Literature and Film
In the poetic legend, Dona Urraca is the wronged infanta, watching Sancho and the Cid despoil her lands from the battlements of her castle shortly before Sancho is murdered. Her brother Alfonso is her loyal and chivalrous defender.
The Hollywood film El Cid largely follows the narrative of the Chronicle and the poetic epics, adding to the character of the Infanta a spurned woman role scheming against the Cid, once she seems rejected by him; however it omits the story that Urraca and Rodrigo grew up as close companions in Zamora and maybe more is behind omitted. And it stretches the psychological card that as older and provoking sister she plays between her brothers Alfonso and Sancho's quarrels for her city and herself. Later in the film, after the death of the haughty older brother Sancho, she focuses her favours to extract from Alfonso compensation to her own grudges with Ruy Diaz. For some reason the film wrongly makes Urraca the ruler of Calahorra, rather than Zamora. Urraca is portrayed by the French actress Geneviève Page.
Read more about this topic: Urraca Of Zamora
Famous quotes containing the words literature and/or film:
“In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading.”
—Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)