Francisco Rabal

Acting

Francisco Rabal

Born — Died

1926-03-08 — 2001-08-29

Place of birth

Águilas, Murcia, Región de Murcia, Spain

Known for

Acting

Credits

70 titles

Francisco Rabal Valera (8 March 1926 – 29 August 2001), popularly known as Paco Rabal, was a Spanish actor. His career spanned more than 200 film and television roles, between 1942 and 2001. He received numerous accolades both in Spain and abroad, including the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award and the Goya Award for Best Actor. Rabal was best known internationally for his collaborations with director Luis Buñuel, with Ronald Bergan writing "most of his other major roles he carried the heady, perverse whiff of the great surrealist director with him." He worked with many other notable directors, including Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar, William Friedkin, Michelangelo Antonioni, Claude C…

Known for

Belle de Jour poster
7.3

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Belle de Jour

1967

L'Eclisse poster
7.6

Vittoria is a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.

L'Eclisse

1962

Fortunata and Jacinta poster
6.7

The aristocrat Juan de Santa Cruz meets Fortunata, a girl of humble origins, and a passionate love arises between them; but his mother decides to marry him to her niece Jacinta.

Fortunata and Jacinta

1980

Sorcerer poster
7.5

Four men from different parts of the globe, all hiding from their pasts in the same remote South American town, agree to risk their lives transporting several cases of dynamite (which is so old that it is dripping unstable nitroglycerin) across dangerous jungle terrain.

Sorcerer

1977

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! poster
6.8

After being released from a mental hospital, a troubled young man tracks down an actress he once had sex with and forces her into captivity, determined to make her part of his life.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1990

It Can Be Done Amigo poster
5.8

An outspoken boy and a gunfighter-pimp save a drifter's life from hanging. The boy's uncle dies, leaving a house and some dry, useless land to the boy. The dying uncle has obtained the drifter's promise to help the boy get what is his. Meanwhile the gunfighter has decided that the drifter should marry his daughter after being with her previously. The two get into a series of brawls and shoot-outs until they arrive in the town and find the boy's inheritance -which turns out not to be as useless as it first appears.

It Can Be Done Amigo

1972

Film credits

2000s · 2 titles

1990s · 10 titles

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! poster
6.8

After being released from a mental hospital, a troubled young man tracks down an actress he once had sex with and forces her into captivity, determined to make her part of his life.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1990

One Hundred and One Nights poster
6.1

Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.

One Hundred and One Nights

1995

Airbag poster
6.6

A man gets involved in a series of mishaps while frantically searching for his lost wedding ring.

Airbag

1997

Goya in Bordeaux poster
6.0

Francisco Goya (1746-1828), deaf and ill, lives the last years of his life in voluntary exile in Bordeaux, a Liberal protesting the oppressive rule of Ferdinand VII. He's living with his much younger wife Leocadia and their daughter Rosario. He continues to paint at night, and in flashbacks stirred by conversations with his daughter, by awful headaches, and by the befuddlement of age, he relives key times in his life.

Goya in Bordeaux

1999

Talk of Angels poster
5.5

This is the story of a young Irish woman who comes to Spain to escape from the pressures she feels about her impending marriage to a political activist in Ireland. But in Spain in the 1930's, taking a job of governess in a wealthy family, she finds the same kinds of political unrest. In fact, it isn't long before she finds herself attracted to a married man who is similarly involved in the struggle against fascism and Franco. This awakens her to her nature that brings her to such men and resolves for her what she must do about the life she left in Ireland

Talk of Angels

1998

Oedipus Mayor poster
5.4

Edipo, is appointed mayor of a town plunged in misery and violence. His first mission is to discover and punish the murderers of Layo, a well-known potentate of the region. His investigation is directed towards all the armed factions that exist in Colombia.

Oedipus Mayor

1996

Water Easy Reach poster
6.6

Tells the story of Almar, a young Norwegian sailor whose gold watch, of great sentimental value, has been broken. While waiting for repairs in a remote Spanish town, he meets a number of unusual characters: Windy, an Australian seafarer with unusual experiences, real or imaginary; Marta, a beautiful Spanish girl; Martha's bizarre grandfather; and two old watchmakers who are painfully methodical. It seems to Almar that real time has also stopped when his watch did.

Water Easy Reach

1998

Little Bird poster
6.2

Manu travels to Murcia to spend the summer with their grandparents because their parents are getting divorced. Surrounded by gardens, sea, nature, and lush, warm family, Manu find his first love and the first signs of adulthood.

Little Bird

1997

The Other poster
7.7

A man who survives an earthquake is convinced that there is another man still stuck in the debris.

The Other

1991

Little Miracles poster
5.5

Rosalía is a cashier at a supermarket. She lives alone, loves reading fairy tales and hides in a magic fantasy world in order to survive living in the real one. She thinks she is a fairy who came on a mission and got caught in this world. She travels by bus every day. At the bus-stop, there is a "web camera" which records images and puts them into the Internet. Santiago is a scientist who works in an international research project to detect signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. He is a lonely man who lives with his dog and his computer. Rosalía finds she has some extra-sensory powers and thinks three young women she knows are fairies. They will remarkably influence her life. She also feels the need to meet her father, whom she has not seen since she was 8.

Little Miracles

1997

1980s · 11 titles

Treasure of the Four Crowns poster
4.3

A group of adventurers are gathered together to retrieve some mystical gems which are in the possession of a deadly cult.

Treasure of the Four Crowns

1983

Speed Driver poster
6.1

Rudi is an illegal street racer named whose reputation in the area becomes so strong that he is hired to compete professionally on the circuit.

Speed Driver

1980

Nightmare City poster
5.7

A reporter and his doctor wife try to escape from the hordes of bloodthirsty, undead people exposed to nuclear radioactivity as military leaders fight a losing war of attrition against the relentless attacks.

Nightmare City

1980

Under Siege poster
5.2

A band of thugs belonging to an organized crime family assaults several casinos at the same time creating death and panic in their wake. As they flee the scenes of their crimes police begin to close in on them, so they quickly hide themselves in a villa owned by a wealthy industrialist taking him and his family hostage.

Under Siege

1980

The Witching Hour poster
4.6

César and Pilar tour the Spanish countryside with their bus, showing films and doing magic spectacles in small villages. In one of these trips they find Saga, a beautiful young woman who starts to travel with them and changes their lives in unexpected ways.

The Witching Hour

1985

Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime) poster
6.0

After Annunziata opens up a hostel with her friend Antonio, she is saved from being raped by a Camorra boss as the gangster is suddenly killed. The killer escapes before Annunziata is able to see who it was. Following this murder are several others, and always with the same “signature” — a syringe in one of the testicles of the victims. As the gangsters continue to be killed off, the identity of the killer – or killers – slowly becomes obvious.

Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime)

1986

The White Dove poster
7.0

Rocío, is in love with Mario, a free rider with a lot of face that, to top it all, is partner of the business of her father, Domingo with whom she maintains incestuous relations. When Domingo passes away, both Mario and Rocío's mother have to put to the front of the business, finishing with the inheritance that could receive Rocío. In the midst of her frustration, a young business worker, secretly in love with Rocío, will try to have the legacy of her father end up in the hands of his rightful heiress.

The White Dove

1989

El hermano bastardo de Dios poster
6.0

This drama concerns a seven-year-old boy, Pepe Luis (Lucas Martin, as the younger Pepe and Paco Rabal Cerezales as Pepe at ten) who lives through the rise of Franco and the ensuing years under the fascist dictator. Presented from the perspective of the young Pepe, the Civil War and Franco are irrelevant to his own concerns: daydreaming about a pretty girl he likes, fighting with other boys, helping the priest at a funeral service, and similar activities. Pepe lives with his uncle and grandparents, and whether he is aware of it or not, the war impinges on their lives in several ways. The title of the film derives from little Pepe's contention that God is not responsible for the war, just some "bastard brother" of the Creator.

El hermano bastardo de Dios

1986

The Holy Innocents poster
7.8

In 60s Extremadura, Paco el Bajo and his relatives work during day in a farmhouse, and silently suffer submission to their masters, who exploit them and treat them almost like animals. Meanwhile, Paco dreams that one day his children will be able to study.

The Holy Innocents

1984

Reborn poster
4.2

A man discovers that his girlfriend is a "stigmata" (someone whose hands and feet mysteriously bleed in the same places where Jesus Christ was crucified) and tries to keep her out of the hands of a greedy TV preacher who plans to exploit her to make money for himself.

Reborn

1981

The Beehive poster
6.4

As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.

The Beehive

1982

1970s · 15 titles

Sorcerer poster
7.5

Four men from different parts of the globe, all hiding from their pasts in the same remote South American town, agree to risk their lives transporting several cases of dynamite (which is so old that it is dripping unstable nitroglycerin) across dangerous jungle terrain.

Sorcerer

1977

It Can Be Done Amigo poster
5.8

An outspoken boy and a gunfighter-pimp save a drifter's life from hanging. The boy's uncle dies, leaving a house and some dry, useless land to the boy. The dying uncle has obtained the drifter's promise to help the boy get what is his. Meanwhile the gunfighter has decided that the drifter should marry his daughter after being with her previously. The two get into a series of brawls and shoot-outs until they arrive in the town and find the boy's inheritance -which turns out not to be as useless as it first appears.

It Can Be Done Amigo

1972

Stay as You Are poster
5.8

A married Roman landscape architect starts an affair with a young woman who might be a shadow from his past.

Stay as You Are

1978

The Desert of the Tartars poster
6.8

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

The Desert of the Tartars

1976

Hotel Fear poster
5.7

A young girl and her mother run a hotel during the war. When the mother dies, the girl finds herself at the mercy of her sex-crazed guests. Soon enough, a cloaked figure starts killing off everyone that tries to harm her.

Hotel Fear

1978

I Am the Law poster
6.6

Sicily, Fascist Italy, 1925. Dictator Benito Mussolini appoints Cesare Mori, a man as tough as he is honest, as the new police prefect of Palermo and entrusts him with the arduous task of putting an end to the Mafia, a sinister criminal organization that has sown terror on the island for centuries.

I Am the Law

1977

C.I.A. Secret Story poster
6.3

Faccia di spia tries to tell the story of the CIA and other government intelligence agencies with lots of re-creations and dramatizations and points out some of the more brutal aspects of the intelligence community from around the world. Wars are started, all facets of everyday life are controlled, innocent people are tortured needlessly and subjected to extreme violence.

C.I.A. Secret Story

1975

The Tempter poster
5.2

A young writer is invited to stay in a religious hostel run by a sinister, manipulative nun who plays deadly psychological games with the inhabitants.

The Tempter

1974

The Counsellor poster
5.6

When the godson of San Francisco's crime lord asks permission to leave "the business," Don Antonio agrees, but reluctantly. Such behavior by either one is a violation of the code, and a bloody mob war breaks out. It is only through the strong support of his family connections in Sicily that Don Antonio is able to survive the mêlée and come out on top. Aghast at the situation he has caused, the godson becomes his leader's "consigliere," or Counselor at Crime.

The Counsellor

1973

Planet Venus poster
7.0

Matteo is a communist intellectual, the son of a wealthy bourgeois, who found himself blind from an eye after the war. One day in the streets of Rome he meets Amelia, a child suffocated by the bourgeois environment.

Planet Venus

1972

It's Nothing Mama, Just a Game poster
4.1

A young Hacienda-owner abuses women due to his traumatic youth while his mother covers for his sadistic actions.

It's Nothing Mama, Just a Game

1974

Ann and Eve poster
3.4

The story concerns the Yugoslavian holiday of two toothsome Swedish girls. One of the girls, played by Maria Liljedahl, is (metaphorically speaking) a world-champion in the promiscuity sweepstakes, bedding men (and women) in great profusion. Somehow, the movie also manages to be about film reviewers and film directors. Variety commented '...the film's inherently good visual and physical qualities are themselves dissipated in [the director's] cynicism, ennui, and involuted intellectual mirror tricks.'

Ann and Eve

1970

Hunted City poster
5.4

Commissario Paolo Ferro (Maurizio Merli) stars as a (typical) tough cop again. This time he returns to the city of Milan to go after a murder corporation. Acampora (Mario Merola) is believed to be the prime suspect although he later proves to be one of the mafia's targets. As if all that wasn't enough, Paolo has to face his own nephew who seems to be involved in all sorts of dirty business.

Hunted City

1979

Laia poster
8.0

No synopsis available yet.

Laia

1970

Emilia... parada y fonda poster
4.2

No synopsis available yet.

Emilia... parada y fonda

1976

1960s · 14 titles

Belle de Jour poster
7.3

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Belle de Jour

1967

L'Eclisse poster
7.6

Vittoria is a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.

L'Eclisse

1962

The Witches poster
6.0

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.

The Witches

1967

Viridiana poster
7.7

Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.

Viridiana

1962

Eagles Over London poster
6.3

The British High Command finds itself in the thick of a huge dilemma when it is realized that they have long been infiltrated by spies from a German intelligence group. This all happens during the preliminary stages of the Battle of Britain.

Eagles Over London

1969

Legacy of the Incas poster
6.3

During the 1800s, Peru's government sends 2 envoys to negotiate peace with the rebellious Incas but a treasure-hunter bandit shoots the Inca ruler and his son, leaving the 2 envoys to take the blame for it.

Legacy of the Incas

1965

Long Days of Vengeance poster
6.1

After suffering three years of hard labor in a prison camp, former sheriff Ted Barnett escapes. Now he seeks revenge.

Long Days of Vengeance

1967

The Nun poster
7.1

In eighteenth-century France, a girl is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior treat her in radically different ways, ranging from maternal concern, to sadistic persecution, to lesbian desire.

The Nun

1967

The Blue Panther poster
5.0

Marie-Chantal travels by train to her cousin's place to spend a winter holiday, when a stranger entrusts her with false jewels that contain a virus powerful enough to destroy all humankind.

The Blue Panther

1965

Mathias Sandorf poster
6.1

1868. Revolutionary Mathias Sandorf is determined to oust the dictatorship oppressing his country. The people see him as their liberator. Denounced by his banker, Mathias is arrested and sentenced to death. He manages to escape and takes refuge in a fishing village where he prepares a new uprising.

Mathias Sandorf

1963

Pigeon Shoot poster
7.2

Young man Marco Laudato, after the '8/9/1943's WW2 armistice, enlists in the Italian Social Republic army, attending the last days of the old regime in decay.

Pigeon Shoot

1961

The Female: Seventy Times Seven poster
6.1

Cora is a Mexican prostitute with typically inconsiderate johns. She is troubled by a hole in the ceiling. The hole triggers flashbacks regarding how she got to where she is; she hooked up with a gringo and got involved in digging a well. A horse thief given up for dead gives them a hand.

The Female: Seventy Times Seven

1962

Cavalcata selvaggia poster
7.0

No synopsis available yet.

Cavalcata selvaggia

1960

El hombre de la isla poster
5.8

Berta is a German who comes to a small fishing village to marry Lorenzo, owner of an island and that only known her through his letters. The early days of their marriage are a constant disappointment, especially when it finds that her husband has no resemblance to the author of the letters. He lives embittered by an old story and is hated by all.

El hombre de la isla

1960

1950s · 7 titles

The Wide Blue Road poster
6.2

Squarciò, a fisherman, lives with his family on a small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. Like his fellow villagers, Squarciò struggles against harsh living conditions, a scarcity of fish in nearby waters and exploitation by the local wholesaler. But while the other fishermen continue to use nets, he goes out to the open sea to fish illegally with bombs. But Squarciò borrows money, loses his boat, and in a moment of supreme desperation, has to bomb directly off-shore, causing the hatred and rejection of his fellow fishermen. Trying to save his family, Squarciò and his young sons sail their new boat out beyond the local waters and bomb-fish again. But this time, the sea exacts a terrible toll…

The Wide Blue Road

1957

Nazarín poster
7.6

A Catholic priest in a poor community lives a charitable life in accordance with his religious principles, but others do not return the favor.

Nazarín

1959

Death of a Cyclist poster
7.1

A couple having an affair strike a bicyclist with their car and do not offer aid out of fear of their relationship being exposed.

Death of a Cyclist

1955

All Is Possible in Granada poster
6.5

Following meetings between Spain and the United States a delegation of a mining company arrives to Granada in search of uranium. The company contacted with the landowners, who agree to sell less of them. Such owner refuses because his ground a treasure supposedly hidden Muslim and refuses to sell them to Margaret, representative of the company. When he refused, Margaret convinces the owner to locate the treasure on your own and sell it in case you find it ... but love gets in his plans.

All Is Possible in Granada

1954

Revelation poster
7.7

A young communist discovers the power of faith.

Revelation

1955

I Was a Parish Priest poster
7.4

A young priest encounters major problems in the diocese where he must preach the word of the Lord, mainly as a result of hatred caused by differences in classes

I Was a Parish Priest

1953

Saranno uomini poster
5.0

After leaving the reformatory where they spent their childhood, three boys begin their journey in life. The protagonist ends up becoming a criminal, but is finally redeemed by another of his former classmates, who has become a priest.

Saranno uomini

1957

Series credits