A recent print of Carlos Saura’s most celebrated dance film. Federico Garcia Lorca’s revenge play was adapted into a flamenco ballet by Alfredo Manas, and Saura’s film of the piece was choreographed by the legendary Antonio Gades, who is also the principal male dancer. Saura films not a polished final production but a dress rehearsal in a bare studio with no scenery and minimal props. This visual austerity accentuates gesture, ceremony and convention, in both the ballet itself and the dancers’ parallel, ritual preparations for a performance. Saura uses cinematic effects sparingly, at dramatic highpoints (in particular the climactic knife-fight, filmed in a vertiginous circular tracking shot) which draw the viewer from beyond the metaphorical footlights into the very heart of passion and desire.
Spain, 1981.
Colour.
71 mins.