alr

Doomed Love
(Amor de Perdição)

Screening on Film
Directed by Manoel de Oliveira.
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.