Cinema
The Cursed Village
La aldea maldita
Florián Rey · 1930
Synopsis
Castile, at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the village of Luján, bad weather ruins the harvests year after year, and poverty spreads. Juan de Castilla, who lives with his wife Acacia, their child and the old grandfather, turns on the moneylender who holds the district in his grip and ends up in prison. During his absence, the inhabitants leave the village one after another to seek a living in the city, and Acacia, urged on by her friend Magdalena, leaves with them, abandoning her family.
Context
Shot in 1929 in villages of the province of Segovia, the film was at first silent; the director then had it given sound in France, and it is this version that was released in Paris and then in Madrid in 1930. The sound version is lost, and only the silent one survives, restored in the nineteen-eighties. Critics note in it the influence of Soviet cinema and German expressionism: play of shadows, close-ups of peasants, actors who walk straight at the camera. The film shows, before many others, the depopulation of the Castilian countryside.
Who it is for
A silent film of about an hour, in two parts; it helps to know that the code of honour decides everything in it.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the masterpiece of Spanish silent cinema; its director himself made a new version in 1942.