Cinema
O Mal-Amado
Fernando Matos Silva · 1974
Synopsis
João is twenty-five and drops out of his studies just before leaving for military service. His father, a zealous and well-connected civil servant, finds him a stopgap job in an office. Placed in a department staffed by women, he becomes the object of his supervisor, Inês, who transfers onto him a frustrated passion for her brother, dead in the colonial war, while he begins to spend time with a colleague, Leonor.
Context
The film was shot in 1972 in the Campo de Ourique district, from a screenplay by the director, his brother João and Álvaro Guerra, and produced by the Portuguese Cinema Centre with money from the Gulbenkian Foundation. Shown at a private preview at Tobis in 1973, it was submitted to the censors in February 1974 and banned in its entirety; the appeal was rejected on 28 March and the negative seized. A month later the regime fell, and the film was released uncut at the Satélite cinema in Lisbon on 3 May 1974. It has a discreet but constant relationship with the colonial war.
Who it is for
Black-and-white feature film, in Portuguese; office and family scenes in a Lisbon neighbourhood, where criticism of the country comes through everyday life.
Prizes and reception
The last Portuguese film banned by the censors and the first released after the revolution, with success.
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