Maria Rosa

Local title
Maria Rosa
Original title
María Rosa
Director
Armando Moreno
Country
Year
1965
Festival
29th Black Nights Film Festival
Programme
Genre

Love triangle, repressed desire, in a Greek-like drama, which was the first Catalan spoken film during the dictatorship.

Marsal, at night and without witnesses, kills a man and driven by his passion for María Rosa, causes conclusive evidence of his crime to fall on Andrés, her husband.

Moreno, a playwright and theatre director, made his film debut with an adaptation of the play by Àngel Guimerà (a prominent Catalan author). With superb acting direction, majestic, physical black-and-white photography, and a striking mise-en-scène, it makes us regret that it was his only work.

Beyond a love triangle disguised as a Greek tragedy, with the makings of a Western, it is fundamentally the chronicle of sexual obsession, beyond the conventions of the time, while escaping censorship. With a stellar pair of actors (glorious Núria Espert and Paco Rabal) who managed to fill the screen with repressed desire and sexual drive, but also with love, in its most volcanic and primitive form. It was also the first Catalan-dubbed film to be commercially released after the Civil War, when Catalan was still officially banned.

Javier Garcia Puerto

Director
Armando Moreno
Screenwriter
Armando Moreno, José María Nunes, Ricard Salvat
Cast
Núria Espert, Francisco Rabal, Paco Rabal, Asunción Balaguer, Carlos Otero
Producer
Filalicio Flaquer, Alfredo Mora
Cinematographer
Cecilio Paniagua
Production Design
Enrique Alarcón
Editing
Juan Luis Oliver
Music
Ángel Arteaga
Production
Memsa
Runtime
Language
Subtitles

Screenings

4th Lux Hall Apollo Kino Plaza
Screening010420 / Maria Rosa
SubtitlesEnglish
Screening duration
Screening103218 / Maria Rosa
SubtitlesEnglish
Screening duration