"One event did superficially change the dismal outlook of Spanish cinema. It was the appearance of a new singing star, Sara Montiel, in The Last Song. Montiel was a beautiful woman who had worked somewhat in Spain before moving first to Mexico and then to the U.S., where she married director Anthony Mann and starred in several films.... The story of a popular singer who falls into terminal despair after the death of her bullfighting boyfriend, The Last Song was an unpretentious film, and even its own producers had little confidence in it. But surprisingly, it was a huge box office success, making Montiel the best known star in Spanish cinema since Imperio Argentina years before. The reason for her success was twofold: one, she did not specialize in Andalusian songs, but rather in cuplés, music hall songs which had a certain nostalgic attraction for many adults; and two, her cuplés were about naughty love stories, full of double meanings which no contemporary writer could match. The songs gave Montiel a kind of brilliant eroticism which would make her the first woman in the Spanish cinema with a sexual capacity.... Even though this exhibition of her temptations was always punished, Montiel, with that ambivalent way of hers, would show that sex was possible." -Diego Galan, Spanish Cinema: 1896-1983