Concha Hidalgo Movies

The spirit, hopes, and failures of a troupe of itinerant performers in the 1950s create a poignant, humorous leitmotif in this drama by Fernando Fernan-Gomez. The story of the wandering players is told in flashbacks, as Carlos Galvan (Jose M. Sacristan) reminisces about the good times while under therapy with a psychiatrist in a senior citizens' home. Carlos and his lover Juanita (Laura del Sol), his teenage son, his father, and a few other actors try to eke out a living by putting on shows in small towns and villages. No one has very much money, but life is lived to the hilt, and Carlos himself has some pretty tall tales. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A soldier in a French prison camp circa spins the yarns of his youth to entertain his follow inmates in this drama from Spanish director Antonio Jose Betancor. As the defeated Spanish Republican army soldiers ponder their circumstances while serving time behind enemy lines, the stories of Jose Garces' (Antonio Canal) childhood, and his love for Valentina (Paloma Gomez), a neighbor girl in his small northeastern Spain community, transport the downbeat soldiers to a happier time. A raucious little rascal who never failed to get into trouble, the smitten youngster beams his declarations of love from the rooftops via semaphore while simultaniously developing a taste for poetry. Despite the trouble he may have caused by killing her father's breeding pigeons, Jose learns what it takes to become a respectable man when his kindly priest and tutor tell him the tales of history's most valiant men. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi