Like The Saragossa Manuscript, The Hourglass Sanatorium was selected by Martin Scorsese for his masterpieces of Polish cinema series, and it is equally deserving of a place on the list. Director Wojciech Jerzy Has transforms Bruno Schulz's story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass into a mystical tale in which nothing is as it seems. Joseph (Jan Nowicki) visits his dying father in a rundown sanatorium, a place where no one sleeps and time seems to endlessly distort, fragmenting the past into the present as Joseph encounters a string of highly unusual characters. While the production design is stunning, it's the film's atmosphere which sucks you in - that's if you can handle its strange, non-linear narrative and stream of head-scratching imagery.
