The cast list given for this film both here and in Wikipedia is deficient (where it is not redundant - Antonio Duarte is just the ghost of Arthur) but anyone who watches the film will find the entire cast (even the cook) not merely listed but carefully pictured before the film begins. Such visual presentation of characters is not uncommon in silent films but the presentation of the entire cast in this way(and in order of appearance not of importance which indicates how deliberate it is)is a little unusual. The extension of such presentation to technicians comes in 1926 (Pudovkin's Mat) and then in the thirties (Sacha Guitry) so Orson Welles and François Truffaut are very definite latecomers in this respect too. The most elaborate of all introductions that I know of (down to the script girl ad personally introduced by Guitry) is in Guitry's 1951 film La Poison (wonderful film too). New wave mon cul! There is also a glimpse of the famous statue of the author (with the naked Truth in his arms) in Lisbon. Muito simpático.
As for the film, it is absolutely excellent with a beautiful performance by Amélia Rey Colaço as Luisa. Colaço was a very celebrated stage actress but this appears to be the only film she made (although she appeared quite often on television in later life). With her husband, Robles Monteiro, also good in this film as the repulsive cousin Basilio, she ran a theatre company for more than fifty years (1921-1974).
Also excellent as the formidable housekeeper is Ângela Pinto, another stage star also in her only film but this time because she had a heart attack (on stage) in 1922 and died three years later. Several other members of the cast, although quit clearly experienced actors and actresses, are not known to have made another film, suggesting that they are too are from a theatre background, very probably members of the Colaço-Monteiro company (we are still at a period when theatre folk were rather sniffy about films). Indeed it would seem as though the film is essentially a collaboration between Invicta and the Colaço-Monteiro company.
To fill in the synopsis a little. Luiza and Jorge are an impossibly uxorious couple after three years of marriage but the cousin Bazilio is Luiza's childhood sweetheart....Add to this Luiza's schhool chum of dubious character, Leopoldina (played by Dolinda Sayal) and a malicious housekeeper and one has the makings of a sophisticated satirical comedy in the manner of Mauritz Stiller...but in fact it turns into a rather black tragedy with elements of horror, but it certainly does not disappoint. Quite why this excellent little film is so little known is a mystery.
A mystery too as to why the Colaço-Monteiro company did not collaborate on further films.
The book has been filmed many times since but the only other version I found was a relatively trashy recent (2007, Daniel Filho) Brazilian film (starring relatively trashy television actress Débora Falabella)....also interesting in its way but very definitely inferior to this silent version.
