Los santos inocentes

In this film, you can see a important part of the recent history of my great country. This film is about the life in a big "cortijo" after civil war in 50-60´S, you can see the lives between rich people, like "señorito Ivan", and poor, like "Paco el Bajo", and how are the relations between this kind of people,they are near to the slavery. Besides, you can see poverty´s ravage, and the many different kind of familiar´s drama.

The DVD I received from Corte Ingles includes a trailer for "Boda de Sangre" (Lorca) and this film is similar in spirit, but with even greater tension. This story is reminiscent of Cela's "Familia Duarte", and indeed the DVD includes a trailer to Cela's "Colmena" also, though I haven't seen that film.

I agree with the strong evaluations and comments of other viewers. I'll add that I enjoyed the handling of time in the film, through intermittent flashbacks and juxtapositions of modern elements - e.g., the automobiles driven by the landowners - with the nearly stone-age level of the protagonist family.

Yet for me, the level of dramatic tension became, frankly, too great to bear. I don't know how I could have handled it in a theater. Given I had mouse control, I interrupted it a few times for relief. Then, about two-thirds through, I forwarded the film to see the end. There are occasions when social realism can produce a tale of social horror harder to watch and bear than anything Hollywood's chainsaw boys ever dreamed of.

The acting and cinematography are excellent. I can imagine viewers trying to laugh at Azarias' (Francisco Rabal) rustic charm. His performance is unforgettable - especially as he, like a hand of fate (azar) delivers the much-needed catharsis near the end - but I, and I presume most, will surely view him as a charming and touching victim, fleeing reality to the extent his old age permits - until a certain cruel act drives him to action.

I would have preferred a balancing of the harshness of this film with more moments of beauty to serve as relief, as in the French Manon (e.g., Jean de Florette) films. But here, the actual social conditions were far harsher - "epoca negra" stuff at its worst - and I presume that to add such relief would have been untrue to history. For me, Familia Duarte and Boda de Sangre sufficed.

I will conclude in recommending some of Delibes' recent works. He has a wonderful sense of humor and a great versatility of style that enables him to relate even everyday events in the most charming and entertaining way. It's hard to believe that the same man who wrote Santos Inocentes also wrote "Diario de un Jubilado" and "Mis Amigas las Truchas" or "Las Perdices de Domingo". And hard to believe how far Spain and Europe have come.

This film will shake you to the bottom. It is truly unusual to come across a movie where deep sociological, psychological and historical issues are dealt with so soberly. This movie shows quietly all the horror and brutality of rural (feudal) life in southern Spain during the hard years of the Franco dictatorship. This film, and the novel it is based on (by M. Delibes) pays humble homage to the history of millions who were silently oppressed by the class of rural landowners that supported Franco. Now, what performances by Juan Diego, Alfredo Landa and Paco Rabal. I really recommend it to anyone interested in realist art.

If I would believe in a god who created man as his equal, Mario Camus would be one of the first people to come in mind to make me understand how powerful that god must be. 'Los santos inocentes' is a masterpiece of European cinema. The movie brings us back to times in Spain where most people were nothing more than property of the few rich. The 'master' even had the right to be the one to make the daughters of his serfs lose their virginity. A man and wife living such a cruel life, with trouble enough of their own, still open up their house for the wife's brother Azarias (Francisco Rabal), when he -at old age- loses his job. And Rabal gives us a performance of simplicity and joy that we will never ever forget. Although I've heard of people who found it difficult to see the beauty through all the misery, to me this is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Possibly also the very best.

The last twenty five years of Spanish filmography have produced a number of titles which have indulged in sociological themes, mostly using the years of the Franco Régime as a background when not a mere scapegoat. El Sur (Victor Erice)(qv), Las Ratas (Giménez Rico)(qv), Las Bicicletas son para el Verano (Jaime Chávarri) as well as several by the now deceased Pilar Miró, come to mind. But perhaps none reach the powerful endorsement achieved in Los Santos Inocentes, carefully and predictably directed by Mario Camus. Faithfully transferred from the book by Miguel Delibes, also author of Las Ratas, as well as singularly impressive narratives such as Cinco Horas con Mario, a true tour de force in contemporary literature, and the intensely lyrical and moving El Camino, Camus inspired the principal actors - Paco Rabal, Alfredo Landa and Terele Pávez - into producing some memorable scenes.

Scenes of illiterate peasants obeying their master, landowner, insensible to everything except his passion for hunting; peasants who were so hugely grateful for the handful of pennies so compassionately handed out by the rich duchess; peasants who grovelled in the filth of their mean shack and could barely write their own names. Spain: about 1962 if the registration number of the big black Mercedes is anything to go by. Spain, in the region called Extremadura, which even today is the poorest part of the country. Spain, governed by a dictator who himself was extremely uncultured.

Camus, armed with the simple but sincere exposition in Delibes' novel, manages to show this plight, but without the tremendism so frequent in Spanish books or films; without any soured feelings, but dispassionately, like a surgeon operating for the five hundredth time on gall-stones. The story was there to be told and not sympathized over. Not for the pop-corn eating public, more for the discerning cinema-goer who can give what the film demands: attention to details. The incision is precise, exact, giving greater credibility to this little masterpiece.