La ciudad perdida

Cristo is the first feature film directed and produced by Margarita Alexandre and Rafael Torrecilla. Evoking the work of Luciano Emmer, this art documentary tells the story of the life of Jesus using only Spanish paintings. In close harmony with the montage, the photographic technique used by Juan Mariné for the filming gives movement to the paintings by Titian, El Greco and Rubens, while the presence of the voices of Fernando Rey, José María Seoane, María Jesús Valdés and other actors of the period give the characters a sense of entity. The film received the category of National Interest from the Censorship Board, undoubtedly more inspired by the film’s exaltation of the national artistic heritage and its religious subject matter than by its artistic aspirations.

The action takes place on a Maragata hacienda that is sinking into misery, whose situation can only be solved through a marriage of convenience. But the marriageable girl, during a train trip, falls in love with a young poet and is reciprocated. Her family is opposed to this relationship, since they have promised her to marry a man of good standing.

A young man arrives at Puebla de las Mujeres, a village of Andalusia with the tradition that man that arrives, man that marries there. The foreigner is going to solve some issues of interest of an aunt who lives in the village. Soon as he arrives all women mobilize, captained by the mayor, for electing bride and organize the wedding. The designated Juanita de la Rosa, does not want to participate and he laughs at the arrangements saying that he has a girlfriend in Madrid.

In a country house dedicated to breeding bulls, bound for bullfighting, a love story emerges, conditioned by social class differences.