Wojciech Has’s final film (is set in 16th-century Germany, beset by plague and religious persecution and rocked by the introduction of printing as a means of disseminating subversive ideas. After fleeing the Inquisition, young Balthazar (Rafał Wieczyński) and the alchemist Friedrich Cammerschulze (Michel Lonsdale, dubbed by Has’s favourite actor Gustaw Holoubek) travel across the country before ending up in Venice. This being a Wojciech Has film, the people they encounter range from the corporeal (priests, cabbalists, the latter echoing The Saragossa Manuscript) to the fantastical (the ghosts of Balthazar’s mother and twin brother, the Archangel Gabriel).
