and sub-titles re-edited for improved accuracy. Mr Bongo also facilitated the production of a new 35mm print for the BFI (British Film Institute) which since has screened at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music).