Genius From Drohobych at The Venice Film Festival

The 81st Venice Film Festival screened a new film by Stephen and Timothy Quay, 77-year-old twins who are considered the most influential creators of puppet animation in the world. Their first work in 20 years is an adaptation of the book Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz, a recognised icon of modernist literature. A bizarre and poetic text in the tradition of surrealism, this short novel in short stories is considered to be Bruno Schulz's major work.

An artist and writer who gained local recognition on the eve of the Second World War but was rediscovered by readers after his death, Bruno Schulz was born and lived his entire life in the town of Drohobych near Lviv, which he wrote into literary eternity. Before the First World War, Drohobych was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then Poland and the Soviet Union, during the Second World War it was occupied by the Nazis, and today it is on the territory of Ukraine. So what do we know about the most famous inhabitant of Drohobych and what can we expect from the film?

Bruno Schulz's Mystical Drohobych

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was rich in modernist writers: Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, and Bruno Schulz were born and worked here, and all of them changed the literature of the twentieth century.

Schulz stands out in this line of artists as one of the most distinctive figures not only in his texts, but also in his writing. As an artist, Bruno Schulz tried to make his way in the big cities of Warsaw, Lviv, and Wilno. As a writer, he was exclusively associated with the town of Drohobych, which had no more than 40-50 thousand inhabitants before the war. He was born here, lived his entire short 50-year life, and was shot dead in November 1942 by a Nazi officer.

The myth of this writer and artist is still the main attraction of Drohobych. This summer, the city hosted the 11th Bruno Schulz Festival, which brings together Ukrainian artists, writers, translators, theatre performers, and scholars inspired by his personality and work. There is a museum of the writer and artist, equipped in the teacher's room of the former gymnasium (now Drohobych State Pedagogical University), where Bruno Schulz studied and then taught drawing.

Although modernist literature was primarily associated with large cities, the writer found inspiration in a Polish provincial town. A Jew by birth, he wrote in German and Polish, which links him to Kafka, who inspired Bruno Schulz, among others. He transformed Drohobych into a unique artistic space in which different cultures, traditions, religious beliefs and languages intertwined. In his works, space and even time are blurred, when a small town becomes the centre of a unique artistic universe. Interestingly, the name of the town itself is never mentioned in Bruno Schulz's works.

Lost In Translation

Bruno Schulz's metaphor-based, plotless prose, which intertwines memories, dreams and reality, is incredibly difficult to translate to the cinema screen. Just like the books of other modernists, the works of Kafka, Marcel Proust or James Joyce have rarely been adequately adapted. The film by Stephen and Timothy Quay, presented on 29 August at the Venice Film Forum, is only the third attempt to adapt Bruno Schulz's texts.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass was first adapted by Polish director Wojciech Has, who is known for his ability to bring books by difficult writers to the screen. For example, his adaptation of Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa became one of the favourite films of David Lynch, the director of the surrealist noirs Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. In 1973, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass became an event not only in Polish but also in world cinema.

The surreal masterpiece about the protagonist's seemingly ordinary trip to a country sanatorium to visit his dying father turns, on the one hand, into a journey into the depths of memory and subconscious, where the hero meets himself as a child and his parents in different years of their lives. On the other hand, it is an equally bizarre journey through the history of Europe. The skilful and high-budget production with its impressive sets and costumes still captures the imagination. Rediscovered after the re-premiere of a restored copy at Cannes 2000, Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass has been compared to the classic works of Federico Fellini and Louis Bunuel.

The second attempt to adapt Bruno Schulz's prose was a 20-minute work by Stephen and Timothy Quay, Street Of Crocodiles, shot using the technique of frame-by-frame puppet animation. This film, which metaphorically shows the inner world of a person with his or her secret desires, won the Best Animated Film award at Cannes in 1986 and has achieved cult status today. Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) has become a big fan of Street of Crocodiles, and Interstellar and The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan has made a documentary about the Quay brothers.

What We Know About The New Film

The Quay brothers are known not so much to the mass audience as to their influence on their colleagues. But in the most paradoxical way, they have had a significant impact on popular culture, particularly through their work on commercials and music videos. For example, the Quay brothers worked on the animation for Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video, which revolutionised the music video market in 1986.

Their interest in Bruno Schulz's prose is not accidental. Americans who settled in London in the late sixties, like Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam, the Quay brothers were initially inspired by Eastern European culture. In particular, the work of Czech Jan Švankmajer and Polish Walerian Borowczyk, who also combined fiction cinema and frame-by-frame puppet animation. After discovering Bruno Schulz's books through Wojciech Has's film, the brothers even visited Drohobych - where, as they admit, they were imbued with the spirit of Bruno Schulz, whose presence is still felt in the city.

The Quay brothers' own version of Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass received the most complimentary press at Venice 2024. The reviewers called the film, shot in a mixed technique of feature film and puppet animation, a ‘triumphant return’, ‘an attractive and intoxicating fantasy landscape about a place where time moves in different directions’. However, almost all journalists unanimously noted that the film was ‘not for everyone’ and that the return of the Quay brothers to big cinema is unlikely to guarantee the film's commercial success.