echanove

A light comedy, in the vein of what would later be 'screwballs', with some specific detail that affects the outcome, which only a few years later, with the approval of the Hays Code, would have been censored.

Although it is a story that we have seen more times since then, the one about the rich girl who, in order to be wanted for herself, pretends to be something else, giving rise to a series of misunderstandings, is seen quite pleasantly, thanks to the good interpretations.

Despite the predictability of the plot and the fact that the characters lack some substance, it contains scenes with a certain magic every time Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea are together. The couple would later make four more films together, to take advantage of that chemistry.

This forgotten Spanish production was seen very little, but it doesn't deserve that void.

Efficiently directed by Francesc Betriu, also unfairly forgotten for me, it adapts the homonymous novel by Juan Marsé, about the return home in 1959, after spending ten years in prison, of the ex-boxer and anarchist guerrilla fighter Jan (Nacho Martínez), who would have ended up mutating into a bank robber in Barcelona in the early post-war years.

During Jan's absence, his brother's widow (Charo López) has become a prostitute to earn a living, while his nephew (Achero Mañas) has grown up longing for his return. His former anarchist companions have taken different paths, some persisting in their ideas and others joining the regime to suck on the boat, while in the Gracia and Guinardó neighborhoods where he spent his youth many things have changed, although everything remains the same. And although for the neighborhood it is a myth. He just wants to be left alone and starts working as a bodyguard for an obscure and wealthy military judge (Eusebio Poncela) who distinguished himself for his ferocity during the years of repression but who, after suffering a car accident, has serious problems with amnesia and mental health.

A plot and setting very much of Marsé's, already present in other of his novels made into movies such as "If they tell you I fell" (Vicente Aranda, 1989) or "El Embrujo de Shanghai" (Fernando Trueba, 2002) but here it moves in the time at the threshold of the 60s and that has more possibilities thanks to the greater length and extension of the six chapters of a miniseries. And the result is very good thanks to the artistic direction of Gil Parrondo, the great work of Betriu reflecting the world of the writer, and a cast in which they are all at a high level.

There is also a juvenile subplot, perfectly integrated into the plot, of whoever carries out the narration. And in which there is an explicit homage to Alan Ladd and "Shane" (George Stevens, 1953) and to the world of the American western, also present on the soundtrack.

A soundtrack, which also includes, among others, songs by Nat King Cole or Paul Anka ("Ansiedad", "Perfidia", "Diana"), the sound that since the country's relative openness to the outside world and the installation of American bases, began to arrive from the other side of the Atlantic.

The recreation of environments by Gil Parrondo -squalid, opulent, more shabby- is prodigious and the truth is that the series is seen non-stop, one chapter after another, with an immense Charo López, a Nacho Martínez whose apparent inexpressiveness He fits the enigma of his character like a glove and a Eusebio Poncela who always more than meets the eye when it comes to bringing forward tortured and somewhat degenerate types, so drunk and returned from everything as prisoners of the greatest anxieties of the soul.

In addition, Assumpta Serna (better than in many of his other films), the great Carlos Lucena, or Juanjo Puigcorbé (this cheeky and cynical man always does well!!) along with others who are not so well known to me are also there. Or as saints of my devotion as Lluis Homar, Ramón Madaula, Ulises Dumont, Martxelo Rubio..., but, I insist, all magnificent. Which is surely also due to the wonderful work of Betriu in directing actors and how careful the entire series must have been from the pre-production phase, as was the case on spanish television at the time.

Brilliant directorial debut by the great Fernando Fernán Gómez in collaboration with Luis María Delgado through this crazy black comedy in which, along with some deaths, there are plenty of insane crazy people.

Almost unknown until recently, when the Spanish Film Library restored it and recovered it on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Fernando, the film anticipates many of the constants of what will later be his best cinema in acid major dramas such as "El Mundo Sigue" (1963) or "El Extraño Viaje" (1964). Although without ever abandoning that tone of comedy so typical of the time in Spain and which is also very present in his filmography, drawing heavily on comedians such as Tono, Mihura, Jardiel or Ramón Gómez de la Serna himself.

The script, half signed by Fernando and Francisco Tomás Comes, adapts with great skill four short stories by Edgar Allan Poe ("The method of Doctor Brea and Professor Pluma", the main one, and the framework for the other three, starring Fernando), Ramón Gómez de la Serna ("La Mona de Imitation"), and the Russian writers Kuprin ("A mistake") and Andréiev ("The crazy doctor"). Without revealing details of the plot, we will say that all of them, in addition to having in common the theme of relationships, touch on the issue of mental health and highlight how thin the line is that separates normality from madness. So often things are not as they seem.

Surprisingly modern and bold for a time when historical dramas or so-called 'white phone comedies' abounded in Spanish cinema, the film is a more than recommendable delight in which black humor invades everything through out these four perfectly intertwined and interrelated stories. Until everything reaches its peak in the delirious sequence of a dinner (in which we will be able to see, among others, a hilarious and very young Camllo José Cela, an acclaimed spanish writer who, decades later, received the Nobel Prize), and which will be followed by a no less crazy epilogue.

Among the actors, Fernando is accompanied by performers as effective as Elvira Quintillá, Antonio Vico, Susana Canales, José María Ladó, Vicente Parra, Margarita Lozano and a very young María Asquerino, among many others such as the journalist and writer Alfredo Marquerie (who plays the man who believes himself to be an olive) or the aforementioned Cela, without anyone from the cast ever being out of tune.

As for the staging, which does not creak at any time and which includes very varied locations in Madrid, it is noteworthy that Fernando breaks the so-called 'fourth wall' on two occasions when talking to the audience. Likewise, the film displays a certain expressionist tone throughout the final part after dinner at the asylum thanks to the use of the sets from the film "Aeropuertp" (1953), a modest drama of crossed stories that Delgado was also filming at the time.

We will never be able to know if the movie had a certain allegorical intention related to the Franco regime, although it seems that Fernando always denied that extreme.

Anyway, it turns out that Fernando's 'first feature' had been this little movie to discover, and that it barely had distribution in its day, and hardly anyone had heard about it.

And it is very grateful that the Film Library has carried out its recovery.