Central and Eastern Europe, 1965. Although still hemmed in by Communist censorship, artists can at least enjoy a relative creative liberty as the last vestiges of Socialist Realism disappear from view in the culture of Poland. Filmmakers, too, are now more free in their choice of subjects for movies. In a spectacular early effort, director Wojciech Has, aided by some of Poland's best movie artists, embarks on a project that will change the course of cinema in that part of the world: an adaptation of Jan Potocki's late Enlightenment/ pre-Romantic novel Gothic novel, The Saragossa Manuscript. Mieczyslaw Jahoda's black-and-white pictures recreate the climate of this arcane collection of interrelated themes and allusions masterfully translated into the script by Tadeusz Kwiatkowski. The actors in the movie correspond only to two categories: the then stars of Polish cinema who consider The Saragossa Manuscript the apogee of their career, and the aspiring actors who owe most of their later successes to the experience and the reputation acquired while working with Has on the movie.