Wojciech Jerzy Has was a Polish film director, screenwriter, and film producer born in Kraków to a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother. His early life was marked by the German occupation of Poland, during which he studied at the Kraków Business and Commerce College and later at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in clandestine underground classes.
After the war, Has continued his education at the reconstituted Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he completed a one-year course in film in 1946. He began producing educational and documentary films at the Warsaw Documentary Film Studio before moving to the National Film Studio in Łódź, where he worked in the 1950s.
Has made his debut with the medium-length feature film Harmony in 1948, and went on to direct full-length feature films starting in 1957. He was appointed professor in the directing department at the National Film School in Łódź in 1974.
Throughout his career, Has gained a reputation for his unique style, which often featured hermetic environments and an accumulation of random objects that formed a unique visual universe. His films were often described as surreal, and his use of objects and dream-like scenarios was reminiscent of Surrealist painting.
Has's oeuvre is characterized by two main currents: his cinema of psychological analysis, which focused on the inner lives of his characters, and his films of visionary form, which often featured journeys and explorations of the human condition.
Some of his most notable films include The Saragossa Manuscript, The Doll, and The Hour-Glass Sanatorium. He also directed intimate psychological dramas such as How to Be Loved and Farewells, which explored the lives of damaged individuals struggling to find their place in the world.
Has's fascination with outsiders and people unable to find their place in reality was a recurring theme throughout his work.
