Cinema
The Circle
O Cerco
António da Cunha Telles · 1970
Synopsis
Lisbon, 1969. Marta, in her early twenties, from the upper middle class, leaves her husband behind and looks for a truer life; she knows what she refuses, less what she wants. A ground hostess at an airline, a model for an advertising agency, she sees her finances become complicated and meets Victor Lopes, a smuggler for whom life no longer holds any surprises.
Context
The director, a producer of the early days of the New Cinema, edited the film himself, and Vasco Pulido Valente wrote part of the dialogue. He discovered Maria Cabral, until then almost unknown, and the film attends to her gestures more than to the action. The censors made cuts. Shown at Cannes in 1970, in the Critics' Week according to most sources, it was afterwards played to full houses for weeks in Lisbon.
Who it is for
A feature film in Portuguese, of about two hours; the camera stays close to the gestures and face of its performer.
Prizes and reception
A great Portuguese success of the seventies and the first film of the Novo Cinema to cover its costs; grand prize of the Secretariat of State in 1970.
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