Though he has been called Portugal's greatest film director, Manoel de Oliveira emerged from relative obscurity at the age of 72 with Doomed Love. An extremely “personal” director, De Oliveira has produced only a handful of features in a career that dates back to 1931. Running over four hours, Doomed Love shows all signs of this uncompromising bent; the passion with which De Oliveira renders Camilo Castelo Branco's classic 1861 novel is matched only by the passions contained in the story itself, a tale of love that increases as it is thwarted by social mores. It is above all De Oliveira's intriguing style which has led the film to be compared less with any rendition of “Romeo and Juliet” than with such diverse examples of style as Rohmer's Marquise of O and Mizoguchi's The Loyal Forty-Seven Ronin.
J. Hoberman comments in the Village Voice, “At once stripped-down and detail-crammed...Doomed Love is a minuet staged as grand opera....” and John Gillett, writing for L.A.'s Filmex, describes De Oliveira's method: “Using off-screen narration which often runs counter to what we are shown, he builds up several complex narrative layers as the characters' lives intertwine in a fascinating ritual of love-death-freedom. He also mixes all kinds of stylization, from real locations to deliberately artificial, skeletal settings, taking in a rich color scheme and a palpably felt period atmosphere which, though austere, does not shun its moments of bravura....”