The Saragossa Manuscript

Alfonse Van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young Walloon captain crossing the Sierra Morena to join his regiment in Madrid. His road keeps pulling him into other people's stories, from two mysterious princesses to a Kabbalist and a band of Romani, each telling tales that nest inside one another. Wojciech Has frames it all as a manuscript found in a deserted house during the Napoleonic wars, and builds the story like a set of boxes that never quite close.