The first major film that Portabella produced, Carlos Saura's The Delinquents (Los Golfos, 1960), makes use of mirroring camera movements to link exterior and interior spaces. These strategies are elaborated in Portabella's first directed feature, Nocturno 29 (1968), where the length of the shots is clearly designed to move beyond strict narrative exigency and to open up other dimensions of engagement. It is with this film that Portabella begins using point-of-view and cinematic textures to open up a different "look" on the world.