Cinema Releases - Mysteries of Lisbon
Mysteries of Lisbon plunges us into a veritable whirlwind of adventures and escapades, coincidences and revelations, sentiments and violent passions, vengeance, love affairs, all wrapped in a rhapsodic voyage that takes us from Portugal to France, Italy, and as far as Brazil. In this Lisbon of intrigue and hidden identities, we encounter a series of characters all somewhat linked to the destiny of Pedro da Silva, orphan in a boarding school. Father Dinis, a descendent of the aristocratic libertines, later becomes a hero who defends justice, a countess maddened by her jealousy and set on her vengeance, a prosperous businessman who had mysteriously made his fortune as a bloodthirsty pirate; these and many more all cross in a story set in the 19th century and all searching for the true identity of our main character.
Emerging onto the international scene at the end of the 1970s, Raul Ruiz turned out to be one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers in recent years, by presenting more intellectual entertainment through artistic experimentation than any other filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard.
This prolific figure has made over 100 films in the past 30 years, yet he has never adhered to any established filming style. He has worked in 35 mm, 16 mm and even video: making cinematic feature films, television programmes for European distribution, as well as documentary films and works of fiction.
Mysteries of Lisbon was to be his penultimate film.
Selected filmography
2010 Mistérios de Lisboa
2008 La Maison Nucingen
2006 Klimt
2003 Ce Jour-Là
2001 Les Âmes Fortes
2000 Combat d'Amour en Songe
2000 Comédie de L'innocence
1999 Le Temps Retrouvé
1997 Généalogies d'un Crime
1996 Trois Vies et une Seule Mort
1995 Fado Majeur et Mineur
1992 L´Œil Qui Ment
1985 L´Éveillé du Pont de l'Alma
1985 Les Destins de Manoel
1985 L'Île au Trésor
1984 Point de Fuite
1983 La Ville des Pirates
1983 Les Trois Couronnes du Matelot
1982 Le Territoire
1978 L'Hypothèse du Tableau Volé
1978 La Vocation Suspendue
CREW
Director Raul Ruiz
Producer Paulo Branco
Screenplay Carlos Saboga
Based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco
Cinematographer André Szankowski (a.i.p)
Music Jorge Arriagada and Luís Freitas Branco
Art Direction Isabel Branco
Editing Valéria Sarmiento and Carlos Madaleno
Production Manager Ana Pinhão Moura
Assistant directors João Pinhão and José Maria Vaz da Silva
Sound Ricardo Leal, Miguel Martins, António Lopes
Production Coordinators Julita Santos and Anne Mattatia (France)
Casting Director Patrícia Vasconcelos
Production Clap Filmes
With the partipation of Alfama Films, ICA –MC, ARTE France, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Cofinova Développement
EGEAC, Grupo Nova Imagem, Turismo do Algarve, Santa Casa da Misericórdia, Genesis Panavision
CAST
Adriano Luz Father Dinis
Maria João Bastos Ângela de Lima
Ricardo Pereira Alberto de Magalhães
Clotilde Hesme Elisa de Montfort
Afonso Pimentel Pedro da Silva
João Luís Arrais Pedro da Silva – Child
Albano Jerónimo Count of Santa Bárbara
João Baptista D. Pedro da Silva
Martin Loizillon Sebastião de Melo
Julien Alluguette Benoît de Montfort
Rui Morisson Marquis of Montezelos
Joana de Verona Eugénia
Carloto Cotta D. Álvaro de Albuquerque
Maria João Pinho Countess of Viso
José Manuel Mendes Friar Baltasar da Encarnação
Special Appearances:
Léa Seydoux Blanche de Montfort
Melvil Poupaud Colonel Ernest Lacroze
Malik Zidi Viscount of Armagnac
Margarida Vilanova Marquise of Alfarela
Sofia Aparício Countess of Penacova
Catarina Wallenstein Countess of Arosa
And with
Américo Silva Bailiff
Ana Chagas Deolinda
André Gomes Barão de Sá
António Simão Novelist
Bernard Lanneau Father Dinis (French voice)
Dinarte Branco Dilettante
Duarte Guimarães Registrar
Filipe Vargas D. Paulo
Helena Coelho Marquise of Santa Eulália
João Vilas Boas Butler
José Airosa Bernardo
Lena Friedrich Maid
Marcello Urgeghe Doctor
Marco D`Almeida Count of Viso
Martinho da Silva F.
Miguel Monteiro Doctor
Nuno Távora Dilettante
Paulo Pinto D. Martinho de Almeida
Pedro Carmo Gentleman
Vânia Rodrigues D. Antónia
Portugal/France 2010 266 minutes Portuguese and French with English subtitles
“One of cinema’s most prolific and singular filmmakers...Like much of Ruiz’s work, MYSTERIES of LISBON is based on a work of fiction... it lasts four and a half hours...but the time flies”
“An engrossing movie that covers three generations over the 18th century and early 19th century and deals with themes, chance, identity, manipulation, multiple personality...”
Philip French, THE OBSERVER
★★★★★
“A MAGNIFICENT LATE MAGNUM OPUS from a director who was one of kind”
“Vast and magnificent...MYSTERIES is strikingly handsome and well-dressed...as stately as the great costume dramas of Luchino Visconti”
Jonathan Romney, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
★★★★★”ENTRANCINGLY STRANGE, beautifully eccentric”
“This is the last completed work from the remarkable and prolific Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz who died in August this year at the age of 70”
“A gorgeous, mesmeric spectacle, and one with great human warmth...Either way...Ruiz offers enormous and unique pleasure”
Peter BRADSHAW, THE GUARDIAN
★★★★
“Fittingly witty... an elegant swansong”
Laurence Phelan, THE INDEPENDENT
“Fitting testament to arthouse great”
THE WEEK
“Intricate storytelling has never looked so good”
Ryan Gilbey, NEW STATESMAN
★★★★
“Raul Ruiz made more than 100 movies, including film’s most successful take on Proust in TIME REGAINED...However...Ruiz may be best remembered for this, his last picture”
“LISBON’s many mysteries are a major undertaking...
“A master film-maker in total control of his craft...a technical masterpiece”
Colin Kennedy, METRO
★★★★
“A Dickens or a Tolstoy...the late Raul Ruiz’s epic is the cinematic equivalent of that all-encompassing good read”
“A sumptuous engrossing period drama in which elaborate storytelling is refined into art “
"The perfect excuse to lose yourself in a classic novel…a sumptuous, engrossing period drama in which elaborate storytelling is refined into an art"
ALLAN HUNTER, DAILY EXPRESS
“One of the loveliest films ever shot digitally, full of shots you could freeze frame and look at for hours. Yes, even more hours.”
Tim Robey, DAILY TELEGRAPH
★★★★★
“A Romantic parody of the Baroque that never fails to amaze”
Jeff Sawtell, MORNING STAR
“A mammoth testament to Ruiz’s art..lavishly good to watch... “
Derek Malcolm, THE STANDARD
★★★★★
“A masterly swansong"
Trevor Johnston RADIO TIMES
TIME OUT NO 1 CRITICS’ CHOICE
“ A dazzling multi-tiered family saga and probably the most luxuriant and witty soap opera you’ll ever see”
★★★★
“MAGNIFICENT, compelling...This movie is GLORIOUS:
shot and lit like the work of a painter”
Kate Muir, THE TIMES
★★★★
“Hugely accomplished...a most noble endeavour”
“This hugely accomplished adaptation…”
Edward LAWRENSON, THE BIG ISSUE
★★★★★
FILM OF THE WEEK
'The summation of Ruiz’s gigantic career'
'This magnificent work…controlled and compelling…heralded as the summation of Ruiz’s gigantic career…Ruiz’s breathtaking soap opera'
David Jenkins, Time Out★★★★★
“This is a film to lose yourself in.”
“An exquisitely crafted, multi-stranded period epic from the master of dream cinema, Raúl Ruiz.”
“This is a truly elegant piece of filmmaking.”
Mysteries of Lisbon is a poetic and phantasmagoric tale of 19th century intrigue, passion and heartache, and a fairytale and dream all rolled into one; and this four hour, retina-entrancing odyssey offers the perfect refuge as winter descends.”
Isabel Stevens, VIEW LONDON
'You can study it, like a painting, and then realize, with a gasp, that it has got hold of you like a fever.'
David Edelstein, New York Magazine
'You won’t see a more brilliant piece of filmmaking this year than Mysteries of Lisbon. Adapted from a Dickens-on-LSD 1854 novel by Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco, Raúl Ruiz’s ravishing film takes the costume drama to a whole new level of refinement. The clothing, the locations, and the photography are all gorgeous, as are most of the actors. But the movie also offers the tempestuous delights of a potboiler.'
John Powers, Vogue
‘A magisterial meditation on narrative and cinema, Mysteries of Lisbon is the most glorious achievement of Raul Ruiz’s prodigious career and one of the first cinematic masterpieces of this century’Tony Pipolo, Film Comment
“Such is Ruíz's mastery of both cinematic and storytelling techniques that this Dickensian saga quickly becomes utterly engrossing....“A superb cast, glorious sets, swooningly romantic score and an intricate, if occasionally operatic, script.”
David Parkinson, Empire
‘Ruiz's most conventionally entertaining and accomplished film...Energetic and fun’
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The Chicago Reader
“I got a little lost while watching "Mysteries of Lisbon" and enjoyed the experience. It's a lavish, elegant, operatic, preposterous 19th century melodrama… It is hypnotically beautiful, playful, coiling between past and present..with the richness of Dickens…we meet brigands, pirates, prelates, nobility, cuckolds and soldiers in the Napoleonic wars, and an abundance of great beauties…It immersed me, it wove a spell”
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sunday Times“A breathless narrative of passion, jealousy and intrigue… with gorgeous Carravaggio-inspired lighting. I can’t wait to see it again…”
Nick James, Sight and Sound“One of Ruiz’s straighter works and one of his most distinctive – a flowing, twisting, leisurely river of narratives within narratives, with characters changing identities and passing in and out of each other’s lives in a picaresque flux that is as much Proustian as Balzacian…executed with sober sumptuousness à la Visconti.”
‘Stands as a perfect closing testament – a stately meditation on fate, memory and the possibility that our lives may be bewitching labyrinths of fact and fabulation.’
Jonathan Romney, Sight and Sound
"A masterly tale about lives and stories and the art of their telling, “Mysteries of Lisbon” is also an elegiac meditation on love lost and rediscovered through misted memory."
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“An utterly absorbing masterwork”
L.A. Weekly
‘One of two great films originally produced for television this year (the other being Carlos), Mysteries of Lisbon is a masterpiece by Ruiz, shortened to four-and-a-half-hours. Adapted from a Nineteenth century novel by Castelo Branco, it would have made Visconti jealous. A rake becoming a monk, an anguished bastard child, a tortured wife and a castrating father are the protagonists of a romantic-surrealist melodrama shot in gorgeous colours and constantly surprising by the twists of its plo and the inventive mise en scène.’
Michel Ciment, Sight and Sound
'[Ruiz] stages the events with an air of intrigue that's amplified by his sly, insistently roving camera and his sinuous, theatrical long takes.'
Richard Brody, The New Yorker
'Once you start to ride with the rapturous, gorgeous, digressive symphony of images and words and music in this film it's completely absorbing and unlike anything you've ever seen.'
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com
‘An epic entertainment...moving between Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil, its narrative involves jealous countesses, reformed libertines and mysterious priests, in a tapestry of coincidences, revelations and secret identities...[Ruiz’s] most ambitious work since the Proust adaptation Time Regained - and quite possibly his magnum opus.’
Jonathan Romney, London Film Festival
‘[A] breathtaking adaptation of one of the masterworks of Portuguese literature: Camilo Castelo Branco’s Mysteries of Lisbon...Mysteries of Lisbon is the crowning achievement of a great director’s career.’
New York Film Festival
“Raul Ruiz's head-spinning "Mysteries of Lisbon" is a period drama of contemporary import - and of the highest order... with riveting results and revelations that continue right to the end. Prostitution, murder, romance, war and spiritual malaise…Mysteries of Lisbon" benefits immeasurably from its impeccable production values, which immerse the audience in a ravishing aristocratic milieu…"
Rob Nelson, Variety
“an elegant, exquisitely produced jewel of a film that sees Ruiz finding a renewed confidence and voice...Evoking the massive novels of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens…Raul Ruiz has directed a masterful adaption of a famous nineteenth-century novel by Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco...Ruiz has made one of the best films in his illustrious career…”
Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival
‘Mysteries of Lisbon is a splendid film in which stories proliferate like the rhizomes dear to Deleuze. They fit together like Russian dolls. The film mixes tragedy and comedy, in sumptuous and sumptuously filmed settings, carried by superb actors (most of them Portuguese) and a very inventive mise-en-scene, full of energy, elegance and shtick.’Serge Kaganski, Les Inrocks
Read a full review of the TV version of Mysteries of Lisbon by Axelle Ropert in Les Inrocks
'This isn't one of those epics that uses length as a bludgeon. Rather than sweep, the movie spirals, twisting its viewpoint to reveal tales within tales.'
Marc Jenkins, Washington Post
‘A unique experience’
Jean-Francois Rauger, Le Monde
‘A masterpiece…’
Eric Loret, Libération
'Say what you will about 19th-century literature -- they had stories in those days (and stories within stories).'
Jim Hoberman, Village Voice
Mysteries of Lisbon's Official Website
Download Zip file 4 images Zip file 3 more images Zip file final 3 images
Trailer
Watch a Video interview with Raúl Ruiz
Read
A O Scott meets Raul Ruiz (The New York Times)
The main US reviews in full
The Guardian Obituary by Ronald Bergan
The Times Obituary by Richard Corliss
Sight & Sound Obituary by Jonathan Romney
Canal + Critics vote Mysteries of Lisbon 'Best Film of 2010' (discussion in French)