The first installment in Manoel de Oliveira's “tetralogy of frustrated love” (four features made between 1971 and 1981), The Past and the Present “is a rich, Buñuelian black comedy based on a play by Vincente Sanches. Set in a sumptuous mansion, the film is the story of a woman who, after driving her second husband to suicide, discovers to her horror that her first one is still alive. Wonderful passages of mime and choreographed action punctuate the hilarious confrontations between the various principals and their beleaguered servants” (Richard Peña, Journal of the University Film and Video Assoc., Summer 1983). “The direction of the entire cast is exemplary (notably Maria de Saisset's Vanda, with the most withering look in all cinema), and the camera style has a Minnelli-like elegance, tracking around rooms and turning the drama into a black caprice. Wonderful use, too, of the ‘Midsummer Night's Dream' music, alternating with passages of silence” (John Gillett, National Film Theatre, London).