General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Ana y los Lobos

Ana y los lobos (English title: Anna and the Wolves) is a 1973 Spanish drama film directed by Carlos Saura, written by Saura with Rafael Azcona, and produced by Elías Querejeta. It tells of Ana, a young English governess who arrives at an isolated Spanish country mansion to care for three girls, and of the strange household she enters: three middle-aged brothers and their domineering mother, whose obsessions with power, sex, and mysticism build toward a tragic ending.¹^•² The film competed in the official selection of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and is read as a symbolic, parabolic critique of Spanish society under the Franco dictatorship.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Directed by Carlos Saura; screenplay by Rafael Azcona and Carlos Saura from Saura's story¹
Production	Elías Querejeta, for Elías Querejeta P.C.⁵
Country and year	Spain, 1973; 35 mm, Eastmancolor, widescreen¹
Runtime	102 minutes (one archive lists 97 minutes)⁵^•⁶
Leading cast	Geraldine Chaplin (Ana), Fernando Fernán Gómez (Fernando), José María Prada (José), José Vivó (Juan), Rafaela Aparicio (the Mother)⁵
Cannes	In Competition, Feature Films, 1973³
Spanish release	Seville 4 June 1973; Barcelona 8 June 1973; Madrid 16 July 1973⁵
Spanish box office	148,610.04 euros from 478,697 admissions¹

Spoilers

Story and characters

Ana, played by Geraldine Chaplin, is a 25-year-old English governess who comes to an isolated country house in an arid Castilian area near Madrid to take charge of three girls, daughters of Luchy, the wife of Juan.⁴^•⁶ The household is headed by three middle-aged brothers and their sick, domineering mother, who longs for past splendors.⁴

The three brothers carry the film's symbolic weight. José, who presents himself to Ana as the voice of order and authority in the family, is authoritarian and collects military uniforms, in which the contemporary critic Pascual Cebollada read an obsession with power; he governs the house.⁴^•⁷ Fernando pursues mystical union with God and withdraws to a cave like a hermit.²^•⁷ Juan, the only married brother, writes madly erotic letters.² In this unsettling atmosphere the family establishes strange relations with the newcomer, and the three brothers, each from his own angle, harass her; the critic Lorenzo López Sancho, writing in ABC in June 1973, described the ending: when Ana's disturbing presence threatens the family's diseased but useful system, the brothers, after satisfying their obsessions in her, kill her.²^•⁸

Allegory and political reading

Saura explained the film's origin in a 1991 statement: he and Azcona approached the screenplay without a starting plot, with only the idea of a film in which the three great powers of Spanish society would be represented, deliberately removed from immediate reality, with all references operating at a symbolic and parabolic level.² Critics of the time read the isolated house as Spain and José, Fernando, and Juan as veiled representatives of power strata united only by a conservative immobility that fears any change to the structure in which they live trapped.⁸ Cebollada called it a parable, possibly about the history of Spain, a satire of the family and of individuals repressed by ethical-religious and sociopolitical conditioning who end by reacting brutally.⁷

Censorship context. The film was made in the last years of the Franco dictatorship, when Saura's films became more confrontational in their criticism of Franco's society and he used symbolic characters and other strategies to try to avoid censorship.⁹ The Spanish censor held the film back at the time, and it was shown later at Cannes; Spanish serious critics received it polemically.¹⁰ López Sancho argued that the shadow of censorship dried up the naturalness of the action, and saw the film as the yellowed photograph of the movie Saura could have made with his theme had he been allowed.⁸

Production and crew

The film was shot in Panoramic widescreen on Eastmancolor by cinematographer Luis Cuadrado, with music by Luis de Pablo, editing by Pablo G. del Amo, and art direction by Francisco Nieva with Elisa Ruiz.⁵ The soundtrack includes the marches "El dos de mayo" and "El misterio de Elche" by Federico Chueca, the latter in a transcription by Óscar Esplá.⁵^•¹¹ The supporting cast includes Charo Soriano as Luchy, Marisa Porcel as Amparo, and the three girls played by Nuria Lage (Natalia), María José Puerta (Carlota), and Sara Gil (Victoria).⁵

Release and reception

The film premiered in Seville on 4 June 1973 at the Palacio Central, opened in Barcelona on 8 June at the París, Fantasio, and reached Madrid on 16 July at the Amaya cinema.⁵ It was selected for the official competition at Cannes in 1973, less than two months before its Spanish release.³^•⁸ In Spain it earned 148,610.04 euros (converted ICAA figures) from 478,697 admissions.¹

Awards. The Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos gave it three 1973 prizes: best actor for Fernando Fernán Gómez, best supporting actress for Rafaela Aparicio, and best cinematography.⁵ It received the Prix l'Age d'Or in 1974, and the Argentine film critics' association named it best Spanish-language film of 1974.⁵

Place in Saura's career

Ana y los lobos belongs to the run of films Saura made with producer Elías Querejeta and writer Rafael Azcona in the late Franco years, alongside El jardín de las delicias (1970) and La prima Angélica (1973), in which he deployed allegorical devices about the Franco regime.¹² Saura himself, in a 2013 presentation, described it as a very violent, very black film with something in common with his earlier La caza.¹³ El País has grouped it with the films of that period that exercised a notable influence on filmmakers of later generations.¹⁴ The film was restored and re-released in France in 2016 together with Mamá cumple cien años (1979), in which Rafaela Aparicio again played the mother.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1970s › Released 1970 to 1974

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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