The third installment of Oliveira’s Tetralogy is a brilliant and devastating portrait of young lovers tragically separated by a bitter feud between their aristocratic families. In Doomed Love Oliveira tested his belief in a creative merging of theatrical, literary and cinematic narrative traditions. His radical approach to adaptation captures the multilayered language of Camilo Castelo Branco’s eponymous epic novel to offer a virtual phenomenology of life and love in 18th century Portugal. After a disastrous premiere on Portuguese television, the theatrical release of Oliveira’s re-edited version was quickly hailed as a landmark in the history of the European art film.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
This is the story of a young man at the dawn of the 21st century. He belongs to the most vulnerable, most futile and most appealing segment of society. Raoul flits from woman to woman, searching for seemingly unattainable love, until he meets Jeanne, who is fated to live freely and tragically.
Traumatized by a horrific incident from her childhood, petty criminal Nikki picks up lonely businessmen and robs them with the help of her faithful boyfriend, Al. After one of their marks accidentally ends up dead, the couple discovers he was in possession of a videotape that shows football legend Zipper Doyle committing sex crimes. Soon the lovers are being chased through the Australian outback by both Zipper and the police.
Grumpy, a retired London criminal lawyer who lives on his country estate with his granddaughter, Virginia, is a witty and lovable, though temperamental, old man. Jarvis, one of Virginia’s recent acquaintances, is their houseguest when Ernest Heron, Virginia’s sweetheart, returns from South Africa as the secret bearer of a valuable diamond. That night, Ernest is attacked in the library and the diamond is stolen, the only clue being a camellia placed in his hand.
An itinerant printer, returns to a small town to help save The Daily Record, a newspaper started by Mr. Allen, an old friend who is now deceased.
The plot follows a Dutch horticulturist from the day he leaves his farm to be admitted to hospital for a cancer treatment to the inevitable sad ending. The film displays intensely how the different people concerned deal with the taboo of cancer (which was very strong in the 70s). Nobody tells the protagonist that he is in fact fatally ill, so that he has to discover that by himself and come to terms with it.
On stormy night in an ugly urban landscape, Ciro Norte, a scientist with wild hair and thick glasses, straps himself to a chair he’s has fashioned with wires: lightening strikes, convulsing him. It seems his experiment has not worked. The next day, he drives his jalopy to a bar, sits alone, and weeps. But suddenly, a vortex sucks him into a dream state where he wanders, escapes man-eating fish, confronts his doppelganger, walks through a field of giant flowers, and comes upon Venus herself, buried up to her shoulders in sand.
Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America’s entry into World War II. Gordon must send his outnumbered band of fighter pilots out against overwhelming odds while juggling the disparate personalities and problems of his fellow flyers. In particular, he must handle the difficulties created by a reckless hot-shot pilot named Woody Jason, who not only wants to fight a one-man war but to waltz off with Gordon’s girlfriend.