Cinema
Black Capes
Capas Negras
Armando de Miranda · 1947
Synopsis
Coimbra. José Duarte is finishing his law degree, wears the students' black cape and sings with them. He loves Maria de Lisboa, a tricana, a poor and honest girl of the town's common people, and she loves him. His studies finished, believing himself betrayed, he leaves Coimbra, and his voice soon brings him fame and money. She stays behind, without him, and she is expecting a child.
Context
Shot in 1946 in Coimbra, in a student republic, and in Porto for the ending, the film depicts the customs of the university: the black cape, the end-of-year festival, the Coimbra song, a cousin of fado. The city did not recognise itself in it: at the premiere on 19 May 1947, the students whistled, and the Minister of Education banned its screening in Coimbra a week later. It is Amália Rodrigues's first film, whose eyebrows a make-up artist had judged six years earlier not to suit the screen; her co-star, Alberto Ribeiro, created the song Coimbra in it, which Amália's voice later made known to the world.
Who it is for
Black-and-white musical melodrama, in Portuguese. The student customs of the old university are as much the setting as the subject, and the music carries the film.
Prizes and reception
The greatest box-office success of Portuguese cinema of its time, twenty-two weeks on the bill at the Condes cinema in Lisbon, and Amália Rodrigues's screen debut.
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