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.
Tag: 1970s
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.
A man tricked into enlisting in the Confederate army is later thrown into a hellish stockade on desertion charges. He eventually breaks out of the prison camp, reunites with his old partner and sets out to kill the man who was responsible for his being in the camp in the first place. However, after accidentally killing a Confederate officer, he finds himself pursued by a gang of vicious bounty hunters intent on collecting the reward put up by the dead officer’s widow.
Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series’ significance.
When Orestes returns to his Greek island homeland after several years in London to settle his late father’s estate, he begins an affair with Elena, who is married to his childhood friend Yanni. Their adultery soon leads to violence and crime.
Just before the Salem Witch Trials, an embittered old woman, who has learned witchcraft, teams up with the Devil, and brings a scarecrow to life as part of her diabolical revenge on the judge who was once her lover.
Set in South Africa, and based on the novel by Wilbur Smith. A family owned diamond empire is torn by the battles between an ambitious businessman and his playboy step-brother and a recently divorced sister. Power, money, love and passion all play heavily in the intrigue surrounding this battle for control.
Aging German man Heinz Alfred Geise is a successful business owner whose past is quite haunting; during World War II he helped orchestrate a Nazi-led bloodbath in a small Greek village. When this secret is exposed in a newspaper article, it causes his son, Andreas, to try to kill both his father and himself.