Cinema
A Severa
José Leitão de Barros · 1931
Synopsis
Lisbon, around 1848. Severa, a Gypsy woman, sings fado in the city's taverns. The young Count of Marialva, a horseman and bullfighting enthusiast, falls in love with her, and his heart is divided between the singer and a young woman of the nobility. From the lezírias of the Tagus to the arenas and the taverns, the film follows this division, with its campinos, its old-style bullfights and its fados, while the city looks on and comments.
Context
The film is taken from a play by Júlio Dantas first staged in 1901, for which the author wrote the dialogue and the song lyrics. For lack of a sound studio in Portugal, the interiors, the sound recording and the mixing were done at Épinay-sur-Seine, at the Tobis studios, the exteriors remaining Portuguese; the shooting script bears the names of Leitão de Barros, Jacques-Bernard Brunius and René Clair. Its success led to the founding, in 1932, of Tobis Portuguesa. A version without a soundtrack was also edited. The singer existed: Maria Severa Onofriana, born in Lisbon in 1820.
Who it is for
A black-and-white feature film, in Portuguese. Music occupies a large part of the soundtrack, and the central character is a figure whom legend had fixed long before.
Prizes and reception
The first Portuguese-language sound feature film; more than six months on the bill in Lisbon and around two hundred thousand viewers.
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