Having traveled extensively throughout Spain this film evokes memories and images from a long lost Spain and a time which although still exists, now is much diluted. Every aspect of this, at some points sleepy, film are for me very real. The acting is superb, and the filmed scenes carefully and accurately depicted. I have never read the book, but having seen this i will now scout for it. I had no idea the cork oaks were used for such purpose and the pomp and circumstance was also an eye opener/ i gave 7 out of 10,but 10 out of 10 for effort, from both the acting cast and the direction. These places do exists still today, and are still owned by the landed gentry, very much fenced off and off limits to the rest of us as you pass through such regions. I often wonder if they still employ people and treat them the same......

Back to the beginning of the 20th century, the countryside of the Iberian peninsula was controlled by land tenants who enjoyed a set of privileges that would be considered more typical of the middle ages than of modern times. As for example, having enslaved families working on their farms.Now this is obviously an issue that 2 actual European Union countries like Spain and Portugal don't like to be reminded of. Nobody likes to remember that less than 50 years ago this was still a reality. So with time it became a non-issue, an unsponsored reality.What Camus does with this movie is remarkable. Not only by his technique and the end result of this film, but mainly because it gives voice - and more importantly, it gives images - to this hundred of anonymous stories that were never portrayed before with such care.A must see.

If I would believe in a god who created man as his equal, Mario Camus would be one of the first people to come in mind to make me understand how powerful that god must be. 'Los santos inocentes' is a masterpiece of European cinema. The movie brings us back to times in Spain where most people were nothing more than property of the few rich. The 'master' even had the right to be the one to make the daughters of his serfs lose their virginity. A man and wife living such a cruel life, with trouble enough of their own, still open up their house for the wife's brother Azarias (Francisco Rabal), when he -at old age- loses his job. And Rabal gives us a performance of simplicity and joy that we will never ever forget. Although I've heard of people who found it difficult to see the beauty through all the misery, to me this is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Possibly also the very best.

The last twenty five years of Spanish filmography have produced a number of titles which have indulged in sociological themes, mostly using the years of the Franco Régime as a background when not a mere scapegoat. El Sur (Victor Erice)(qv), Las Ratas (Giménez Rico)(qv), Las Bicicletas son para el Verano (Jaime Chávarri) as well as several by the now deceased Pilar Miró, come to mind. But perhaps none reach the powerful endorsement achieved in Los Santos Inocentes, carefully and predictably directed by Mario Camus. Faithfully transferred from the book by Miguel Delibes, also author of Las Ratas, as well as singularly impressive narratives such as Cinco Horas con Mario, a true tour de force in contemporary literature, and the intensely lyrical and moving El Camino, Camus inspired the principal actors - Paco Rabal, Alfredo Landa and Terele Pávez - into producing some memorable scenes.Scenes of illiterate peasants obeying their master, landowner, insensible to everything except his passion for hunting; peasants who were so hugely grateful for the handful of pennies so compassionately handed out by the rich duchess; peasants who grovelled in the filth of their mean shack and could barely write their own names. Spain: about 1962 if the registration number of the big black Mercedes is anything to go by. Spain, in the region called Extremadura, which even today is the poorest part of the country. Spain, governed by a dictator who himself was extremely uncultured. Camus, armed with the simple but sincere exposition in Delibes' novel, manages to show this plight, but without the tremendism so frequent in Spanish books or films; without any soured feelings, but dispassionately, like a surgeon operating for the five hundredth time on gall-stones. The story was there to be told and not sympathized over. Not for the pop-corn eating public, more for the discerning cinema-goer who can give what the film demands: attention to details. The incision is precise, exact, giving greater credibility to this little masterpiece.