Les Amants de Teruel

The Lovers of Teruel is the best film I have ever seen. Saw it about 15 times. It is the kind of film one can see over and over--like a great opera. Every frame is perfectly composed. The first time I saw it, 44 years ago, I sat through it twice because of the music by Mikos Theodorakis. Great acting from the entire cast. Great story--emotionally wrenching. Usually films that have surrealistic sequences in them come off as merely hokey, but in The Lovers of Teruel those sequences really do work. I am not a dance film fan, and this film was often billed as a dance film, but the dancing is wonderful and is only part of the story. Every film I have since seen I compare to this one--and nothing has yet come close. Too bad it is not out on DVD. I saw it once on VHS. Don't bother. It is a distortion and makes the film look terrible. More than highly recommended, although where can one see it these days?

Quite simply one of the most beautiful and effective fusions of different arts I have ever seen. I was at the University of Minnesota when it was programmed by the Film Society there, while its faculty adviser was Al Milgrom. The film simply flabbergasted me . Widescreen color love story with little dialogue and perhaps the finest music Mikis Theodorakis ever wrote. In his classical vein, not his Zorba mode. Simple and universal story and why it went nowhere in the USA is far beyond my power to even imagine. The dream sequence in ballet is not your standard tutu fest, and develops shockingly powerful emotions. I viewed it once and have never forgotten either it or certain images and have spent over 30 years searching, not obsessively but with reasonable regularity for its music or a copy of the film in any possible format.

This is definitely the most powerful experiences on screen that I have had in decades of film watching, and I am certain it is one of the greatest film ever made. I am saying this although almost forty years have passed since the week in which I saw it twice, in two consecutive days. Its superb use of visual (including mastery of semantically loaded colour photography), musical (including highly structured and meaningful manipulation of sound) and choreographic motifs, its multi-layered art/life embeddings, its overall truly cinematic nature, integratve and absolutely irreducible to any of its components -- all of these and much more are only part of the reasons why this is an unjustifiably forgotten milestone in film history. I am dismayed, frustrated and disappointed that it cannot be purchased in any accessible form -- video cassette or DVD. Will anyone rise to the challenge of correcting this miserable state of affairs? I have been searching for this film for decades, in vain.

This wonderful film never had a chance in this country. When it opened in one theatre in NYC, a newspaper strike that lasted several months was taking place. With no ads and no published reviews it died. I fortunately got to see the film because I happened to notice that the driving force of the film was Ludmilla Tcherina a favorite of mine since seeing her in "Tales of Hoffmann". It was put on beta video tape by Kultur, unfortunately the tape was bad as it did not use widescreen or pan & scan and much of the film was lost on the edges. This film with its wonderful music by Theodrakis deserves another

For all those who lament it being unavailable, it is on you tu be.