La clave mitológica de “A Caça” (1963), un filme de Manoel de Oliveira

Abstract

The short film “A Caça” was made in 1963 by the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. This is a special work, a very symbolical film because of the difficulties in filming - bad weather, technical troubles and the action of portuguese censorship. The symbolical dimension of “A Caça” is, perhaps, its more important feature. In this article, “A Caça” is studied in correspondence with the classical mythology. One of the characters of the film is watching a statue of the goddess Diana for a while. Similarly to Actaeon's fate, the boy who sees Diana's naked body dies in a reserve. This reference, and others like the dog barking in the alternative end, is related to the episode of Cadnrus' grandson. Finally, we carry out a comparison between Oliveira's film and a movie that has the same title: “La Caza”, released in 1965 by the Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura.