Review by Andrew_Bettencourt

The first all-talking Portuguese film with sound and musical performances. Although sometimes forgotten in time, the film serves as an introduction to what would be known as the Golden Age of Portuguese Cinema. It is a less complex drama - compared to Canção de Lisboa and many other well known classics that would follow - and it´s based on the novel from Júlio Dantas, about the life of a gypsy girl, who is believed to be the first Fado singer and a seminal figure to the musical genre. It shows the most significant aspects of portuguese culture of late 1880s, the social life of portuguese high society, the country side of beautiful Lezirias from Ribatejo, with the Portuguese bull and Lusitanian horse, but most importantly, it tells how the popular music called Fado was born, setting a very specific tone in portuguese cinema about fate, melancholia and a sad longing we call "saudade" that would be explored for decades in film and music.