albertomallofres-pantoja

First of all, I want to clear up something: I love Britain. I love the British people. In many aspects, I feel British. (You could put the music from "West Side Story" to this affirmation: "I feel British, oh so British..."). I´m a citizen of the world. But I cannot help feeling indignant when someone tries to pull my leg, as some British character like pseudo-historian Paul Preston or so is attempting to do.

I don´t want to be boring, but I must insist about my age. I was born in 1919, so I DO know the era that "Raza" deals with. Everything that the film says is true, although it is presented in a very mild and benevolent way. The pursuit against the Catholic church is true. The hate of militiamen towards priests, monks, nuns and Catholic people in general is true. The shootings in the red zone (and the word "red" is not offensive - the left-wingers called themselves that way) are true. (For a better information, I recommend the books written about the subject by the former member of the GRAPO Pío Moa.) Believe me, I DO KNOW SOMETHING.

I want to set the record straight: I don´t like to speak badly about ANYONE, but the Truth is my best friend and I must be faithful to it. The thing is that we are talking about a film. I´m completely against Communism and that doesn´t prevent me from liking "Potemkin". I´m not a Nazi, but I like "Triumph Of The Will". And "Potemkin", judging by what I have read about the subject, is very inaccurate from a historical point of view; "Raza" isn´t. It is a no-nonsense picture. But most of all it´s a very good movie: the actors are wonderful (particularly Ana Mariscal - what a woman!), the direction is impeccable and the semi-documentary tone of the whole work is successful. I´ll say it again: the assassination of the monks on the beach is among the best cinematic scenes I have ever seen, and I cry every time I watch it. Because, unfortunately, that was only (sorry to say) too true. The fact that I´m a certain age doesn´t make me dodder or drivel, thank God.

Other films, like "La Caza", "Furtivos" or "El Espíritu De La Colmena", have tried to tell a different story, but the degree of success is uneasy: "La Caza" (one of whose leading actors, by the way, is the great Alfredo Mayo, the protagonist of "Raza") is a good film (maybe the best film of Carlos Saura, which is not saying much), but it´s not a film about the war, but rather about the aftermath of the war, and it doesn´t reflect at all a reality; those facts didn´t exist in the 60s (or, at least, they were not a general attitude). And as for "Furtivos" or "El Espíritu De La Colmena", they also depict a society later than the war (not the war itself, and still less the pre-war) and, for all their fame and prizes, they are (from a strictly cinematographic and non-political point of view) small pieces of blatant rubbish.

Before I say goodbye, I must stress something: hate is not a good advisor. And profanities and obscene language are no good, especially when headed for someone who is dead and therefore cannot defend himself. Please, let´s calm down a little bit. May people read good books and learn the truth. I hope that, as in Charles Laughton´s great film "Night Of The Hunter", love ends up defeating hate. God bless you.

OK, I must be something like Grandpa Cebolleta, that nice comic book character who was always telling stories about battles he could never have been involved in. But I´m not that old (or as young as some other commentators). I was born in 1919 (and I´m sorry for being so insisting about my age). I WAS in those battles to which "Franco, Ese Hombre" makes very little reference because during the nearly forty years of Franco´s regime the film directors had the good sense of not touching that subject (The Civil War) more than half-dozen times and never to mortify or vent any kind of anger on the defeated. In exchange, in these nearly three decades of the post-Franco era there must be surely some one hundred films that have used scurrility and mortification as a support for their making. "Sex" (with the most dislocated derivations of Freud and the Marquis of Sade) and a grotesque "triumphalism" (?) have been the basic support of this post-Franco cinema or, to be precise, this "anti-Franco" cinema, because this was and is its nourishing thesis.

Is it not possible to talk about films without ever wallowing in the mire of politics (almost always of the same side, by the way)? Is it not possible to appreciate films for what they are and not for what they "should" be (or, at least, someone thinks they should be)? I see that some "ghosts" that we believed they had disappeared completely in the 60s have come out of their closets again. The Civil War is back with a vengeance (pun intended). We should call Tim Burton - what a delightful film he could make with this amazing ghostly army!

I might add that "Franco, Ese Hombre" is a masterpiece (by your leave, of course).

To my way of thinking, nothing seems more inappropriate and inconsistent than labelling "Raza" as laughable or as a simple political pamphlet. OK, Sáenz De Heredia was no Leni Riefenstahl - and, in my humble opinion, and with all due respects to Riefenstahl and her work, he didn´t need to. Some people try to scrutinize each and every corner of both Generalissimo Franco´s book and Sáenz De Heredia´s film in a frantic search for data which can be degrading and negative to Franco without ever noticing a little bit of light, a little bit of ideals or at least something that is not mean or ridiculous. For most of these people, the great concepts that provide the backbone of the life of a military man - country, honour, sacrifice, ideals, etc. - are hollow and old-fashioned words without any value in these so-called modern times. That´s the characteristic point of view of the "progressive" who don´t know what to do or say when they get to the power or expose their alternative.

Those who think that this is a pro-Nazi film should notice that there isn´t any allusion to Hitler or the Nazism in the whole context of the movie (apart from the fact that they seem to be completely unaware of: Franco clipped Hitler´s wings when the latter tried to introduce his army in Spain). The Council of Spanishness took charge of the production of the picture and entrusted its direction to one of the best film directors in the history of cinema, José Luis Sáenz De Heredia, who was, effectively, cousin of the Founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo De Rivera, but I don´t think this is a discrediting to make a movie, is it? Franco chose him from several directors and let him work with absolute freedom. The film was an outstanding success in those years of remarkable patriotism that followed the end of the Spanish Civil War. The greatest actors of the era were in it: Alfredo Mayo and the extraordinary Ana Mariscal were the leading performers alongside José Nieto, Blanca De Silos, Raúl Cancio and a terrific Julio Rey in the brief but pivotal role of the father.

"Raza" (both the novel and the film) must be placed in their time. And for their time they were what they had to be. The cinematic rubbish perpetrated by Ken Loach and Vicente Aranda ("Land And Freedom" and "Libertarias", respectively), about the heroic anarchist conscripts of the other side, seem much more grievous to me, who, as a war veteran born in 1919, lived that era. The purpose of "Raza" was to explain to the whole Spanish people the real history of a third of the century and many people believed in it because they had lived the history that way. So the film, seen with hindsight, is not anachronistic or ridiculous; it reflects perfectly the ideas and the feelings than made millions of Spaniards vibrate at that time. (Is there anything preposterous in the fact that a military man considers that dying for his country is something beautiful? Do the people of these days have the slightest idea of who the Almogavars were?).

The Churrucas, the family depicted in the film, is not Franco´s real family. The leading male character, José (Alfredo Mayo) is a frustrated sailor and an infantry officer with a brilliant career, but his adventures during the Second Republic and the Civil War don´t have anything to do with Franco himself. The antagonist, Pedro (José Nieto) may have some element that reminds us of Ramón Franco, but it is not a portrait of Franco´s younger brother, who was anything but an intellectual. Anyone who knows accurately Franco´s biography is perfectly aware that this is not an autobiographical work, but a labour of love which must not inspire us with despise but be considered a reliable portrait of a forgotten Spain that nevertheless is a part of historical memory and roots. (By the way: do you think it´s laughable to see how a whole group of monks are murdered by the sea? These things really happened, believe it or not.)

The film, as a work, is magnetic; one of my favourite sequences is that of the front near Bilbao, when Capt. Echeverría (Raúl Cancio) is about to desert to see his wife and children but his brother-in-law, José Churruca, arrives in time to avoid it. And I like very much the scene in which José gets to arrive to the National zone after having been shot and presumed dead (there were more than one of those cases in the war), especially the moment in which we see a beautiful woman dressed as a man, who has had to pose as a male to be able to fight for what she believes in. (I think there is a sexy element in that segment.) And I like very much the scene of Pedro´s sacrifice and any scene Ana Mariscal is in.

If this film had been made in the United States and its action took place during the World War II, it would be considered more or less a masterpiece. But as it was made in Spain during Franco´s regime, it has necessarily to be a turkey. That´s the way it goes!