Ana and the Wolves

Director: Carlos Saura

1973 / 100min / 35mm

Chaplin’s fifth film with Saura is a savage allegorical send-up of the senescent Franco dictatorship that had ruled Spain from 1939 onwards in which the actress, playing the Ana of the title, arrives to take up the position of governess at an estate in the sun-baked Castile countryside, there to contend with an aged and much-afflicted matriarch, her three variously insane sons, and the young female offspring of the only married male heir, voracious sex pest Juan (José Vivó). Censors balked at the first version of the script that Saura submitted, allowing filming to proceed only after extensive rewrites. He went ahead and shot the original script. The Caudillo cannot have been pleased.

Distributor: Janus Films

35mm print courtesy of Filmoteca Española

Part of The Remembered Lives of G. Chaplin & C. Saura