New Trailer for 4K Re-Release of Manoel de Oliveira's 'Francisca' Film

"We were speaking about the infinite, about love and magnetism…" Grasshopper Film has released a new trailer for a 4K restoration of a Portuguese biographical epic called Francisca, from acclaimed filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira. Camilo Castelo Branco, the author of the novel from which Oliveira adapted Doomed Love, also emerged as a character in the director's next film—Francisca—a sinister, absorbing portrait of a mutually destructive love affair. Oliveira's source text for Francisca was a novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís: the book's re-telling of a troubled passage in Camilo's life, his friend José Augusto (Diogo Dória) embarked on a perverse game of marital cat and mouse with Francisca (Teresa Menezes), the woman the novelist loved, led Oliveira to new levels of stylistic and formal imagination. With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its gloomy interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is "an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience," and one of Oliveira's crowning achievements. The new 4K digital restoration is by the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Enjoy.

Here's the new 4K restoration trailer (+ poster) for Manoel de Oliveira's Francisca, from YouTube:

A sinister, absorbing portrait of a mutually destructive love affair, Manoel de Oliveira's Francisca is based on a novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís, whose work he'd later adapt twice more. The book’s re-telling of a troubled passage in real-life author Camilo Castelo Branco life—his friend José Augusto embarked on a perverse game of marital cat and mouse with Francisca, the woman the novelist loved—led Oliveira to new levels of stylistic and formal imagination. (It helped that his wife, a distant relative of the historical Francisca, gave him access to a cache of the woman's letters.) With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its gloomy interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience, and one of Oliveira's crowning achievements. Francisca is directed by acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, who passed away in 2015. It was his sixth feature film at the time. It first premiered in the Director's Fortnight sidebar at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. Grasshopper Film will re-release the 4K restoration in "virtual cinemas" starting on November 13th this fall. For more details, visit their website.