The Last Torch Song

The Last Torch Song, better known under its Spanish title El último cuplé, is a 1957 Spanish jukebox musical film directed by Juan de Orduña and starring Sara Montiel, Armando Calvo and Enrique Vera.[1]

The Last Torch Song
Spanish theatrical release poster
SpanishEl último cuplé
Directed byJuan de Orduña
Written by
  • Jesús María de Arozamena
  • Antonio Mas Guindal
Produced byJuan de Orduña
Starring
CinematographyJosé F. Aguayo
Edited byAntonio Cánovas
Music byJuan Solano
Color processEastmancolor
Production
company
Producciones Orduña Films
Distributed byCifesa
Release date
  • 6 May 1957 (1957-05-06)
Running time
110 minutes
CountrySpain
LanguageSpanish

It was released in Spain on 6 May 1957. It was immensely popular domestically and it had a wide international release making it the worldwide highest-grossing Spanish-language film made up to that point. The film's soundtrack album had also a wide international release.

Cast

Production

The filming took place in Barcelona between November 1956 and January 1957. Montiel accepted to star in the film as a deference to its director Juan de Orduña and during a vacation in Spain in between her Hollywood filmings Serenade and Run of the Arrow.[2] The film was filmed with a very low budget. Initially, the songs in the film were going to be sung by a professional singer who would dub Montiel, but due to the low budget, she eventually sang the songs herself.[3] Orduña had to sell the distribution rights to Cifesa to finance the completion of the filming.[4]

Release

The Last Torch Song opened on 6 May 1957 in Spain. The film was running at the 1,400-seat Rialto Theatre for forty-seven weeks,[5] making it the highest grossing film in Madrid in the 1950s.[lower-alpha 1] The film was there for so long that, as a result of the rain and the wind, the large billboard announcing the film had to be replaced by another, something unusual in the history of film exhibition in Spain.[8] The film soundtrack album also became a hit.

The film had a wide international release with the dialogues dubbed or subtitled into other languages in non-Spanish speaking countries, while the songs kept in their original version. It was the worldwide highest-grossing Spanish-language film made up to that point, only surpassed in the 1950s–60s by her next film The Violet Seller, and catapulting Montiel's career as an actress and a singer.[9]

Notes
  1. Back then in Spain, boxoffice grosses were a secret kept by exhibitors for tax reasons. The only guide to estimate them was the length of the first-run and the capacity of the venue.[6] It was not made mandatory to officially communicate the number of tickets sold until 1 January 1965.[7]

References
  1. Labanyi & Pavlović p.236
  2. The Last Torch Song (1957), retrieved 8 May 2020
  3. Herreros, Enrique. La Codorniz de Enrique Herreros (in Spanish). p. 169. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  4. "Medio siglo de «El último cuplé»". Levante-EMV (in Spanish). 7 May 2007. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  5. Sánchez Barba, Francesc (2007). Francoism's mists: the rise of Spanish film noir (1950-1965) (in Spanish). University of Barcelona. p. 172. ISBN 9788447531745.
  6. "How They Played in Madrid, 1958". Variety. 15 April 1959. p. 83. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  7. "ORDER of December 22, 1964 establishing the control system of the performance of the films that are exhibited in Spain" (PDF). Boletín Oficial del Estado (in Spanish). 30 December 1964. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  8. "'El último cuplé', una película de récord". La Verdad (in Spanish). 10 April 2013. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  9. Edwin López Moya (12 April 2018). "New Sara Montiel biography is being written in Philadelphia". Al Día News. Retrieved 16 May 2020.

Bibliography
  • Labanyi, Jo & Pavlović, Tatjana. A Companion to Spanish Cinema. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.


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