Os Crimes de Diogo Alves

A remake of the same producer's 1909 film of the same name that tells the story of Portugal's notorious serial killer, Diogo Alves (whose severed head now resides at the University of Lisbon) . It's quite a graphic film for its time, with scenes of women being throttled and a small girl being thrown from an aqueduct, and the matter-of-fact manner in which the killings are depicted is quite chilling. Although this version - which makes use of some of the same locations as the first film - is a vast improvement on its predecessor, the style of acting and direction lags behind that of the French, British and Americans.

An attempt to make a thriller in the early days of cinema in Portugal, using the infamous memory, still very much alive in popular memory, of the horrendous crimes of the Galician Diogo Alves and his companion "a Parreirinha" in the already distant years of 1836-1840.

The film is a small sample of this criminal career that shows, however, with a boldness unusual at the time, the release of two victims of the Aqueduct, a washerwoman and a child.

Despite their boldness, the scenes do not stand out for their credibility, the plot is almost non-existent, limiting itself to showing some crimes, a scene of the trial and another of the hanging, without any discernible motivations (even the theft seems almost incidental) and with a exaggerated interpretation, which tries to compensate for the muteness of the film with the profusion of gestures.

A museum piece of purely historical interest.