Furtivos
Encyclopedia
Furtivos is a 1975 Spanish film directed by José Luis Borau
. It stars Lola Gaos
, Ovidi Montllor
and Alicia Sánchez. The script was written by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
and José Luis Borau. The film is a stark drama that portraits an oedipal relationship and its dire consequences. A great critical and commercial success, it won best picture at the San Sebastián International Film Festival
in 1975. Furtivos is considered a classic of Spanish cinema.
. His only company is his brash, domineering mother, Martina. Ángel is an "alimañero", a hunter in charge of killing wolves and other animals of prey in order to protect deer in a hunting wild reserve. To survive, he resorts to furtive deception of the local civil guards hunting the wild game and selling the meat and skins for profit. During the autumn hunting season, the local Governor comes to hunt stag with his entourage taking base at Ángel's rustic house. The Governor has special affection towards Martina, who was his wet nurse
.
Ángel goes to the provincial capital to buy traps, rope and nooses. He has killed a wolf taking the skin to sell it. In town, he is smitten with a young woman, Milagros, who is looking for a way out of her troubles. Milagros is the girlfriend of a well-known delinquent nicknamed "El Cuqui". She has escaped from the local reformatory for girls hoping to run away with her lover. With no money and still wearing the reformatory's uniform, she notices Ángel eating his lunch in the street and boldly seduces him taking him for a fool. Ángel buys her new clothes and after spending a clandestine evening in an out of the way hotel, he invites her to return to the forest with him. Initially reluctant, Milagros eventually leaves with him on a bus towards the forest.
Meanwhile, Martina has been busy entertaining the childish an irritating Governor, who has come with some friends to hunt deer. Upset with her son's delay in town, Martina is furious when she sees him arriving with a girl in tow. She takes her displace ire with a trapped she wolf. Martina savagely kills the defenseless animal with an ax. Milagros plans is to leave soon hiding out from the authorities until El Cuqui comes to look for her, but Ángel, in spite of his mother opposition, is determined that she stays with him. During the hunting expedition, the Governor shoots at a deer with no success, and as the animal is about to get away, Ángel, in another part of the forest, kills the animal; and drags it out of sight. Initially Ángel tries to hide the presence of the runaway girl from the Governor, but Martina, who is jealous, makes Milagros come to the notice of the Governor. Martina's plan to get rid of Milagros backfires. Instead of returning her to the reformatory, the governor accepts to let her free as Ángel wants to marry the wayward girl. He would be now responsible for her.
Martina is beyond herself with anger. Milagros now has taken her place next to Ángel in the only bed of the house, implying that mother and son had had an incestuous relationship. Ángel is oblivious to his mother's fury. He is happy with Milagros who tries to be accommodating and begins to be genuinely fond of him.
Eventually El Cuqui returns sooner than expected and Milagros, although now attach to Ángel, still plans to run off. Meanwhile, the local police discover El Cuqui's presence in the forest. The Governor, whose hunting expedition has been interrupted by El Cuqui, asks Ángel to track him down since he is the most familiar with the area. He pursues him and finds him, but lets him go because Milagros has promised to stay with him if her lover is spared from jail. El Cuqui escapes. When Ángel returns home Martina tells her son that Milagros has fled as well, taking her few belongings with her. Desperate, Ángel goes back to the forest to look for her, but he cannot find her. Martina tries to console him as she helps him takes his wet clothes.
At first, Ángel is distraught, but life goes on. Peering into the attic of Martina's home, the Governor has discovered deer skins that Ángel has poached. Embarrassed by this findings the Governor eventually name Ángel a Forest Guard in order to discourage his illegal hunting. Ángel begins to prosper. However, he is still obsessed by Milagros disappearance. By chance, he meets again face to face with El Cuqui who, to Ángel's surprise, demands to know where Milagros is. Realizing that she did not escape with El Cuqui, Ángel searches their room finding a box with some of Milagros's nostalgic possessions that she would have never left behind. He finally realizes that Martina, out of jealousy, has killed his wife. He remains calm and tells his mother that the next day they would go to church. Ángel wears his forest guard uniform and take his mother to mass. Martina takes communion and at Ángel's insistence she also received the sacrament of confession. On their way home from the Sunday church service; Ángel shoots her in the back in a field of snow.
and Mariano Haro
, for the starring roles. Alicia Sánchez was an unknown actress from the theater. Ovidi Montllor was a famous singer. The success of Furtivos allowed him to have a parallel career as an actor. When José Luis López Vázquez
declined the role of the Governor, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
persuaded Borau to play it.
and Jose Luis Borau
. The idea behind the film was born out of the character of Angel, the poacher, which was based on a real man who lived and hunt illegally in Cabuérniga Cantabria
.The character of the mother, Martina, originated with the actress who was cast for the role, Lola Gaos. Borau was impressed after seeing Gaos play the role of Saturnina, a cynical maid, in Luis Buñuel
's film Tristana
(1970). Borau mixed the reference to that character with Goya's painting Saturn veering his children
. Hence came the plot line of a female Saturn
, a dominating mother, an incestuous tormentor of her son.
Furtivos was Borau's fourth feature film and the first he was able to make with artistic freedom. The film was made in 1975, just before Francisco Franco
's death. The original idea was to use as location El Bosque del Saja, (The Woodland of Saja) where the real hunter that inspired the story lived, but the director found that those woods, were wolves live, were not right for filming. They do not give the right cinematic look and are too intricate with thick bushes to allow the actors to move and the light to come in. Several different locations were used. The film was shot in the north of the province of Madrid
in El Hayedo de Montejo and some other location around Navarrete, near Segovia
and in the Pyrenees
for the snowy locations. The exteriors shots in the forest were difficult to film because of the constantly changing weather conditions. The film was made with a budget of two hundred thousand dollars.
Borau was not only director, but also screen writer, producer and actor. The scenes in which he plays Santiago, the local governor, where directed by his coo scriptwriter Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón.The poster was made by Ivan Zulueta
. It depicts Martina as a big monster overpowering her son with her huge paws.
It was a standard practice in Spanish film of the time to post synced the actors recording their lines in the studio in post-production. The voices of Angel and the governor are not dubbed by the actors who play those roles. Ovidi Montllor
, Angel, had a thick Valentian accent, unsuitable for a character supposedly born and bred in northern Spain. The governor played by Borau was dubbed by dubbing actor Rafael Penagos whose high-toned pitch voice was preferred to Borau's gruffer tones. Alicia Sánchez was also dubbed by a different actress. Only Lola Gaos real raspy voice was kept.
where it won the first prize Golden Shell
as best film. The harshness of the story, its simple narrative, and the erotic elements in it captured the attention of the public. The film was a great commercial success. Furtivos became the top grossing film in Spain in 1976, netting some three millions dollars.
Furtivos was Borau's fourth feature film and the first he was able to make with artistic freedom. It remains his best, his highest grossing success and the one for which he is often remembered.
Furtivos is also notable for the cinematography by José Luis Cuadrado whose chiaroscuro effects for the film were inspired by the paintings of El Greco
and Jusepe de Ribera. The pace and vital style of the film follows the style of Ford Landgrave and Hitch OK, the hollowed directors admired by Borau. The thematic of the film is far and away from the subject taken by Hollywood films with its uncompromising approach to a difficult theme, the tragic consequences of a love triangle between the mother, Martina, son, Angel, and daughter in law, Milagros and the a matricide following a son's discovery of his wife's murdered by his own mother.
The film earned critical praised from among others Vargas Llosa
, Francisco Umbral
, and Julian Marias
. Critical praise was not unanimous and the film was attacked by sympathizers of Franco's regime. It also offended animal rights advocates in Spain for the strong scene in which Martina clubs a trapped she wolf with a shovel.
. Santiago, the local governor, evokes the figure of Franco, who was known to be a keen huntsman. The petulant, narcissist, infantile behaviors of the governor towards Martina, his former wet nurse, suggest the senility of the dictator who was approaching death when the film was made. His intrusiveness in the life of Martina and her son can be viewed as the attempts of the Francoist forces to repress and control the desires of a nation.
Beneath the social themes lie the motif of incest and the image of the cruel and vicious Martina. She represents the unwinding matriarchal structure that belies Spanish traditional machismo. In its presentation of an all domineering mother the films brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock
's Psycho. The mother son relationship is the key element in the film's depiction of patterns of abuse. There is not only Martina's exploitation and sexual abuse of her son, the physiological violence to which Martina subjects her son, but her savage butchering of the captive wolf, who suffers her displace ire over Milagro's intrusion in her relationship with Angel. "Spain is a cruel mother who devours her children and Furtivos is a cruel film", Borau explained.
The film follows a simple structure and is told as a Fairy tale
. Using allegorical characters typical in fairy stories: a king, the local governor who Martina calls in the film my king, a hunter, Ángel, a witch, Martina, a princess in danger, Milagros, and the lurking scenario of the woods, where the action of the film takes place. In one scene Martina is called a witch. She calls the governor "my king". Like in children tales Milagros gets lost in the forest.
Although the film is based on an actual event, it is considered one of the cruelest stories in Spanish Cinema. The realization of the incestuous relationship between Angel and his mother, especially when she is finally dragged and torn out of their bed to make room for Milagros, is considered one of the most starling scenes in Spanish Cinema. Also memorable is Martina's taking her aggressions out on animals, beating a trapped she wolf to death with an ax. Also disturbing is the scene when Angel shoots Martina without remorse just as he had killed a beautiful wild stag, the governor's coveted but elusive prize, during one of his hunting excursions.
José Luis Borau
José Luis Borau Moradell is a Spanish producer, screenwriter, writer, and film director. He has acted in some films.He won Goya Award as Best Director in 2000 for Leo....
. It stars Lola Gaos
Lola Gaos
Lola Gaos, , was a Spanish film, television and theatre actress....
, Ovidi Montllor
Ovidi Montllor
-Career:At the age of 24, Montllor moved to Barcelona, where he was a member of various independent theater groups, including the CICF, and later with Núria Espert and Adrià Gual...
and Alicia Sánchez. The script was written by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón is an award-winning Spanish screenwriter and film director. His 1973 film Habla, mudita was entered into the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1977, he won the Silver Bear for Best Director for Camada negra at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival...
and José Luis Borau. The film is a stark drama that portraits an oedipal relationship and its dire consequences. A great critical and commercial success, it won best picture at the San Sebastián International Film Festival
San Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
in 1975. Furtivos is considered a classic of Spanish cinema.
Plot
Ángel, a soft spoken withdrawn man, lives an isolated life in a rustic farmhouse in the woodlands around SegoviaSegovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...
. His only company is his brash, domineering mother, Martina. Ángel is an "alimañero", a hunter in charge of killing wolves and other animals of prey in order to protect deer in a hunting wild reserve. To survive, he resorts to furtive deception of the local civil guards hunting the wild game and selling the meat and skins for profit. During the autumn hunting season, the local Governor comes to hunt stag with his entourage taking base at Ángel's rustic house. The Governor has special affection towards Martina, who was his wet nurse
Wet nurse
A wet nurse is a woman who is used to breast feed and care for another's child. Wet nurses are used when the mother is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cultures the families are linked by a special relationship of...
.
Ángel goes to the provincial capital to buy traps, rope and nooses. He has killed a wolf taking the skin to sell it. In town, he is smitten with a young woman, Milagros, who is looking for a way out of her troubles. Milagros is the girlfriend of a well-known delinquent nicknamed "El Cuqui". She has escaped from the local reformatory for girls hoping to run away with her lover. With no money and still wearing the reformatory's uniform, she notices Ángel eating his lunch in the street and boldly seduces him taking him for a fool. Ángel buys her new clothes and after spending a clandestine evening in an out of the way hotel, he invites her to return to the forest with him. Initially reluctant, Milagros eventually leaves with him on a bus towards the forest.
Meanwhile, Martina has been busy entertaining the childish an irritating Governor, who has come with some friends to hunt deer. Upset with her son's delay in town, Martina is furious when she sees him arriving with a girl in tow. She takes her displace ire with a trapped she wolf. Martina savagely kills the defenseless animal with an ax. Milagros plans is to leave soon hiding out from the authorities until El Cuqui comes to look for her, but Ángel, in spite of his mother opposition, is determined that she stays with him. During the hunting expedition, the Governor shoots at a deer with no success, and as the animal is about to get away, Ángel, in another part of the forest, kills the animal; and drags it out of sight. Initially Ángel tries to hide the presence of the runaway girl from the Governor, but Martina, who is jealous, makes Milagros come to the notice of the Governor. Martina's plan to get rid of Milagros backfires. Instead of returning her to the reformatory, the governor accepts to let her free as Ángel wants to marry the wayward girl. He would be now responsible for her.
Martina is beyond herself with anger. Milagros now has taken her place next to Ángel in the only bed of the house, implying that mother and son had had an incestuous relationship. Ángel is oblivious to his mother's fury. He is happy with Milagros who tries to be accommodating and begins to be genuinely fond of him.
Eventually El Cuqui returns sooner than expected and Milagros, although now attach to Ángel, still plans to run off. Meanwhile, the local police discover El Cuqui's presence in the forest. The Governor, whose hunting expedition has been interrupted by El Cuqui, asks Ángel to track him down since he is the most familiar with the area. He pursues him and finds him, but lets him go because Milagros has promised to stay with him if her lover is spared from jail. El Cuqui escapes. When Ángel returns home Martina tells her son that Milagros has fled as well, taking her few belongings with her. Desperate, Ángel goes back to the forest to look for her, but he cannot find her. Martina tries to console him as she helps him takes his wet clothes.
At first, Ángel is distraught, but life goes on. Peering into the attic of Martina's home, the Governor has discovered deer skins that Ángel has poached. Embarrassed by this findings the Governor eventually name Ángel a Forest Guard in order to discourage his illegal hunting. Ángel begins to prosper. However, he is still obsessed by Milagros disappearance. By chance, he meets again face to face with El Cuqui who, to Ángel's surprise, demands to know where Milagros is. Realizing that she did not escape with El Cuqui, Ángel searches their room finding a box with some of Milagros's nostalgic possessions that she would have never left behind. He finally realizes that Martina, out of jealousy, has killed his wife. He remains calm and tells his mother that the next day they would go to church. Ángel wears his forest guard uniform and take his mother to mass. Martina takes communion and at Ángel's insistence she also received the sacrament of confession. On their way home from the Sunday church service; Ángel shoots her in the back in a field of snow.
Cast
While Lola Gaos was set from the start to play Martina, Borau considered Ángela MolinaÁngela Molina
Ángela Molina is a Spanish actress, and a daughter of Antonio Molina, Spanish singer and actor.Molina studied dance and theater art in the Escuela Superior de Madrid. She rose to international prominence after starring in Luis Buñuel's last movie That Obscure Object of Desire...
and Mariano Haro
Mariano Haro
Mariano Haro Cisneros is a former Spanish athlete, competing in the long-distance events. He was born in Becerril de Campos....
, for the starring roles. Alicia Sánchez was an unknown actress from the theater. Ovidi Montllor was a famous singer. The success of Furtivos allowed him to have a parallel career as an actor. When José Luis López Vázquez
José Luis López Vázquez
José Luis López Vázquez de la Torre was a Spanish actor. -Career:López Vázquez was born in Madrid. He originally worked in theater as a costume designer, a scenic designer, and as an assistant director to Pío Ballesteros and Enrique Herreros. In 1946, he switched over to film, with a small role in...
declined the role of the Governor, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón is an award-winning Spanish screenwriter and film director. His 1973 film Habla, mudita was entered into the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1977, he won the Silver Bear for Best Director for Camada negra at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival...
persuaded Borau to play it.
- Lola GaosLola GaosLola Gaos, , was a Spanish film, television and theatre actress....
as Matina - Ovidi MontllorOvidi Montllor-Career:At the age of 24, Montllor moved to Barcelona, where he was a member of various independent theater groups, including the CICF, and later with Núria Espert and Adrià Gual...
as Ángel - Alicia Sánchez as Milagros
- José Luis BorauJosé Luis BorauJosé Luis Borau Moradell is a Spanish producer, screenwriter, writer, and film director. He has acted in some films.He won Goya Award as Best Director in 2000 for Leo....
as Santiago, the provincial Governor - Felipe Solano as El Cuqui
- Ismael Merlo as the priest
Title
The word Furtivos has two meanings in Spanish: people hunting game illegally (poachers) and somebody who harbor secret thoughts. The director's intention was to imply both. For Borau the film is about secrets and persecution. He explained that before looking for it in a dictionary, he only associated the word furtivo with something done in secrecy. The English translation of the title, Poachers, does not capture the full meaning of the original. Borau explained: "I wanted to show that under Franco, Spain was living a secret life. Virtually everyone in this film is a Furtivo."Production
The script was written by film director and screenwriter Manuel Gutiérrez AragónManuel Gutiérrez Aragón
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón is an award-winning Spanish screenwriter and film director. His 1973 film Habla, mudita was entered into the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1977, he won the Silver Bear for Best Director for Camada negra at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival...
and Jose Luis Borau
José Luis Borau
José Luis Borau Moradell is a Spanish producer, screenwriter, writer, and film director. He has acted in some films.He won Goya Award as Best Director in 2000 for Leo....
. The idea behind the film was born out of the character of Angel, the poacher, which was based on a real man who lived and hunt illegally in Cabuérniga Cantabria
Cantabria
Cantabria is a Spanish historical region and autonomous community with Santander as its capital city. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Autonomous Community , on the south by Castile and León , on the west by the Principality of Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea.Cantabria...
.The character of the mother, Martina, originated with the actress who was cast for the role, Lola Gaos. Borau was impressed after seeing Gaos play the role of Saturnina, a cynical maid, in Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
's film Tristana
Tristana
Tristana is a 1970 Spanish film directed by Luis Buñuel. Based on the eponymous novel by Benito Pérez Galdós, it stars Catherine Deneuve and Fernando Rey and was shot in Toledo, Spain. The voices of French actress Catherine Deneuve and Italian actor Franco Nero were dubbed to Spanish...
(1970). Borau mixed the reference to that character with Goya's painting Saturn veering his children
Saturn Devouring His Son
Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus , who, fearing that he would be overthrown by his children, ate each one upon their birth...
. Hence came the plot line of a female Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
, a dominating mother, an incestuous tormentor of her son.
Furtivos was Borau's fourth feature film and the first he was able to make with artistic freedom. The film was made in 1975, just before Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's death. The original idea was to use as location El Bosque del Saja, (The Woodland of Saja) where the real hunter that inspired the story lived, but the director found that those woods, were wolves live, were not right for filming. They do not give the right cinematic look and are too intricate with thick bushes to allow the actors to move and the light to come in. Several different locations were used. The film was shot in the north of the province of Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
in El Hayedo de Montejo and some other location around Navarrete, near Segovia
Segovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...
and in the Pyrenees
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...
for the snowy locations. The exteriors shots in the forest were difficult to film because of the constantly changing weather conditions. The film was made with a budget of two hundred thousand dollars.
Borau was not only director, but also screen writer, producer and actor. The scenes in which he plays Santiago, the local governor, where directed by his coo scriptwriter Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón.The poster was made by Ivan Zulueta
Ivan Zulueta
Juan Ricardo Miguel Zulueta Vergarajauregui known as Ivan Zulueta was a designer and film director...
. It depicts Martina as a big monster overpowering her son with her huge paws.
It was a standard practice in Spanish film of the time to post synced the actors recording their lines in the studio in post-production. The voices of Angel and the governor are not dubbed by the actors who play those roles. Ovidi Montllor
Ovidi Montllor
-Career:At the age of 24, Montllor moved to Barcelona, where he was a member of various independent theater groups, including the CICF, and later with Núria Espert and Adrià Gual...
, Angel, had a thick Valentian accent, unsuitable for a character supposedly born and bred in northern Spain. The governor played by Borau was dubbed by dubbing actor Rafael Penagos whose high-toned pitch voice was preferred to Borau's gruffer tones. Alicia Sánchez was also dubbed by a different actress. Only Lola Gaos real raspy voice was kept.
Reception
Furtivos premiered at the San Sebastian Film FestivalSan Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
where it won the first prize Golden Shell
Golden Shell
The Golden Shell is the highest prize given to a competing film at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It was introduced in 1957. In 1953 and 1954, the highest prize had been called the Gran Premio. In 1955 and 1956 it was replaced by the Silver Shell...
as best film. The harshness of the story, its simple narrative, and the erotic elements in it captured the attention of the public. The film was a great commercial success. Furtivos became the top grossing film in Spain in 1976, netting some three millions dollars.
Furtivos was Borau's fourth feature film and the first he was able to make with artistic freedom. It remains his best, his highest grossing success and the one for which he is often remembered.
Furtivos is also notable for the cinematography by José Luis Cuadrado whose chiaroscuro effects for the film were inspired by the paintings of El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
and Jusepe de Ribera. The pace and vital style of the film follows the style of Ford Landgrave and Hitch OK, the hollowed directors admired by Borau. The thematic of the film is far and away from the subject taken by Hollywood films with its uncompromising approach to a difficult theme, the tragic consequences of a love triangle between the mother, Martina, son, Angel, and daughter in law, Milagros and the a matricide following a son's discovery of his wife's murdered by his own mother.
The film earned critical praised from among others Vargas Llosa
Vargas Llosa
Vargas Llosa is the surname of two prominent Peruvian intellectuals who are father and son.*Mario Vargas Llosa, born in 1936, is a novelist, journalist and essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2010....
, Francisco Umbral
Francisco Umbral
Francisco Umbral was a Spanish journalist, novelist, biographer and essayist.-Style:...
, and Julian Marias
Julián Marías
Julián Marías Aguilera , was a Spanish philosopher. His History of Philosophy is widely accepted as the greatest work written in Spanish on the subject of the history of philosophy...
. Critical praise was not unanimous and the film was attacked by sympathizers of Franco's regime. It also offended animal rights advocates in Spain for the strong scene in which Martina clubs a trapped she wolf with a shovel.
Analysis
Underneath its rural and realistic presentation; Furtivos is at the same time a tragedy and a fairy tale. The film is an allegorical criticism of the social order under FrancoFrancisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
. Santiago, the local governor, evokes the figure of Franco, who was known to be a keen huntsman. The petulant, narcissist, infantile behaviors of the governor towards Martina, his former wet nurse, suggest the senility of the dictator who was approaching death when the film was made. His intrusiveness in the life of Martina and her son can be viewed as the attempts of the Francoist forces to repress and control the desires of a nation.
Beneath the social themes lie the motif of incest and the image of the cruel and vicious Martina. She represents the unwinding matriarchal structure that belies Spanish traditional machismo. In its presentation of an all domineering mother the films brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Psycho. The mother son relationship is the key element in the film's depiction of patterns of abuse. There is not only Martina's exploitation and sexual abuse of her son, the physiological violence to which Martina subjects her son, but her savage butchering of the captive wolf, who suffers her displace ire over Milagro's intrusion in her relationship with Angel. "Spain is a cruel mother who devours her children and Furtivos is a cruel film", Borau explained.
The film follows a simple structure and is told as a Fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
. Using allegorical characters typical in fairy stories: a king, the local governor who Martina calls in the film my king, a hunter, Ángel, a witch, Martina, a princess in danger, Milagros, and the lurking scenario of the woods, where the action of the film takes place. In one scene Martina is called a witch. She calls the governor "my king". Like in children tales Milagros gets lost in the forest.
Controversy
Furtivos was made at the time in the last days of Franco's life and it was released when the Francoist censorship was still in place. The film directly challenged Franco's censorship policies with its scenes of stark violence, explicit nudity, its depiction of amoral characters and its display of the degeneration of the existing political regime. The director fought vigorously with the censors first to have the film made and later to releases it as he had intended without cuts. He refused to the censor's demands to cut some of the aspect of the character of the governor, scenes at the girl's reformatory, and Milagros woodlands striptease. Borau battles with the censors paved the way for many other Spanish film directors to deal with controversial themes without fear of censorship.Although the film is based on an actual event, it is considered one of the cruelest stories in Spanish Cinema. The realization of the incestuous relationship between Angel and his mother, especially when she is finally dragged and torn out of their bed to make room for Milagros, is considered one of the most starling scenes in Spanish Cinema. Also memorable is Martina's taking her aggressions out on animals, beating a trapped she wolf to death with an ax. Also disturbing is the scene when Angel shoots Martina without remorse just as he had killed a beautiful wild stag, the governor's coveted but elusive prize, during one of his hunting excursions.
Awards
Winner of the 1975- Cinema writers Circle Awards as: Best Film and Best actress (Lola Gaos).
- Golden ShellGolden ShellThe Golden Shell is the highest prize given to a competing film at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It was introduced in 1957. In 1953 and 1954, the highest prize had been called the Gran Premio. In 1955 and 1956 it was replaced by the Silver Shell...
as Best Film at the San Sebastián International Film FestivalSan Sebastián International Film FestivalThe San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
.