
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
7.3Beautiful 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
7.6Vittoria 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
6.7The 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
7.5Four 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
6.8After 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
5.8An 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
6.1A boating accident off the coast of Spain sends Paul and his girlfriend Barbara to the decrepit fishing village of Imboca. As night falls, people start to disappear and things not quite human start to appear. Paul is pursued by the entire town. Running for his life, he uncovers Imboca's secret..they worship Dagon, a monstrous god of the sea...and Dagon's unholy offspring are on the loose...
Dagon
2001
6.0Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre.
Speaking of Buñuel
2000
1990s · 10 titles
6.8After 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
6.1Monsieur 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
6.6A man gets involved in a series of mishaps while frantically searching for his lost wedding ring.
Airbag
1997
6.0Francisco 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
5.5This 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
5.4Edipo, 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
6.6Tells 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
6.2Manu 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
7.7A man who survives an earthquake is convinced that there is another man still stuck in the debris.
The Other
1991
5.5Rosalía 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
4.3A 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
6.1Rudi 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
5.7A 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
5.2A 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
4.6César 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
6.0After 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
7.0Rocío, 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
6.0This 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
7.8In 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
4.2A 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
6.4As 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
7.5Four 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
5.8An 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
5.8A married Roman landscape architect starts an affair with a young woman who might be a shadow from his past.
Stay as You Are
1978
6.8Lieutenant 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
5.7A 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
6.6Sicily, 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
6.3Faccia 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
5.2A 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
5.6When 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
7.0Matteo 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
4.1A 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
3.4The 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
5.4Commissario 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
8.0No synopsis available yet.
Laia
1970
4.2No synopsis available yet.
Emilia... parada y fonda
1976
1960s · 14 titles
7.3Beautiful 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
7.6Vittoria 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
6.0Five 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
7.7Viridiana 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
6.3The 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
6.3During 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
6.1After suffering three years of hard labor in a prison camp, former sheriff Ted Barnett escapes. Now he seeks revenge.
Long Days of Vengeance
1967
7.1In 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
5.0Marie-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
6.11868. 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
7.2Young 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
6.1Cora 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
7.0No synopsis available yet.
Cavalcata selvaggia
1960
5.8Berta 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
6.2Squarciò, 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
7.6A 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
7.1A 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
6.5Following 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
7.7A young communist discovers the power of faith.
Revelation
1955
7.4A 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
5.0After 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
6.7The 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
8.0Miniseries about the early life of Garibaldi.
Il giovane Garibaldi
1974
7.3The life of Miguel de Cervantes, writer of the iconic novel Don Quixote of La Mancha.
Cervantes
1981
5.8An account of the life of Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), from her spiritual awakening to her final days, as she struggles to reform the Order of the Carmelites and with her own faith.
Teresa de Jesús
1984
5.8No synopsis available yet.
Truhanes
1993
10.0The story of the half-Jewish Ida Raimundo and her two sons Antonio and Giuseppe in Rome, during and immediately after the Second World War.
History
1986
6.6The world of bullfighting seen through the unforgettable adventures of a likeable rogue. A serious goring forced José Álvarez "Juncal", a famous bullfighter from the 1950s, to leave the bullfighting world, but it left him with a distinguished limp.
Juncal
1989
9.0Vittorio Cottafavi's four part series on the life of Christopher Colombus
Christopher Colombus
1968
7.0The painter Francisco de Goya is witness to the disasters and horrors caused by the bloody resistance of the Spanish people to the French occupation during the Napoleonic wars.
Los desastres de la guerra
1983
Spanish documentary series.
Imágenes perdidas
1991

