Has’ character navigates this space like a prisoner locked in a tiny cell of his own weakness. The only escape from it is a dream to break the habit. But Has deprives his character of hope, and shows that the tragic end is inevitable, there is no escape from innate demons. As Kuba says in one of the scenes:
I dreamed that I was a boozer – that my name was Smith, and that there was a phone in my house – you understand it. I dreamed that I wanted to forget about drunkenness, get away from the people I drank with, from the pubs, from the memories. It so happens sometimes in a dream – true, but in a dream you cannot run away from anything.
Broniewski – man from the Noose
The story of an alcoholic whose over-zealous friends make it difficult for him to quit drinking was drawn by Hłasko and Has from life, and the prototype of the main character was Władysław Broniewski, a poet, a communist, an alcoholic and a friend of Marek Hłasko. In Beautiful Twentysomethings Hłasko wrote about that day:
One day, Broniewski stopped drinking and started writing new poems, and it even went well. After about an hour, someone called him and asked him how he was doing, Broniewski said he got to work, and that he hoped to work hard for another month or two. To his misfortune he mentioned he didn’t drink; his interlocutor congratulated him and the conversation was over; Broniewski carried on writing. After fifteen minutes the phone rang again; someone else who had spoken with the previous caller and had learned that Broniewski had decided not to drink congratulated him and asked him to persevere in abstinence; Broniewski thanked him and went back to work. After ten minutes the phone rang again; a word of warning again and an expression of gratitude from Broniewski. The eighth phone call was from comrade Jakub; a pale and trembling Broniewski came to my place and said: Go get vodka!
To Has and Hłasko, Broniewski’s story became the starting point for an account of the impossibility of liberation from the pressures of others and from personal weakness. Their Noose was a story about a man, existentially bankrupt, who reconciles with his condition, gradually abandoning hope of rescue. Has’ character is doomed; the titular noose tightens every minute. The director repeatedly shows a visual motif of a noose as a prediction of the tragic fate of the character. The loop is formed by a phone cord, a saxophone strap worn around the neck of a drunk friend, a girl’s jump rope and the belt of a man who gets arrested by the police officer.
Cinema as time
To Has, the Noose was a story about the inevitable. About the fate befalling a man doomed to failure and conscious of his circumstances. It was also a film in which, for the first time, the author of the Doll formulated his style. In the Noose, the director reached for the visual motifs that years later were to become a hallmark of his films. The interior of Kuba’s apartment, as well as the décor of the pub, in which he spends the day, resemble the symbolically cluttered space of the Hourglass Sanatorium. As in his later films, Has also speaks of time – slipping through one's fingers and relentlessly approximating the inevitable.
