Cinema
A Bee in the Rain
Uma Abelha na Chuva
Fernando Lopes · 1972
Synopsis
In a countryside in the centre of the country, on the banks of the Mondego, Maria dos Prazeres, a ruined aristocrat, and Álvaro Silvestre, a coarse landowner, form a household without children and without esteem. Each knows what the other thinks of him, and they hold up the illusion of unity through silences and arrangements. Around them live the people of the house, a maidservant, a coachman. Contempt and frustration mount.
Context
The film is taken from Carlos de Oliveira's novel published in 1953, who collaborated on the adaptation. Begun in 1968, between the bankruptcy of a producer and the birth of a new production structure, the shooting was only completed in 1971, and the film was released at the Estúdio cinema, in Lisbon, on 13 April 1972. The director, who said he was thinking of Murnau, approached this neorealist text under the sign of expressionism: breaks in rhythm, repeated shots and lines, freeze frames, sounds whose source is unknown. A travelling theatre troupe performs a scene from Amor de Perdição in it, and the manner of the film has been summed up in a phrase, an aggressive modesty.
Who it is for
A black and white feature film, in Portuguese, of a little over an hour; austere, it moves at times towards abstraction.
Prizes and reception
Grand prize of the Secretariat of State in 1971 and prize for best cinematography, then the João Ortigão Ramos prize in 1972; one of the major works of the Portuguese New Cinema.
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