Cria Cuervos
Encyclopedia
Cría cuervos is a 1976 Spanish film directed by Carlos Saura
. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight year old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival
.
Reality and fantasy swap places. The bizarre death of Ana's father, who will prove to be a Fascist military man, is real. The apparently banal appearance of the mother at the fridge, on the other hand, is in fact fantasized by the grieving child. Ana's mother is already dead; her image is only a fanciful illusion of the little girl's mind. Blaming her mother's illness and death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder she believes to be a potent poison in his milk glass as a willful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. (Her mother had told her years ago to throw out this powder as it was poison. It turns out it is simply baking soda.)
At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction of having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair, and the feisty, fleshy housekeeper, Rosa.
Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly as her mother, recounts her infancy: 'I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown'.
The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer school vacation. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, or even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the family maid, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.
Ana’s mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder, her guinea pig's death and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother, ill and using a wheelchair, the opportunity of dying and ridding herself from loneliness by providing her a spoonful of her poison. The old woman turns down Ana's offer as the old woman realizes that the powder is simply baking soda.
The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted: it was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison, so powerful that one spoonful would kill an elephant. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her father: "The only thing I remembered perfectly is that then my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighted on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness."
Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the lugubrious family compound and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been shut out from their world up to this point.
plays the lead character, Ana. She was already well known thanks to her starring role in the film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) by Víctor Erice, made when she was seven years old. She followed Cría cuervos by yet another memorable role in The Nest
(1980) in which she played a thirteen year old in a relationship with an aging widower played by Héctor Alterio who here has the role of Anselmo, Ana's father.
Geraldine Chaplin
plays dual roles: Ana's mother in which she speaks Spanish
with an English
accent and Ana as a young woman in which she is dubbed by actress Julieta Serrano
. Chaplin was director Saura's common-law wife and muse at that time. She appeared in ten of his films.
The phrase "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos" is said to originate with Don Álvaro de Luna
of Castile during a hunting expedition. In the course of the hunt his party came across a beggar with terrible scarring in the place of eyes. The beggar explained that he had raised a raven for three years with affection and great care, but it attacked him one day, leaving him blind. The bon mot was Don Álvaro's reply.
Cría cuervos was released as Cría! in the United States
and as Raise Ravens in the UK.
was considered one of the great opponents, along with other directors, of the Franco regime, with characters and themes in the film alluding to Saura's interpretations and criticisms of Franco-inspired truths.
The film stresses the disparity between Ana's inner world of private traumas and the outer world of political realities and fascism. Ana will cope with her guilt in both arenas.
When asked to elucidate on the nature of Ana's suffering, the director, Carlos Saura
replied :" Cria cuervos is a sad film, yes. But that's part of my belief that childhood is one of the most terrible parts in the life of a human being. What I'm trying to say is that at that age you've no idea where it is you are going, only that people are taking you somewhere, leading you, pulling you and you are frightened. You don't know where you're going or who you are or what you are going to do. It's a time of terrible indecision."
lay dying, and premiered in Madrid's Conde Duque Theatre, on January 26, 1976. Highly acclaimed, it received the Cannes film festival
Special Jury Prize Award. The film became director Carlos Saura and producer Elías Querejeta
's most commercially successful film up to that point, going on to become the sixth largest grossing Spanish film of 1976. The picture made a similar strong showing in foreign markets, including the US where it solidified Saura's reputation as Spain's best international known director of the 1970s. Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema
.
" by Jeanette
, an English-born singer, singing in Spanish, whose accented voice reminds Ana of her mother, as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who speaks Spanish with her English accented voice. Despite an infectious rhythm the song has sad and poignant lyrics. The song expresses the fact that Ana has no understanding of death, only of absence.
Cría cuervos (Raise Ravens) is a 1976 Spanish film directed by Carlos Saura
. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight year old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival
.
Reality and fantasy swap places. The bizarre death of Ana's father, who will prove to be a Fascist military man, is real. The apparently banal appearance of the mother at the fridge, on the other hand, is in fact fantasized by the grieving child. Ana's mother is already dead; her image is only a fanciful illusion of the little girl's mind. Blaming her mother's illness and death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder she believes to be a potent poison in his milk glass as a willful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. (Her mother had told her years ago to throw out this powder as it was poison. It turns out it is simply baking soda.)
At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction of having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair, and the feisty, fleshy housekeeper, Rosa.
Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly as her mother, recounts her infancy: 'I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown'.
The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer school vacation. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, or even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the family maid, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.
Ana’s mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder, her guinea pig's death and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother, ill and using a wheelchair, the opportunity of dying and ridding herself from loneliness by providing her a spoonful of her poison. The old woman turns down Ana's offer as the old woman realizes that the powder is simply baking soda.
The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted: it was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison, so powerful that one spoonful would kill an elephant. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her father: "The only thing I remembered perfectly is that then my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighted on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness."
Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the lugubrious family compound and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been shut out from their world up to this point.
plays the lead character, Ana. She was already well known thanks to her starring role in the film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) by Víctor Erice, made when she was seven years old. She followed Cría cuervos by yet another memorable role in The Nest
(1980) in which she played a thirteen year old in a relationship with an aging widower played by Héctor Alterio who here has the role of Anselmo, Ana's father.
Geraldine Chaplin
plays dual roles: Ana's mother in which she speaks Spanish
with an English
accent and Ana as a young woman in which she is dubbed by actress Julieta Serrano
. Chaplin was director Saura's common-law wife and muse at that time. She appeared in ten of his films.
The phrase "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos" is said to originate with Don Álvaro de Luna
of Castile during a hunting expedition. In the course of the hunt his party came across a beggar with terrible scarring in the place of eyes. The beggar explained that he had raised a raven for three years with affection and great care, but it attacked him one day, leaving him blind. The bon mot was Don Álvaro's reply.
Cría cuervos was released as Cría! in the United States
and as Raise Ravens in the UK.
was considered one of the great opponents, along with other directors, of the Franco regime, with characters and themes in the film alluding to Saura's interpretations and criticisms of Franco-inspired truths.
The film stresses the disparity between Ana's inner world of private traumas and the outer world of political realities and fascism. Ana will cope with her guilt in both arenas.
When asked to elucidate on the nature of Ana's suffering, the director, Carlos Saura
replied :" Cria cuervos is a sad film, yes. But that's part of my belief that childhood is one of the most terrible parts in the life of a human being. What I'm trying to say is that at that age you've no idea where it is you are going, only that people are taking you somewhere, leading you, pulling you and you are frightened. You don't know where you're going or who you are or what you are going to do. It's a time of terrible indecision."
lay dying, and premiered in Madrid's Conde Duque Theatre, on January 26, 1976. Highly acclaimed, it received the Cannes film festival
Special Jury Prize Award. The film became director Carlos Saura and producer Elías Querejeta
's most commercially successful film up to that point, going on to become the sixth largest grossing Spanish film of 1976. The picture made a similar strong showing in foreign markets, including the US where it solidified Saura's reputation as Spain's best international known director of the 1970s. Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema
.
" by Jeanette
, an English-born singer, singing in Spanish, whose accented voice reminds Ana of her mother, as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who speaks Spanish with her English accented voice. Despite an infectious rhythm the song has sad and poignant lyrics. The song expresses the fact that Ana has no understanding of death, only of absence.
Cría cuervos (Raise Ravens) is a 1976 Spanish film directed by Carlos Saura
. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight year old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival
.
Reality and fantasy swap places. The bizarre death of Ana's father, who will prove to be a Fascist military man, is real. The apparently banal appearance of the mother at the fridge, on the other hand, is in fact fantasized by the grieving child. Ana's mother is already dead; her image is only a fanciful illusion of the little girl's mind. Blaming her mother's illness and death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder she believes to be a potent poison in his milk glass as a willful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. (Her mother had told her years ago to throw out this powder as it was poison. It turns out it is simply baking soda.)
At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction of having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair, and the feisty, fleshy housekeeper, Rosa.
Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly as her mother, recounts her infancy: 'I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown'.
The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer school vacation. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, or even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the family maid, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.
Ana’s mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder, her guinea pig's death and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother, ill and using a wheelchair, the opportunity of dying and ridding herself from loneliness by providing her a spoonful of her poison. The old woman turns down Ana's offer as the old woman realizes that the powder is simply baking soda.
The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted: it was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison, so powerful that one spoonful would kill an elephant. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her father: "The only thing I remembered perfectly is that then my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighted on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness."
Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the lugubrious family compound and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been shut out from their world up to this point.
plays the lead character, Ana. She was already well known thanks to her starring role in the film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) by Víctor Erice, made when she was seven years old. She followed Cría cuervos by yet another memorable role in The Nest
(1980) in which she played a thirteen year old in a relationship with an aging widower played by Héctor Alterio who here has the role of Anselmo, Ana's father.
Geraldine Chaplin
plays dual roles: Ana's mother in which she speaks Spanish
with an English
accent and Ana as a young woman in which she is dubbed by actress Julieta Serrano
. Chaplin was director Saura's common-law wife and muse at that time. She appeared in ten of his films.
The phrase "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos" is said to originate with Don Álvaro de Luna
of Castile during a hunting expedition. In the course of the hunt his party came across a beggar with terrible scarring in the place of eyes. The beggar explained that he had raised a raven for three years with affection and great care, but it attacked him one day, leaving him blind. The bon mot was Don Álvaro's reply.
Cría cuervos was released as Cría! in the United States
and as Raise Ravens in the UK.
was considered one of the great opponents, along with other directors, of the Franco regime, with characters and themes in the film alluding to Saura's interpretations and criticisms of Franco-inspired truths.
The film stresses the disparity between Ana's inner world of private traumas and the outer world of political realities and fascism. Ana will cope with her guilt in both arenas.
When asked to elucidate on the nature of Ana's suffering, the director, Carlos Saura
replied :" Cria cuervos is a sad film, yes. But that's part of my belief that childhood is one of the most terrible parts in the life of a human being. What I'm trying to say is that at that age you've no idea where it is you are going, only that people are taking you somewhere, leading you, pulling you and you are frightened. You don't know where you're going or who you are or what you are going to do. It's a time of terrible indecision."
lay dying, and premiered in Madrid's Conde Duque Theatre, on January 26, 1976. Highly acclaimed, it received the Cannes film festival
Special Jury Prize Award. The film became director Carlos Saura and producer Elías Querejeta
's most commercially successful film up to that point, going on to become the sixth largest grossing Spanish film of 1976. The picture made a similar strong showing in foreign markets, including the US where it solidified Saura's reputation as Spain's best international known director of the 1970s. Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema
.
" by Jeanette
, an English-born singer, singing in Spanish, whose accented voice reminds Ana of her mother, as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who speaks Spanish with her English accented voice. Despite an infectious rhythm the song has sad and poignant lyrics. The song expresses the fact that Ana has no understanding of death, only of absence.
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight year old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival
1976 Cannes Film Festival
The 29th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 13-28, 1976. A new section, 'L'Air du temps', which is non-competitive and focuses on contemporary subjects, is introduced at this festival and discontinued after the next.- Jury :...
.
Plot
Eight-year-old Ana, stoic and mute approaches her father's bedroom where she hears a woman in bed with her father, confessing her love for him. Descending the stairs, she spies an attractive middle-aged woman, hastily dressing and rushing from the bedroom to the front door of the darkened house. The woman and Ana exchange glances but do not speak. Once the woman has left, Ana enters her father's bedroom and finds the man dead, apparently from a heart attack. As if not really understanding the gravity of the situation, Ana unflappably takes away a half-full glass of milk, which she carries to the kitchen and cleans. In the kitchen, she sees her mother, who chides her for being up so late and sends her off to bed.Reality and fantasy swap places. The bizarre death of Ana's father, who will prove to be a Fascist military man, is real. The apparently banal appearance of the mother at the fridge, on the other hand, is in fact fantasized by the grieving child. Ana's mother is already dead; her image is only a fanciful illusion of the little girl's mind. Blaming her mother's illness and death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder she believes to be a potent poison in his milk glass as a willful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. (Her mother had told her years ago to throw out this powder as it was poison. It turns out it is simply baking soda.)
At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction of having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair, and the feisty, fleshy housekeeper, Rosa.
Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly as her mother, recounts her infancy: 'I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown'.
The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer school vacation. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, or even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the family maid, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.
Ana’s mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder, her guinea pig's death and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother, ill and using a wheelchair, the opportunity of dying and ridding herself from loneliness by providing her a spoonful of her poison. The old woman turns down Ana's offer as the old woman realizes that the powder is simply baking soda.
The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted: it was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison, so powerful that one spoonful would kill an elephant. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her father: "The only thing I remembered perfectly is that then my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighted on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness."
Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the lugubrious family compound and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been shut out from their world up to this point.
Cast
Ana TorrentAna Torrent
Ana Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
plays the lead character, Ana. She was already well known thanks to her starring role in the film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) by Víctor Erice, made when she was seven years old. She followed Cría cuervos by yet another memorable role in The Nest
The Nest (film)
The Nest is a 1980 Spanish film written and directed by Jaime de Armiñán, starring Héctor Alterio and Ana Torrent.The plot follows the emotionally intense relationship between an old widower and a precocious thirteen year old girl...
(1980) in which she played a thirteen year old in a relationship with an aging widower played by Héctor Alterio who here has the role of Anselmo, Ana's father.
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
plays dual roles: Ana's mother in which she speaks Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
accent and Ana as a young woman in which she is dubbed by actress Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano Romero is a Catalan theatre and cinema actress. Her prolific career began in the 1960s, and she has worked with directors Pedro Almodóvar and Ventura Pons.-Filmography:...
. Chaplin was director Saura's common-law wife and muse at that time. She appeared in ten of his films.
- Ana TorrentAna TorrentAna Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
- Ana, 8 years old - Conchi Pérez - Irene, 11 years old
- Maite Sánchez - Mayte, 5 years old
- Geraldine ChaplinGeraldine ChaplinGeraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
- Ana's mother and older Ana - Mónica RandallMónica RandallMónica Randall is a Spanish film actress.Randall has made some 110 appearances in film and TV since 1963. She appeared in numerous western films in the 1960s in films such as One Hundred Thousand Dollars for Ringo and has made regular TV appearances since the 1970s.- External links and sources :...
- Aunt Paulina - Florinda ChicoFlorinda ChicoFlorinda Chico Martín Mora was a Spanish actress of film, theater and television.-Biography:Florinda Chico Martín Mora was born in 1926 in Don Benito, Extremadura, Spain. She studied singing and then started her artistic career on the stage acting in musical revues...
- Rosa, a maid - Josefina Díaz - Ana's grandmother
- Germán Cobos - Nicholas, Amelia's husband
- Héctor Alterio - Anselmo, Ana's father
- Mirta MillerMirta MillerMirta Miller is an Argentine film actress. She has appeared in over 65 films since 1961. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.-Selected filmography:* No Exit * Una chica casi decente...
- Amelia, Anselmo's mistress
Title
The title Cria cuervos comes from the Spanish proverb, "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos." This translates as, "Raise ravens, and they'll take out your eyes" and is generally used for someone who has bad luck in raising children, or raised them badly. It may also imply rebellious behavior or that every bad act will return to haunt you.The phrase "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos" is said to originate with Don Álvaro de Luna
Álvaro de Luna
Álvaro de Luna y Jarana , Duke of Trujillo, 1st Count of San Esteban de Gormaz, was a Spanish politician...
of Castile during a hunting expedition. In the course of the hunt his party came across a beggar with terrible scarring in the place of eyes. The beggar explained that he had raised a raven for three years with affection and great care, but it attacked him one day, leaving him blind. The bon mot was Don Álvaro's reply.
Cría cuervos was released as Cría! in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and as Raise Ravens in the UK.
Analysis
This film was made during a period where Carlos SauraCarlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
was considered one of the great opponents, along with other directors, of the Franco regime, with characters and themes in the film alluding to Saura's interpretations and criticisms of Franco-inspired truths.
The film stresses the disparity between Ana's inner world of private traumas and the outer world of political realities and fascism. Ana will cope with her guilt in both arenas.
When asked to elucidate on the nature of Ana's suffering, the director, Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
replied :" Cria cuervos is a sad film, yes. But that's part of my belief that childhood is one of the most terrible parts in the life of a human being. What I'm trying to say is that at that age you've no idea where it is you are going, only that people are taking you somewhere, leading you, pulling you and you are frightened. You don't know where you're going or who you are or what you are going to do. It's a time of terrible indecision."
Reception
Cria cuervos was shot in the summer of 1975, as Spanish dictator Francisco 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...
lay dying, and premiered in Madrid's Conde Duque Theatre, on January 26, 1976. Highly acclaimed, it received the Cannes film festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
Special Jury Prize Award. The film became director Carlos Saura and producer Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta is a Spanish film producer.-Biography:He was a soccer player in Real Sociedad.Father of Gracia Querejeta. He has produced the best of Spanish films in 60's and 70's. He has worked with Carlos Saura in 11 films, Víctor Erice in 2 films, Montxo Armendáriz in 4 times or Fernando León...
's most commercially successful film up to that point, going on to become the sixth largest grossing Spanish film of 1976. The picture made a similar strong showing in foreign markets, including the US where it solidified Saura's reputation as Spain's best international known director of the 1970s. Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema
Cinema of Spain
The art of motion-picture making within the nation of Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.In recent years, Spanish cinema has achieved high marks of recognition as a result of its creative and technical excellence...
.
Music
The film prominently features the pop song "Porque te vasPorque te vas
"Porque te vas" is a song performed by the singer Jeanette written by José Luis Perales and remained relatively unknown at the start of 1974...
" by Jeanette
Jeanette Dimech
Janette Anne Dimech , who performs under the name Jeanette, is a half-Belgian, half-Spanish, English-born, American-raised singer who has resided in Spain since the age of 12, and who sings primarily in Spanish. She has also recorded songs in several different languages: English , French, German...
, an English-born singer, singing in Spanish, whose accented voice reminds Ana of her mother, as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who speaks Spanish with her English accented voice. Despite an infectious rhythm the song has sad and poignant lyrics. The song expresses the fact that Ana has no understanding of death, only of absence.
DVD release
Cria Cuervos was released on DVD on August 14, 2007 in a two-disc special edition as part of the Criterion Collection.External links
- Criterion Collection essay by Paul Julian Smith
- Film Reference
- Strictly Film School
- DVDLaser.com
- Film Affinity (Spanish)
- Cinergia (Spanish)
Cría cuervos (Raise Ravens) is a 1976 Spanish film directed by Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight year old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival
1976 Cannes Film Festival
The 29th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 13-28, 1976. A new section, 'L'Air du temps', which is non-competitive and focuses on contemporary subjects, is introduced at this festival and discontinued after the next.- Jury :...
.
Plot
Eight-year-old Ana, stoic and mute approaches her father's bedroom where she hears a woman in bed with her father, confessing her love for him. Descending the stairs, she spies an attractive middle-aged woman, hastily dressing and rushing from the bedroom to the front door of the darkened house. The woman and Ana exchange glances but do not speak. Once the woman has left, Ana enters her father's bedroom and finds the man dead, apparently from a heart attack. As if not really understanding the gravity of the situation, Ana unflappably takes away a half-full glass of milk, which she carries to the kitchen and cleans. In the kitchen, she sees her mother, who chides her for being up so late and sends her off to bed.Reality and fantasy swap places. The bizarre death of Ana's father, who will prove to be a Fascist military man, is real. The apparently banal appearance of the mother at the fridge, on the other hand, is in fact fantasized by the grieving child. Ana's mother is already dead; her image is only a fanciful illusion of the little girl's mind. Blaming her mother's illness and death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder she believes to be a potent poison in his milk glass as a willful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. (Her mother had told her years ago to throw out this powder as it was poison. It turns out it is simply baking soda.)
At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction of having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair, and the feisty, fleshy housekeeper, Rosa.
Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly as her mother, recounts her infancy: 'I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown'.
The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer school vacation. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, or even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the family maid, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.
Ana’s mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder, her guinea pig's death and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother, ill and using a wheelchair, the opportunity of dying and ridding herself from loneliness by providing her a spoonful of her poison. The old woman turns down Ana's offer as the old woman realizes that the powder is simply baking soda.
The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted: it was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison, so powerful that one spoonful would kill an elephant. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her father: "The only thing I remembered perfectly is that then my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighted on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness."
Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the lugubrious family compound and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been shut out from their world up to this point.
Cast
Ana TorrentAna Torrent
Ana Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
plays the lead character, Ana. She was already well known thanks to her starring role in the film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) by Víctor Erice, made when she was seven years old. She followed Cría cuervos by yet another memorable role in The Nest
The Nest (film)
The Nest is a 1980 Spanish film written and directed by Jaime de Armiñán, starring Héctor Alterio and Ana Torrent.The plot follows the emotionally intense relationship between an old widower and a precocious thirteen year old girl...
(1980) in which she played a thirteen year old in a relationship with an aging widower played by Héctor Alterio who here has the role of Anselmo, Ana's father.
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
plays dual roles: Ana's mother in which she speaks Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
accent and Ana as a young woman in which she is dubbed by actress Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano Romero is a Catalan theatre and cinema actress. Her prolific career began in the 1960s, and she has worked with directors Pedro Almodóvar and Ventura Pons.-Filmography:...
. Chaplin was director Saura's common-law wife and muse at that time. She appeared in ten of his films.
- Ana TorrentAna TorrentAna Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
- Ana, 8 years old - Conchi Pérez - Irene, 11 years old
- Maite Sánchez - Mayte, 5 years old
- Geraldine ChaplinGeraldine ChaplinGeraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
- Ana's mother and older Ana - Mónica RandallMónica RandallMónica Randall is a Spanish film actress.Randall has made some 110 appearances in film and TV since 1963. She appeared in numerous western films in the 1960s in films such as One Hundred Thousand Dollars for Ringo and has made regular TV appearances since the 1970s.- External links and sources :...
- Aunt Paulina - Florinda ChicoFlorinda ChicoFlorinda Chico Martín Mora was a Spanish actress of film, theater and television.-Biography:Florinda Chico Martín Mora was born in 1926 in Don Benito, Extremadura, Spain. She studied singing and then started her artistic career on the stage acting in musical revues...
- Rosa, a maid - Josefina Díaz - Ana's grandmother
- Germán Cobos - Nicholas, Amelia's husband
- Héctor Alterio - Anselmo, Ana's father
- Mirta MillerMirta MillerMirta Miller is an Argentine film actress. She has appeared in over 65 films since 1961. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.-Selected filmography:* No Exit * Una chica casi decente...
- Amelia, Anselmo's mistress
Title
The title Cria cuervos comes from the Spanish proverb, "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos." This translates as, "Raise ravens, and they'll take out your eyes" and is generally used for someone who has bad luck in raising children, or raised them badly. It may also imply rebellious behavior or that every bad act will return to haunt you.The phrase "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos" is said to originate with Don Álvaro de Luna
Álvaro de Luna
Álvaro de Luna y Jarana , Duke of Trujillo, 1st Count of San Esteban de Gormaz, was a Spanish politician...
of Castile during a hunting expedition. In the course of the hunt his party came across a beggar with terrible scarring in the place of eyes. The beggar explained that he had raised a raven for three years with affection and great care, but it attacked him one day, leaving him blind. The bon mot was Don Álvaro's reply.
Cría cuervos was released as Cría! in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and as Raise Ravens in the UK.
Analysis
This film was made during a period where Carlos SauraCarlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
was considered one of the great opponents, along with other directors, of the Franco regime, with characters and themes in the film alluding to Saura's interpretations and criticisms of Franco-inspired truths.
The film stresses the disparity between Ana's inner world of private traumas and the outer world of political realities and fascism. Ana will cope with her guilt in both arenas.
When asked to elucidate on the nature of Ana's suffering, the director, Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
replied :" Cria cuervos is a sad film, yes. But that's part of my belief that childhood is one of the most terrible parts in the life of a human being. What I'm trying to say is that at that age you've no idea where it is you are going, only that people are taking you somewhere, leading you, pulling you and you are frightened. You don't know where you're going or who you are or what you are going to do. It's a time of terrible indecision."
Reception
Cria cuervos was shot in the summer of 1975, as Spanish dictator Francisco 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...
lay dying, and premiered in Madrid's Conde Duque Theatre, on January 26, 1976. Highly acclaimed, it received the Cannes film festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
Special Jury Prize Award. The film became director Carlos Saura and producer Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta is a Spanish film producer.-Biography:He was a soccer player in Real Sociedad.Father of Gracia Querejeta. He has produced the best of Spanish films in 60's and 70's. He has worked with Carlos Saura in 11 films, Víctor Erice in 2 films, Montxo Armendáriz in 4 times or Fernando León...
's most commercially successful film up to that point, going on to become the sixth largest grossing Spanish film of 1976. The picture made a similar strong showing in foreign markets, including the US where it solidified Saura's reputation as Spain's best international known director of the 1970s. Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema
Cinema of Spain
The art of motion-picture making within the nation of Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.In recent years, Spanish cinema has achieved high marks of recognition as a result of its creative and technical excellence...
.
Music
The film prominently features the pop song "Porque te vasPorque te vas
"Porque te vas" is a song performed by the singer Jeanette written by José Luis Perales and remained relatively unknown at the start of 1974...
" by Jeanette
Jeanette Dimech
Janette Anne Dimech , who performs under the name Jeanette, is a half-Belgian, half-Spanish, English-born, American-raised singer who has resided in Spain since the age of 12, and who sings primarily in Spanish. She has also recorded songs in several different languages: English , French, German...
, an English-born singer, singing in Spanish, whose accented voice reminds Ana of her mother, as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who speaks Spanish with her English accented voice. Despite an infectious rhythm the song has sad and poignant lyrics. The song expresses the fact that Ana has no understanding of death, only of absence.
DVD release
Cria Cuervos was released on DVD on August 14, 2007 in a two-disc special edition as part of the Criterion Collection.External links
- Criterion Collection essay by Paul Julian Smith
- Film Reference
- Strictly Film School
- DVDLaser.com
- Film Affinity (Spanish)
- Cinergia (Spanish)
Cría cuervos (Raise Ravens) is a 1976 Spanish film directed by Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
. The film is an allegorical drama about an eight year old girl dealing with loss. Highly acclaimed, it received the Special Jury Prize Award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival
1976 Cannes Film Festival
The 29th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 13-28, 1976. A new section, 'L'Air du temps', which is non-competitive and focuses on contemporary subjects, is introduced at this festival and discontinued after the next.- Jury :...
.
Plot
Eight-year-old Ana, stoic and mute approaches her father's bedroom where she hears a woman in bed with her father, confessing her love for him. Descending the stairs, she spies an attractive middle-aged woman, hastily dressing and rushing from the bedroom to the front door of the darkened house. The woman and Ana exchange glances but do not speak. Once the woman has left, Ana enters her father's bedroom and finds the man dead, apparently from a heart attack. As if not really understanding the gravity of the situation, Ana unflappably takes away a half-full glass of milk, which she carries to the kitchen and cleans. In the kitchen, she sees her mother, who chides her for being up so late and sends her off to bed.Reality and fantasy swap places. The bizarre death of Ana's father, who will prove to be a Fascist military man, is real. The apparently banal appearance of the mother at the fridge, on the other hand, is in fact fantasized by the grieving child. Ana's mother is already dead; her image is only a fanciful illusion of the little girl's mind. Blaming her mother's illness and death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder she believes to be a potent poison in his milk glass as a willful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. (Her mother had told her years ago to throw out this powder as it was poison. It turns out it is simply baking soda.)
At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction of having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair, and the feisty, fleshy housekeeper, Rosa.
Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly as her mother, recounts her infancy: 'I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown'.
The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer school vacation. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, or even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the family maid, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.
Ana’s mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder, her guinea pig's death and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother, ill and using a wheelchair, the opportunity of dying and ridding herself from loneliness by providing her a spoonful of her poison. The old woman turns down Ana's offer as the old woman realizes that the powder is simply baking soda.
The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted: it was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison, so powerful that one spoonful would kill an elephant. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her father: "The only thing I remembered perfectly is that then my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighted on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness."
Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the lugubrious family compound and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been shut out from their world up to this point.
Cast
Ana TorrentAna Torrent
Ana Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
plays the lead character, Ana. She was already well known thanks to her starring role in the film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973) by Víctor Erice, made when she was seven years old. She followed Cría cuervos by yet another memorable role in The Nest
The Nest (film)
The Nest is a 1980 Spanish film written and directed by Jaime de Armiñán, starring Héctor Alterio and Ana Torrent.The plot follows the emotionally intense relationship between an old widower and a precocious thirteen year old girl...
(1980) in which she played a thirteen year old in a relationship with an aging widower played by Héctor Alterio who here has the role of Anselmo, Ana's father.
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
plays dual roles: Ana's mother in which she speaks Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
accent and Ana as a young woman in which she is dubbed by actress Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano
Julieta Serrano Romero is a Catalan theatre and cinema actress. Her prolific career began in the 1960s, and she has worked with directors Pedro Almodóvar and Ventura Pons.-Filmography:...
. Chaplin was director Saura's common-law wife and muse at that time. She appeared in ten of his films.
- Ana TorrentAna TorrentAna Torrent Bertrán de Lis is a Spanish film actress.Torrent's debut came in 1973 with the starring role as "Ana" in the film El espíritu de la colmena directed by Víctor Erice, when she was seven years old...
- Ana, 8 years old - Conchi Pérez - Irene, 11 years old
- Maite Sánchez - Mayte, 5 years old
- Geraldine ChaplinGeraldine ChaplinGeraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
- Ana's mother and older Ana - Mónica RandallMónica RandallMónica Randall is a Spanish film actress.Randall has made some 110 appearances in film and TV since 1963. She appeared in numerous western films in the 1960s in films such as One Hundred Thousand Dollars for Ringo and has made regular TV appearances since the 1970s.- External links and sources :...
- Aunt Paulina - Florinda ChicoFlorinda ChicoFlorinda Chico Martín Mora was a Spanish actress of film, theater and television.-Biography:Florinda Chico Martín Mora was born in 1926 in Don Benito, Extremadura, Spain. She studied singing and then started her artistic career on the stage acting in musical revues...
- Rosa, a maid - Josefina Díaz - Ana's grandmother
- Germán Cobos - Nicholas, Amelia's husband
- Héctor Alterio - Anselmo, Ana's father
- Mirta MillerMirta MillerMirta Miller is an Argentine film actress. She has appeared in over 65 films since 1961. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.-Selected filmography:* No Exit * Una chica casi decente...
- Amelia, Anselmo's mistress
Title
The title Cria cuervos comes from the Spanish proverb, "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos." This translates as, "Raise ravens, and they'll take out your eyes" and is generally used for someone who has bad luck in raising children, or raised them badly. It may also imply rebellious behavior or that every bad act will return to haunt you.The phrase "Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos" is said to originate with Don Álvaro de Luna
Álvaro de Luna
Álvaro de Luna y Jarana , Duke of Trujillo, 1st Count of San Esteban de Gormaz, was a Spanish politician...
of Castile during a hunting expedition. In the course of the hunt his party came across a beggar with terrible scarring in the place of eyes. The beggar explained that he had raised a raven for three years with affection and great care, but it attacked him one day, leaving him blind. The bon mot was Don Álvaro's reply.
Cría cuervos was released as Cría! in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and as Raise Ravens in the UK.
Analysis
This film was made during a period where Carlos SauraCarlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
was considered one of the great opponents, along with other directors, of the Franco regime, with characters and themes in the film alluding to Saura's interpretations and criticisms of Franco-inspired truths.
The film stresses the disparity between Ana's inner world of private traumas and the outer world of political realities and fascism. Ana will cope with her guilt in both arenas.
When asked to elucidate on the nature of Ana's suffering, the director, Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura
Carlos Saura Atarés is a Spanish film director and photographer.-Early life:Born into a family of artists , he developed his artistic sense in childhood as a photography enthusiast.He obtained his directing diploma in Madrid in 1957 at the Institute of Cinema Research and Studies...
replied :" Cria cuervos is a sad film, yes. But that's part of my belief that childhood is one of the most terrible parts in the life of a human being. What I'm trying to say is that at that age you've no idea where it is you are going, only that people are taking you somewhere, leading you, pulling you and you are frightened. You don't know where you're going or who you are or what you are going to do. It's a time of terrible indecision."
Reception
Cria cuervos was shot in the summer of 1975, as Spanish dictator Francisco 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...
lay dying, and premiered in Madrid's Conde Duque Theatre, on January 26, 1976. Highly acclaimed, it received the Cannes film festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
Special Jury Prize Award. The film became director Carlos Saura and producer Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta is a Spanish film producer.-Biography:He was a soccer player in Real Sociedad.Father of Gracia Querejeta. He has produced the best of Spanish films in 60's and 70's. He has worked with Carlos Saura in 11 films, Víctor Erice in 2 films, Montxo Armendáriz in 4 times or Fernando León...
's most commercially successful film up to that point, going on to become the sixth largest grossing Spanish film of 1976. The picture made a similar strong showing in foreign markets, including the US where it solidified Saura's reputation as Spain's best international known director of the 1970s. Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema
Cinema of Spain
The art of motion-picture making within the nation of Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.In recent years, Spanish cinema has achieved high marks of recognition as a result of its creative and technical excellence...
.
Music
The film prominently features the pop song "Porque te vasPorque te vas
"Porque te vas" is a song performed by the singer Jeanette written by José Luis Perales and remained relatively unknown at the start of 1974...
" by Jeanette
Jeanette Dimech
Janette Anne Dimech , who performs under the name Jeanette, is a half-Belgian, half-Spanish, English-born, American-raised singer who has resided in Spain since the age of 12, and who sings primarily in Spanish. She has also recorded songs in several different languages: English , French, German...
, an English-born singer, singing in Spanish, whose accented voice reminds Ana of her mother, as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who speaks Spanish with her English accented voice. Despite an infectious rhythm the song has sad and poignant lyrics. The song expresses the fact that Ana has no understanding of death, only of absence.