Surcos

A farming family moves to Madrid. Where they stay is the house of the wife's sister. Finding work in the city is not what they expected: the father tries to get into a factory, the sons drift into the black market and street trade, the daughter ends up in a nightclub. The family comes apart quickly and each of them is drawn after a reckoning of their own. José Antonio Nieves Conde's Spanish film was made under Franco and is taken as the clearest example of Italian neorealism in Spain. The state film institute gave it an award for national interest; the church and part of the industry reacted against it. The telling idealises neither the city nor the countryside. The tone is dark and the ending bitter.