Furrows

Furrows is a 1951 Spanish film directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde, and written by him in collaboration with Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Eugenio Montes, and Natividad Zaro. It provides an unsettling portrait of post-Civil War Madrid while caudillo Francisco Franco was in power. Plot Surcos follows the struggles of a Spanish family as it emigrates from the countryside to Madrid circa 1950. Facing difficulties in finding housing and employment, several family members turn to illegal or immoral activities in order to make ends meet, and the traditional family structure disintegrates. The movie begins when the Perez family of country bumpkins arrive from the country at the Madrid train station, disoriented, gawking and loaded down with baggage, including a basket of live chickens. The Perez family consists of a mother (who is never named in the movie), the fiftyish aged father, Manuel, his older son Pepe (who had visited Madrid during the Spanish Civil War), his younger son, Manolo and his slightly impish, but completely naïve daughter, Tonia. They move in with a relative of the mother in a run down apartment complex that is overrun with hordes of children who do cruel things every time they get a chance, showing that none of them are attending school at that point in Franco's Spain. In the apartment they meet the relative's daughter, the street smart Pili. Pili makes a living for her mother and herself by selling contraband American cigarettes in the street. Pili has an evil boyfriend, El Mellao. El Mellao works for the even more evil black marketer, but well dressed, very rich and smooth, Don Roque (“El Chamberlain”). Pepe quickly makes an implacable enemy of El Mellao when he defends Pili from his abuses and Don Roque hires Pepe in the place of El Mellao to drive around his contraband, because Pepe will do it for less. Pepe and Pili also become a couple and move in together.