Wojciech Jerzy Has (1 April 1925 – 3 October 2000) was a Polish film director, screenwriter and film producer.

Early life and studies

Wojciech Jerzy Has was born in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

. Has himself was agnostic. However, his family on both sides was

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, although he was a philosemite. He had

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

roots on his father's side, and

on his mother's. The name ''Has'' is the

Hollandic Hollandic or Hollandish ( ) is the most widely spoken dialect of the Dutch language. Hollandic is among the Central Dutch dialects. Other important language varieties of spoken Low Franconian languages are Brabantian, Flemish ( East Flemish, ...

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

and Germanised Jewish surname ''Haas'' (האָז), meaning ''hare'' in English. During the wartime German occupation of Poland, Has studied at the Kraków Business and Commerce College and later clandestine underground classes at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts – until it was disbanded in 1943. When the war ended, he went on to study at the reconstituted Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In 1946, Has completed a one-year course in film and began producing educational and documentary films at the Warsaw Documentary Film Studio, and in the 1950s moved on to work at Poland's premier filmmaking academy, the National Film Studio, in

Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...

Career

Has made his debut with ''

Harmony In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...

'' (''Harmonia'', 1948), a medium-length feature, and began making full-length feature films in 1957. In 1974, he was appointed as professor in the directing department at the National Film School in Łódź. Throughout his long and prolific career, he directed such notable films as '' The Saragossa Manuscript'', '' The Doll'' and '' The Hour-Glass Sanatorium'' (also known as ''The Sandglass''). Early on in his career, Has gained a reputation as an individualist who avoided political overtones in his art. He produced his most important films throughout the period when the Polish Film School was at its most prominent; however, his work possessed its own stylistic feeling that was independent of the overt political themes that dominated the prevailing Polish School. In practically all of his films, Has sought to create hermetic environments, in which the problems and storylines of his protagonists were always of secondary importance to the particular world he had created, characterized by an accumulation of random objects that formed a unique visual universe. "If Wojciech Has had become a painter, he would surely have been a

Surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

," wrote the Polish critic Aleksander Jackiewicz. "He would have redrawn antique objects with all their real accoutrements and juxtaposed them in unexpected ways." Has's oeuvre is commonly associated with Surrealist painting in Polish criticism. This is reinforced by the director's dream poetic and his use of objects, which are also characteristic of many canvasses by the Surrealists. Has also created a number of intimate psychological dramas during his career, such as ''

How to Be Loved ''How to be Loved'' () is a 1963 Polish film, directed by Wojciech Has. The film, based on a novel of the same name by Kazimierz Brandys, examines the emotional casualties of war, which is perhaps the central theme of the Polish Film School ...

'' and '' Farewells'', focusing on damaged individuals who have difficulty settling into life. In his work, he was fascinated by outsiders and people incapable of finding their place in reality. Two themes remain evident in Has's output: one being his cinema of psychological analysis, the other his films of visionary form, in which he most often used the motif of a journey. Polish writer

Stanisław Lem Stanisław Herman Lem (; 12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer. He was the author of many novels, short stories, and essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology, and literary criticism. Many of his science fi ...

, generally harshly critical of Polish cinema, singled out Has (his films ''The Saragossa Manuscript'' and ''How to Be Loved'') and even talked with him about filming Lem's '' Star Diaries''.СТАНИСЛАВ ЛЕМ: ИДТИ НА РИСК
an interview of published in '' Soviet Screen'' magazine, 1966, no. 1, pp.18-19

Later life

From 1987 to 1989, Has was artistic director of the Rondo Film Studio and a member of the Polish State Cinema Committee. In 1989–1990, he served as dean of the directing department at the National Film School. In 1990, he became the school's provost and remained in this position for six years. He was the managing director and chief advisor at the school-affiliated Indeks Studio.

Selected filmography

*'' The Noose'' (''Pętla'', 1958) *'' Farewells'' (''Pożegnania'', 1958) *'' One Room Tenants'' (''Wspólny pokój'', 1959) *'' Goodbye to the Past'' (''Rozstanie'', 1961) *''

Gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

'' (''Złoto'', 1962) *''

'' (''Jak być kochaną'', 1962) *'' The Saragossa Manuscript'' (''Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie'', 1965) *'' The Codes'' (''Szyfry'', 1966) *'' The Doll'' (''Lalka'', 1968) *'' The Hour-Glass Sanatorium'' (''Sanatorium pod klepsydrą'', 1973) *'' Write and Fight'' (''Pismak'', 1984) *'' Memoirs of a Sinner'' (''Osobisty pamiętnik grzesznika... przez niego samego spisany'', 1985) *'' An Uneventful Story'' (''Nieciekawa historia'', 1986) *'' The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober'' (''Niezwykła podróż Balthazara Kobera'', 1988)

References

External links