“The setting is that of the Portuguese aristocracy, where one lives between the luxury of sumptuous villas and the exoticism of hosts who, at the very least, are ministers in Brazil. The harmony of the environment is disturbed by an aged blind man and, above all, by a mysterious woman in black who bursts into the life of the Countess Maria Da Silva Oliveira like a bolt from the blue, aboard an automobile travelling at crazy speed. From this moment the main figure will be that of recognition: when, after the accident, the woman regains her memory, no-one is to remain what they believed themselves to be or wanted to show themselves as. The woman remembers that she is the daughter of the blind man and the mother of the Countess, while one of the most insistent and morbid pretenders of the latter will discover that in reality he is her father. Even the young Francisco Manuel will be accused of scandalous frauds though he is rapidly freed. At the end of all these disturbances will the two young lovers succeed in staying together for the rest of time? The last word, obviously, belongs to destiny.

At first sight, O Destino seems to be a film of devastating staticness. In effect the events and facts follow one another with amazing speed and thus one may hazard the guess that a certain solemnity I the screenplay is the effect of a precise strategy which aims at keeping the drama compressed in order to avoid an inflation of coups de théatre. On the other hand, from the figurative point of view, the dynamism is delegated to a rich chromatic installation which, in certain moments, is close to virtuosity”.

Giacomo Manzoli