
by Allan Fish
(Spain 1976 110m) DVD1/2
Aka. Cría; Raise Ravens
Porque te vas to the Rains of Castamere
p Elias Querejeta d/w Carlos Saura ph Teo Escamilla ed Pablo G.del Arno m Federico Mompoli art Rafael Palmero
Geraldine Chaplin (Maria/Ana as adult), Ana Torrent (Ana), Monica Randall (Paulina), Florinda Chico (Rosa), Conchita Perez (Irene), Josefina Diaz (Abuela, grandmother), Mirta Miller (Amelia Garontes), Hector Alterio (Anselmo), Maite Sanchez (Maite),
Occasionally, through fate, coincidence or whatever force you may or not believe in, you watch a film at a time when the stars seem to align. Such was the case with Cría Cuervos. I’d seen it before, but I had deliberately not gone back to it as soon as the BFI Blu Ray was announced. I wanted to wait to see it in Hi-Def. The Blu Ray was then delayed but still I was resolved to hold back. On first viewing, Carlos Saura’s film, like many of his early works, seemed dominated by political allegory and left me relatively cold. Finally, I got the Blu Ray, but I didn’t watch it immediately. I waited a week or so, so that when I put it on a seemingly unrelated event took place; the showing of the already infamous Game of Thrones episode ‘The Rains of Castamere’. There’s no link there, I can hear you mutter, and you’d be right, but take a look again at the opening scene of Cría, of a series of pictures from a family album.
As Cría was shot, Franco was lying on his deathbed and Geraldine Chaplin had been working with Carlos Saura for nearly a decade, since Peppermint Frappe. They had no family, but they’d been lovers, and one can see that candidness in the photos in the album. Yet Geraldine had another family, of a father who went from Fred Karno to knight of the realm and had as big a hand in the popularity of the movies at a time when Francisco Franco was only an unknown soldier in the regulares. (more…)
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