Memoirs of a Sinner
1986 film by Wojciech Jerzy Has
Memoirs of a Sinner (Polish: Osobisty pamiętnik grzesznika przez niego samego spisany) is a 1986 Polish film directed by Wojciech Has, starring Piotr Bajor. The film is an adaptation of James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) and tells the tale of the protagonist Robert and his doppelganger.
Premise
Robert (Piotr Bajor) is exhumed from the grave by a gang of grave robbers and is forced to recount his life story - a struggle between good and evil, embodied in his doppelganger whom he eventually kills.
Cast
Piotr Bajor as Robert
Maciej Kozłowski as Stranger
Janusz Michałowski as Pastor
Hanna Stankówna as Rabina
Ewa Wiśniewska as Laura
Franciszek Pieczka as Logan
Anna Dymna as Dominika
Katarzyna Figura as Cyntia
Jan Jankowski as Gustaw
Jan Pawel Kruk as Guard
Andrzej Krukowski
Zdzislaw Kuzniar
Zofia Merle
Jerzy Zygmunt Nowak as Samuel
Elwira Romanczuk as Malgorzata
Production
The film was filmed in the village of Klęk in the Polish province of Łódź.
Release
The film was released on 20 October 1986. Jerzy Maksymiuk's score won the award for Best Score at the 1986 Polish Film Festival.
Comparison with the book
Has maintains the strangeness central to the novel, although he tends to focus on the creation of unease, intrigue and beautiful images rather than Hogg's satire on Calvinist predestination.
The public source identifies “Memoirs of a Sinner” as 1986 film by Wojciech Jerzy Has. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Memoirs, Sinner and film.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11800516. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 1824.
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This entry incorporates text from “Memoirs of a Sinner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.