Don't Count on Your Fingers

Portabella considers searching for a new type of narrative by abandoning the institutional production formula: the Aristotelian canon as the perfect tool, efficient and most adequate for producers, attested to by the success demostrated by the massive assistance of audiences in movie theatres, becoming the most popular entertainment of the 20th Century. To carry this out he had recourse to the poet, Joan Brossa. Using the technical rules for publicity films a narrative structure, Portabella’s first film would be unthinkable without Joan Brossa’s poetry. His play on words, his powerful visual metaphors and his fascination for traditional ways of representation, Portabella returns from exile after the “Viridiana” scandal. The first sentence in this, his first film is: “Defeated… but no vanquished”. The last sequence leaves the spectator rooted in front of a blank screen.