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Film Info

Portugal 1998 | 103 min. Director: Paulo Rocha
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Project / Host

European Film Awards

Synopsis

In the blood stained banks of the River of Gold, a "ballad of jealousy", the story of an amazing and horrible crime, among the common folks of Portwine country. An old couple marries. She is a level-crossing guard, he runs a dredgery-boat. Mélita, her niece, falls into the river, cries for help, António saves her from drowning, under Carolina's jealous eyes. In a train, a gold-selling gipsy, "Zé of Gold", tries hawking a gold chain to Mélita. Poor Zé, he "sees" in the innocent girl's eyes her bloody past: in a former life she killed her lover and painted with his blood the room of their loves. Horrified, he runs away. Carolina chases him, steals the gold chain and falls in love with him. She begs the gipsy to explain to her the girl's dark past. The aging António finds himself everyday more and more attracted by Mélita. Carolina dreams: she sees everything in red, painted with blood. Zé of Gold no longer is afraid of Mélita. He wants to cut his ties with his mistress. Carolina finds herself betrayed by everybody. She "sees" a big knife before her eyes ...

Cast & Crew

Director's comment

Just after the war, still a child, I used to listen, in the trains teaving Campanhã station, to old blind singers, selling and singing lirics with the week's events, bloody crimes, wrong marriages, victims of poor faith, werewolfs, strange phenomena, while the train would go on up to Régua, or crossing the bridge towards Gaia, floating over the river. During the 50s, still a teenager. I got used to wander up the river, looking for characteres or places to shoot. Once, at nightfall, I was walking with my mother close to the mouth of the river Sousa when a huge "rabelo" boat went by, spreading its black sails carrying coal from the Pejão mines. The boatman, surrounded by the silence of nightfall, saw us and improvised a fourline stanza about love. After OS VERDES ANOS, the film I made in 1964, I decided to go back to my town, to my first loves. I then wrote "0 Rio do Ouro", a drama about emigrants, about broken innocence coming from the foreign money. By chance, the lost script of O RIO DO OURO, written in the 60s, came to me from inside an old box, and reading it again I fett it might be possible to pick up the Level Crossing Guard Romance, keeping the situation and the carachters of the former text: wedding, shipwreck, coal boat.

Biography

Born in Oporto in 1935, Paulo Rocha is a Portuguese film director.

Filmography:
1963- THE GREEN YEARS
1965- CHANGING OF LIFE
1971- A POUSADA DAS CHAGAS
1982- ISLAND OF LOVES
1983 - ISLAND OF MORAES
1986 - THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
1989 - MÁSCARA DE FERRO CONTRA ABISMO AZUL
1992 - OLIVEIRA, THE ARCHITECT
1993 - PORTUGARU SAN
1995 - IMAMURA, 0 LIVRE PENSADOR

Cast & Crew

Paulo Rocha
 Paulo Rocha, Claudia Tomaz
 Elso Roque
 Isabel Ruth (Carolina), Lima Duarte (António), Joana Bárcia (Mélita), João Cardoso (Zé does Ouros)
 Jose Edgar Feldman
 José Mário Branco
 Alberto Péssimo, Jorge Gonçalves
 Manuela Bronze
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