Wonderfully offbeat film!

Very well executed

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Absolutely brilliant

Pretty good adaptation about a vintage novel that is credited with founding a literary genre , the Picaresque novel , from the Spanish world ¨Picaro¨ , meaning rogue or rascal . Lázaro , Marco Paloetti , is a poor boy of humble origins from Salamanca . His mother , Margarita Lozano , asks a wily blind beggar , Carlos Casaravilla , to take him as his apprentice . Lázaro uses his cunning while serving the blind person as well as several other masters , and also learning to practice all kinds of tricks and traps . Lazarillo suffers extreme famine because of the lack of food and designs a lot of strategies to get aliments . As he deals with a blind , a selfish verger , a starving squire : Juanjo Menendez and some travelling comedians : Carenutto , who agree to a bailiff , Antonio Molino Rojo , carry out a set-up about fake miracles . As the swindlers deceive suppliants purchasing indulgences . Based on an anonymous book that created the picaresque novel , this extensive genre includes ¨Cervantes's Rinconete and Cortadillo¨ , ¨Henry Fielding's Tom Jones¨ and ¨Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn¨ . The identity of the author of ¨Lazarillo¨ has been a puzzle for nearly four hundred years , it is likely that the writer chose to remain anonymous out of fear of religious prosecution . Its influence extends to twentieth century , dramas , and movies featuring the ¨anti-hero¨ . ¨Lazarillo De Tormes¨ gives a vivid and jolly description of the world of the pauper and the petty thief , including various popular sayings and a great number of of villagers stories . It describes the adventures of the Picaro Lazarillo , amusingly played by Marco Paleotti , exposing injustices who usually suffers while amusing the viewer . Lazarillo De Tormes comes from river Tormes , this is a river runs through his home town : Salamanca . Given the subversive nature of Lazarillo , and its open criticism of the Catholic Church , the film was strongly censored by the Francoist authorities . This movie displays an appropriate photography by the great cameraman Manuel Berenguer . Being masterfully shot on atmospheric location in Toledo , Salamanca , Frias , Lereya , Olias Del Rey , Alberca , Lerma , Tordesillas and other Castilian towns and villages . The motion picture was stunningly directed by Cesar Fernández Ardavin and it won the Golden Bear in Berlin Festival.This classic novel has been adapted several times : a silent rendition , 1925 , by Florian Rey with Jose Nieto , Montenegro and Pitusin . 1997 retelling titled ¨The Rogues¨ by Mario Monicelli with Giancarlo Giannini , Vittorio Gassman , Giuliana De Sio , Bernand Blier . 2oo1 ¨Lazarillo De Tormes¨ directed by Fernando Fernández Gómez , José Luis García Sánchez with Rafael Alvarez , el Brujo , Manuel Alexandre and Beatriz Rico . And a recently made episode 2016 from the successful series ¨El Ministerio Del Tiempo¨ was starred by El Lazarillo De Tormes along with Rodolfo Sancho and Aura Garrido .

The classic Spanish picaro is lovingly transferred to the screen in this marvelous adaptation of one of its first prototypes preceding the immortal Don Quixote. In the opening frames the beautiful brooding quality of the Spanish landscape is established as a fitting background to the events which transpire after Lazarillo, a poor boy, is sold into bondage by his mother to the first of a succession of masters. Thus begin the travels of Lazarillo as he learns to live by his wits, first with a greedy blind beggar who beats and starves him. He soon learns to outwit his mean-spirited captor in some delightfully realized sequences and eventually becomes an accomplished street-wise thief who survives quite handily through petty crime. Only one of his succession of masters is kind to him, the impoverished threadbare nobleman (engagingly portrayed by Juan Jose Menendez) who desperately tries to appear eligible to make an advantageous marriage with one of the daughters of the local grandees, but whose pretensions are cruelly mocked as he and his new servant Lazarillo slowly starve together. Cruel necessity causes the canny Lazarillo to leave this most favorite master and move on to yet other unscrupulous patrons and more petty crime in the shadow of the always threatening Inquisition. His travails afford opportunities for much biting social and political satire sharply observed along the way. Lazarillo finally seems to find a good place among a roving roguish company of puppeteers, but just as their wagon merrily rolls away with him as their newly acquired apprentice we are informed that before reaching the age of fourteen, Lazarillo will undoubtedly be hanged for his life of crime.