Soledad Miranda

Here are a synopsis and pictures from Un día en Lisboa. For more details about this movie, click here. If you have any pictures from this movie that I don't have, please contact me! The only copy of the film known to exist was discovered in the Filmoteca Española and is quite degraded, particularly the color has turned to red. Originally one had to have a special permit to view the film at the Filmoteca. Thanks to the efforts of this website, and the film historian who found the reel in the Filmoteca's archives, the film has been preserved digitally! However I am not allowed to put a clip online, only photos. Sorry. I did, however, laboriously color restore the screencaps! I included some non-restored images so you can see the difference. (Interestingly enouigh, you can see several clips from this documentary in the Soledad documentary Soledad Miranda, una flor en el desierto.)

This is a short travel documentary with a fictional representation about a couple of lovers traveling across the cities of Lisbon and Estoril, Portugal. There is no dialogue in the film, only music and later singing at a nightclub performance and, at one point, Soledad's laughter. Soledad arrives in Portugal via airplane and is picked up at the airport by a young man. They spend the day zooming around in his sportscar to see the sights in Lisbon and Estoril, incluidng monuments, parks, and an empty bullfighting arena. They go swimming at the beach in Estoril (where they kiss), enjoy beers at a cafe, and spend the evening fountain-gazing and being serenaded at a nightclub. There are comedic moments as the man bumps into Soledad at the airport, knocking over her luggage, and later walks into a pole, which Soledad finds hilarious.

Soledad and José Manuel Simões, her future real-life husband, play the couple. He shows off his driving skills quite a bit in the sportscar he drives in the film, which also shows the couple driving along the very road on which Soledad's fatal accident would occur years later.

© Amy Brown
with special thanks to
Carlos Aguilar