Anna and the wolves

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Movie
German title Anna and the wolves
Original title Ana y los lobos
Country of production Spain
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1973
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Carlos Saura
script Carlos Saura
Rafael Azcona
production Elías Querejeta
music Luis de Pablo
camera Luis Cuadrado
cut Pablo González del Amo
occupation

Anna and the Wolves (Original: Ana y los lobos ) is a 1973 film by Carlos Saura .

content

The young Englishwoman Anna starts her new job in Spain as a nanny for three little girls. Little by little, life in the affluent family becomes more and more sinister for Anna. Fernando, José and Juan, the house’s three grown sons, embody taboo subjects in Spanish society in the Franco era: church, military and sexuality. Each of the three "wolf brothers" tries in his own way to abuse Anna for his pathological madness. Anna makes fun of it at first, but over time she becomes more and more drawn into the cruel maelstrom of acts that end with her rape and murder.

interpretation

In contrast to Saura's previous film Garden of Earthly Delights , in which different time levels are complexly interwoven, Anna and the Wolves are told in a linear manner and in an emphatically realistic style, right up to the factual representation of the violent end. The location of the plot is limited to the house and property, the closed plot reinforces the feeling of a prison. Photos that run through the film like through all of Saura's oeuvre build a bridge to the past. Omen are revealed early on in the film that Anna does not take seriously: anonymous letters, a buried doll, an artificial bird that is being shot at. Despite the realistic representation, it remains open in the end whether the cruel scenes took place in reality or just in Anna's nightmare or in the dream of the brothers.

Ostensibly a family story, Anna and the Wolves was mostly understood as an allegory of the Spanish society of Franquism . The three brothers represent the pillars of police violence, religious exaggeration and bourgeois libertinage on which Spanish society is based. The falling mother, beset by premonitions, was seen as the personification of the Spanish state itself. After the end of the Franco regime, Saura shot the comedy Mama turns 100 in 1979 with the same cast . In this, it was no longer Anna, the embodiment of humanism , who was to be murdered, but the grandmother who cast the shadow of the dark past on the young Spanish democracy.

background

In an interview from 1979, Carlos Saura counted Anna and the Wolves as well as The Hunt to his “aggressive films”. They were made at a time when his “personal aggression was culminating, and the only solution was to explode or make such films.” He continued: “I made this film because my mother, when I was at home wanted to talk about political, sexual or religious problems, always said: You don't talk about them. The Spanish censors then said the same to me: Everything you want - except sex, politics and religion! "

As with many of his films made during the time of the Franco dictatorship, Saura had problems with the Spanish censorship with Anna and the Wolves . The authorities originally wanted to ban the film. In the end, dictator Franco himself made the decision to approve the film. After a screening he decided to release the film uncut: “The pictures are excellent and of rare beauty, the colors exquisite. And as for the content - nobody could understand that anyway. ”Saura explained why the aggressive film Anna and the Wolves caused less violent reactions than, for example, cousin Angélica , whose performances were accompanied by violent disturbances by the Falangists :“ The film does not work in Spain aggressive. The Spaniards see him from a distance. If something is allegorical, it does not frighten them ”.

criticism

“An evil parable in which the three pillars of Spanish society under Franco are caricatured - the ominous coalition of the bourgeoisie, church and military. A pessimistic film that hides its criticism in complex, often surrealistic image allegories. "

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

literature

  • Wolfgang Schuch (Ed.): Spanish film texts. Luis Buñuel: Viridiana. Carlos Saura: Anna and the Wolves. Juan Antonio Bardem: Seven days in January . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1982.
  • Petra Häusser: Carlos Saura - themes, motifs and stylistic devices in the work of the Spanish film director - an analysis . Thesis. Grin-Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-638-69884-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Häußer: Carlos Saura , p. 23.
  2. ↑ a b Schuch (Ed.): Spanische Filmtexte , pp. 254–255.
  3. ↑ Schuch (Ed.): Spanische Filmtexte , p. 254.
  4. ↑ Häußer: Carlos Saura , p. 25.
  5. ↑ Anna and the Wolves. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used