Francisco Rabal
Birthday: 1926-03-08
Place of Birth: Águilas, Murcia, Región de Murcia, Spain
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Francisco Rabal (March 8, 1926 – August 29, 2001), perhaps better known as Paco Rabal, was a Spanish actor born in Águilas, a small town in the province of Murcia, Spain. In 1936, after the Spanish Civil War broke out. Rabal and his family left Murcia and moved to Madrid. Young Francisco had to work as a street salesboy and in a chocolate factory. When he was 13 years old, he left school to work as an electrician at Estudios Chamartín. Rabal got some sporadic jobs as an extra. Dámaso Alonso and other people advised him to try his luck with a career in theater. During the following years, he got some roles in theater companies such as Lope de Vega or María Guerrero. It was there that he met actress Asunción Balaguer; they married and remained together for the rest of Rabal's life. Their daughter, Teresa Rabal, is also an actor. In 1947, Rabal got some regular jobs in theater. He used his full name, Francisco Rabal, as stage name. However, the people who knew him always called him Paco Rabal. (Paco is the familiar form for Francisco.) "Paco Rabal" became his unofficial stage name. During the 1940s, Rabal began acting in movies as an extra, but it was not until 1950 that he was first cast in speaking roles, and played romantic leads and rogues. He starred in three films directed by Luis Buñuel - Nazarín (1959), Viridiana (1961) and Belle de jour (1967). William Friedkin thought of Rabal for the French villain of his 1971 movie The French Connection. However, he could not remember the name of "that Spanish actor". Mistakenly, his staff hired another Spanish actor, Fernando Rey. Friedkin discovered that Rabal did not speak English or French, so he decided to keep Rey. Rabal has previously worked with Rey in Viridiana. Rabal did, however, work with Friedkin in the much less successful but Academy Award-nominated cult classic Sorcerer (1977), a remake of The Wages of Fear (1953). Throughout his career, Rabal worked in France, Italy and Mexico with directors such as Gillo Pontecorvo, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Valerio Zurlini, Jacques Rivette and Alberto Lattuada. It is widely considered that Rabal's best performances came after Francisco Franco's death on 1975. In the 1980s, Rabal starred in Los santos inocentes, winning the Award as Best Actor in Cannes Film Festival, in El Disputado Voto del Señor Cayo and also in the TV series Juncal. In 1989, he was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival. In the 1999 he played the character of Francisco Goya in Carlos Saura Goya en Burdeos, winning a Goya Award as Best Actor. Francisco Rabal is the only Spanish actor to have received a honoris causa doctoral degree from the University of Murcia. Rabal's final movie was Dagon, a film which was dedicated to him right before the credits. The dedication read "Dedicated to Francisco Rabal, a wonderful actor and even better human being." Rabal died in 2001 from compensatory dilating emphysema, while on an airplane travelling to Bordeaux, when he was coming back from receiving an Award at Montreal Film Festival. Description above from the Wikipedia article Francisco Rabal, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies
Belle de Jour
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Dagon
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Viridiana
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The Miller's Saucy Wife
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A Time of Destiny
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Speed Driver
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The Challenges
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Epilogue
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Blanca's Weddings
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Treasure of the Four Crowns
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Airbag
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Summer Night
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Fight to the Death
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The Mighty Crusaders
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Counselor at Crime
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Tormento
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Whom God Forgives
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La peccatrice
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Weeping for a Bandit
José María "El Tempranillo" fleeing from justice, takes refuge in Sierra Morena. After a period of h...
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Pigeon Shoot
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N.P. - The Secret
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Bloody Che Contra
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Stay as You Are
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Baroque
A series of images, music and sounds which transport through Mexico's history, without any narrative...
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The Lame Pigeon
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The Lost Paradise
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Ni contigo ni sin ti
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The Beehive
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Path to the Kingdom
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España insólita
"España insólita" is that different, unknown and humble Spain that does not appear on postcards or t...
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Just Run!
13-year-old Milio admires his older brother Luis who belongs to a drug gang in a poor Madrid suburb....
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Nights of Constantinople
The triumph of a young man in an important erotic literature contest reaches the ears of his grandmo...
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Divertimento
A rivalry between two actors proves to have dangerous consequences in this drama from Spain. Daniel ...
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Mathias Sandorf
1868. Revolutionary Mathias Sandorf is determined to oust the dictatorship oppressing his country. T...
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I Am the Law
Sicily, Fascist Italy, 1925. Dictator Benito Mussolini appoints Cesare Mori, a man as tough as he is...
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La otra imagen
A blind couple's marriage is tested when the wife is drawn to a blind writer....
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Planet Venus
Matteo is a communist intellectual, the son of a wealthy bourgeois, who found himself blind from an ...
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The Big Hit
Frank Willes, a young professional footballer, is involved in a road accident from which he emerges ...
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Oscuros sueños de agosto
Isabel returns to Spain, after several years of absence, to be cured of a neurosis. His daughter Ana...
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Azahares rojos
Family with young-adult children returns to Mexico after many years in Spain....
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María Rosa
In order to get María Rosa, the woman he is deeply in love with, Marsal murders a moneylender hated ...
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Io sono mia
Vannina and Giacinto are a young married couple who live their relationship in an unequal way; while...
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Death of a Cyclist
A couple having an affair strike a bicyclist with their car and do not offer aid out of fear of thei...
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El hermano bastardo de Dios
This drama concerns a seven-year-old boy, Pepe Luis (Lucas Martin, as the younger Pepe and Paco Raba...
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The Holy Innocents
In 60s Extremadura, Paco el Bajo and his relatives work during day in a farmhouse, and silently suff...
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C.I.A. Secret Story
Faccia di spia tries to tell the story of the CIA and other government intelligence agencies with lo...
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Divine Words
A work of Valle-Inclán, the story takes place in Galicia in the early twentieth century. To escape p...
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The Hand in the Trap
This haunting drama concerns a young woman on vacation from boarding school who discovers her aunt c...
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It's Nothing Mama, Just a Game
A young Hacienda-owner abuses women due to his traumatic youth while his mother covers for his sadis...
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Vultures Over the City
Merli, teamed with Mexican star Hugo Stiglitz as his photographer buddy, plays a journalist investig...
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Divine
"La Nueva Jerusalem" is a small community of believers lead by Papá Basilio and Mamá Dorita. They're...
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L'uomo dai calzoni corti
Salvatore, known as "bread loaf", escapes from Caltanissetta's brewery to find his mother he never m...
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Diez fusiles esperan
During the first Carlist war in the 1830s in Spain a lieutenant falls into the enemy's hands and is ...
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Le soldat Laforêt
When he gets separated from his unit, Laforet (Roger Van Hool) becomes a de facto deserter during 19...
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Cuenca
A medium-length documentary commissioned by the Cuenca City Council. The documentary shows an honest...
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The White Dove
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Intimidad de los parques
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Victòria! La gran aventura d'un poble
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After the Deluge
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Radio Stories
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El canto del gallo
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At Five in the Afternoon
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Spain Again
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The Revolution on Two Horses
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Los zancos
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The Dead Man
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Eye of the Cat
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El apartamento de la tentación
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The Other Woman
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The Big Black Sow
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Manuel, le fils emprunté
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Buñuel
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Goya: A Story of Solitude
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One Hundred and One Nights
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Water Easy Reach
Tells the story of Almar, a young Norwegian sailor whose gold watch, of great sentimental value, has...
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Nightmare City
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El buscón
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La vieja música
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Don Juan Tenorio
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La noche y el alba
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El crimen de Pepe Conde
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Luna de sangre
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María Morena
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Doubt
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Revenge
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Don Quixote
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Alhucemas
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Un adulterio decente
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La taberna fantástica
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Oedipus Mayor
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The Other
A man who survives an earthquake is convinced that there is another man still stuck in the debris....
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Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime)
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Ciao Cialtroni!
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Land Without Bread
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extrem...
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Les paradoxes de Buñuel
Famed film director Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) is the subject of this French documentary, with anecdota...
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