The Pleasant Feeling Of Being In A More Innocent Age: Paul Bowles’s impressions on Portugal

Photo-documentary on Paul Bowles’s long-stay in Madeira and in Continental Portugal, motivated by the violence outbreak in Morocco as well as by Jane Bowles’s poor health, during the second half of the 1950s.

Based on journalistic, epistolary and photographic texts, the documentary puts forward Bowles’s perspective on a backward and naive country which had fallen victim of a long dictatorship. The arrival of General Humberto Delgado in Lisbon and the reaction to his intention to run for president are witnessed and reported by Bowles to his close relations and to the American press. Nevertheless, Portugal’s peaceful atmosphere as well as its perceived “authenticity” are features that fascinate and that the American author favours in his observations.