Based on one of the most important and popular works of Portuguese literature, Doomed Love was recently revealed to North American audiences as one of de Oliveira’s greatest works. Closely following Camilo Castelo Branco’s eponymous novel from 1862, de Oliveira creates a radical and unprecedented fusion of theatre, literature and cinema, which, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum, ...
The film was to be a documentary, but evolved during production to a fictional film. It nevertheless adheres strictly to the poems and letters exchanged by two of the most outstanding names of the Modernist Movement, Fernando Pessoa (in Lisbon) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro (in Paris). Their endless conversation was dramatically and suddenly terminated.