Background Information about the Film
This black-and-white film was produced in Poland in 1965, directed by Wojciech Has. It has shown in the USA sporadically since then, with English subtitles and original Polish soundtrack. It is based on the early 19th century novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa which was written by Jan Potocki, a Polish nobleman.
The full three-hour version premiered in the USA at the New York Film Festival in 1997, and was released for general distribution in May 1999. Jerry Garcia (who called it his favorite film), Edith Kramer, and Martin Scorsese played instrumental roles in the effort to make the full version available. Although Garcia put up the initial funding, a full version was not obtained in his lifetime. Scorsese bankrolled the final project, which required making a new negative from the only existing print of the full-length film. Francis Ford Coppola assisted Cowboy Booking International in the distribution of the film.
Background Information about my Outline
I saw the full version at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on August 7, 1999. It was my third viewing of the film in as many decades, and I took detailed notes in order to comprehend the many levels of the story-within-a-story.
Nearly seven years later, I bought a copy of the DVD version produced by Image Entertainment. I viewed the film several times during the ensuing weeks, replaying most of the scenes in order to study the appearance of characters in the background and various other details. As a result, the 2006 version of the outline is much longer than the 1999 version that I originally uploaded to the web.
The outline is a straightforward presentation of the narrations made by the movie's characters. It shows a change in the story-within-a-story's level each time a character within the current level of narration begins his or her own narration. The depth of indentation in the outline indicates the level of narration. Segments within a level (A through Z, or 1-4 in D, or a-b in P-4) usually indicate breaks in the action.
At the main level of Alfonso's experience (A through Z), there are many places where a new segment could be interpreted as a change in level (e.g., instead of waking up, Alfonso is dreaming about what might happen). Therefore, the number of levels mentioned by any promoter or commentator should be taken with a grain of salt.
Other Information about the Film and Novel
If you can read French or Polish, I recommend that you visit the web site of Anne Guerin-Castell who wrote her doctoral thesis on the director Wojciech Has.
If you are interested in the novel, visit the blog of Christine Hosler who provides an outline, commentary, and academic references.
Note on proper nouns: My outline and commentary use the spellings that appear in the film's English-language subtitles, rather than the spellings given in translations of Potocki's novel.
This page also appears in a section of my web site: https://www.martinschell.com/saragossamanuscript/index.html