Doomed Love
(Amor de Perdição)
With António Sequeira Lopes, Cristina Hauser, Elsa Wallencamp.
Portugal, 1978, 16mm, color, 265 min.
Portuguese with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA
In tribute to the late and inestimably great Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015), the Harvard Film Archive presents the centerpiece of his celebrated "Tetralogy of Thwarted Love,” Amor de Perdição.
The third installment of Oliveira’s Tetralogy is a brilliant and devastatingportrait of young lovers tragically separated by a bitter feud between their aristocratic families. In Doomed Love Oliveira tested his belief in a creative merging of theatrical, literary and cinematic narrative traditions. His radical approach to adaptation captures the multilayered language of Camilo Castelo Branco's eponymous epic novel to offer a virtual phenomenology of life and love in 18th century Portugal. After a disastrous premiere on Portuguese television, the theatrical release of Oliveira's re-edited version was quickly hailed as a landmark in the history of the European art film.