Placido

Venerable Spanish director Luis García Berlanga's hyperbolically frenetic social satire PLACIDO is an Oscar nominee for BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM and Palme d'or contestant, and guilefully circumvents the censor of Franco's government by subsuming his trenchant sideswipes into the pandemonium of a farcical dynamo.

The story takes place exclusively on the day before Christmas, in a small Spanish town, to celebrate the festival, each of the wealthy families will invite one poor citizen to each one's Christmas Eve dinner, to be a Good Samaritan for one day, (but even that, would be too big a challenge for many of them, Berlanga makes sure that the acerbic irony doesn't lose itself in the swamp of shameless plugging) . And Placido (comedian Cassen in his film debut) is an unassuming man who must pay his bill before midnight, otherwise he will lose his motor-vehicle (and his family stays in the public lavatory because they cannot afford the rent). He is hired by Gabino Quintanilla (Vázquez, a masterful nexus in the convoluted morass), the photographer of the so-called "set a poor man at your table" charity event, to participate the Christmas parade in the afternoon with his vehicle, after he picks up a band of film stars in the train stations, who will participate in the charity auction afterwards.

Rambunctious from A to Z, this comedy distinguishes itself as an interminably garrulous talkie, which sets a built-in hindrance to those subtitle-dependent first-time viewers, it could be an excruciatingly daunting experience since the devil is in the details, and it is plain physically impossible to get on board with all comings and goings at that speed. The charity plugging continues with an effervescent flurry of episodes where bourgeois hypocrisy, nagging nuisances, contemptible unkindness inexorably career through the night with Placido persistently tailing behind to make both ends meet.

A plethora of named Spanish actors appears on the roster to enliven the burlesque merry-go- round, which predominantly caters for its home-turf demography who can trace a piquant whiff of self-referentiality out of its rowdy mockery, and also accentuates Berlanga's rhythmic legerdemain to affix a catenation of skits scene to scene in a non-stop fashion, however, in the eyes of an outsider, its efficacy is potently eclipsed by his tangibly more mordant social critique THE EXECUTIONER (1963).

This was the fifth Berlanga outing I have checked out after CALABUCH (1956), the compendium THREE FABLES OF LOVE (1962), his masterpiece NOT ON YOUR LIFE (1963) and LIFE SIZE (1974; which I only watched in a trimmed version) – however, I also own WELCOME, MR. MARSHALL! in my collection.

The film under review is a satire about a small-town's attempt to increase its business by inviting movie stars over for their Christmas parade, as well as displaying its social conscience by having elderly locals foisted as dinner guests upon its leading citizens. Both moves are disastrous as, in the first, only second-rate actors turn up.while the aged unsurprisingly prove a burden on the hosts too busy with their own varied agendas! The title figure, then, is an ordinary fellow trying to make ends meet in order to sustain a large (and invariably bickering) family.

As can be gleaned from the above premise, the movie features such an extensive cast of characters as to resolve itself in an endless sea of chatter - tiring the viewer out trying to keep up with the large but unevenly placed English subtitles! This is not to say that the end result is not enjoyable throughout: indeed, there are a number of laugh-out-loud moments along the way - notably, a disgruntled veteran thespian complaining that he was overlooked in the luncheon assignations and being told by the organizer that he might be better off joining the ranks of the aged instead!; one of the latter suffers a heart attack and, discovered to be "living in sin" by the pious owners with a woman being feasted in another household, it is decided that they marry before the man expires (which he does soon after the ceremony, held despite his sudden reluctance to take the woman for his wife!).

The eventual winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, for which this was nominated, was Sweden's THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY; the other candidates were three obscure entries from Denmark, Japan and Mexico (albeit featuring Japanese star Toshiro Mifune!); for the record, among those unsuccessfully submitted for this category were SUMMER SKIN (Argentina - which I own but is unwatched so far), LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (France) and LA NOTTE (Italy). While, as I said, PLACIDO has undeniable merit, it does come across as rather lightweight in this company (for what it is worth, the film is included - indeed, ranked quite highly - in the "Wonders In The Dark" all-time top 3,000 movies list) and was voted fourth best Spanish film by industry insiders and critics in a 1996 Spanish cinema centenary poll(!)...which makes one wonder what the outcome would have been had Luis Bunuel's scandalous homecoming effort i.e. VIRIDIANA (bestowed with the Palme D'Or at Cannes) been entered in the Oscars race in its place! Interestingly enough, PLACIDO did eventually come up against Bunuel's subsequent film THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962) at the Cannes Film Festival, but they were both defeated by Brazil's THE GIVEN WORD aka KEEPER OF PROMISES (1962).

Cassen's family lives in a lavatory because they are poor. All he owns is a three-wheel truck that he earns a meager living with. He has to pay a bill tonight or lose it, and no one is interested in telling him precisely how much he owes or collecting it because it is Christmas Eve. Everyone is more intent on the local "Win an evening with a movie star" pageant, or making sure they get a good-looking poor person to eat Christmas diner with them, because that's a public charity campaign that Franco is pushing at the moment.

Luis García Berlanga's film is about a Spain where the well-to-do care only about appearances, and while they may attempt to perform acts of charity, they fail to accomplish anything worthwhile because there is no charity in their hearts. It's a very large cast that roams through a dozen households, but always returns to Cassen who's promised this ad that an imposed on, and will, the audience becomes aware, will come aay with nothing, not even a Christmas dinner, because the upper class has to go to midnight mass. It's a wry and ultimately despairing look at Franco's Spain.

My grandmom is 90 years old now. when she was giving presents for christmas she wanted always to give gifts to a lot of people beyond the close family. for example to people from the portuguese village where she lived with my grandfather and my father for a lot of years (even though she wasn't born there she lived there a long time). Usually the gifts for those people were merely things that could be bought for one or two euros. I used to ask her: "why do you buy those gifts, there just cheap stuff they don't care and need". the answer used to be something like this: "poor them they wouldn't know, for them is very big already!" - a table cloth for two euros is not important for anyone sorry. at the end of the day it was never about giving them gifts. but it was because plus they already had that for other christmases. she wanted to feel better with herself thinking how good of a person she was. she still thinks now a days she's humble and a one of the most generous people in the globe: i can't complain, but i would tell you that i always doubt that.

"placido" is pretty much a film about that: high or middle high class people receiving poor citizens in their homes for christmas eve. they don't like them, they don't want them, they treat better their dogs than them. one getting a cold, a disease or getting drunk is a tragedy: not because someone got a disease but because that could expose the facade they built: the idea they're very generous and humble and everyone will go to heaven because of that.

it's never from the heart. it's never from good intentions with this film. it's always for other people to see how good they are. my grandmom did this in a smaller scale true: but this is a exaggeration of reality. the ideia you'll have a parade in the middle of the cold where poor people can get sick, but they're there to applaud stars from madrid beause they need to please the event organizers is the beggining of this crazy journey where placido just wants to pay the installment of his motorbike.

so yeah it's always about the organizers policing each other, checking if everyone "is good". is kinda a foucalt's panopticon of charity: eveyone check if everyone is doing the good, is having a poor peasant in their house. the peasants: they can even die that the tragedy is always for the people who hold them for the night. they're just props, they're pawns not people. they're instruments that make the others not only feel better but mostly feel they won't be judged by anyone else. poor people as instruments to control the high class, to make them feel good about themselves even if at the end of the dinner they go back to their cold houses or even the street.

what happens inside the doors is a different story. and berlanga shows this as a master: the scenes are always vivid, full of people talking, they're quick and witty, don't let anyone breathe. i laughed my ass off a lot of the time just seing the absurd and relating to this, because in portugal things weren't that different. heck in some places you'll probably still find people like this. arrested development, the tv show, was a bit like this on the best of its times: people just talking above each other, fully of different type of conversations happening at the same time. sometimes we have three conversarions or four in the same scene.

the events taking place are one more ludicrous than the other. they just continue to mount, and placido's problem just grows and grows and grows because people are so worried in their own bubbles to feel themselves better than they couldn't care less when a low class citizen as a problem. the hypocrisy of a society that wanted allways to appear good, not to be good. poors are just the losers they feel they need to help because they might be criticized if they don't. but at the end of the day is more important to sell cooking pots, to marry people "living in sin" and to feed your dog.

at the end of the day this is a great rich comedy that wants to criticize spanish society. it works on both sides. but even if you have zero context about this, it's still a work of genious. like arrested development. it's a great film, one of the best comedies i've ever seen. after enjoying a lot bienvenido mr marshall, watching placido makes me really think berlanga is a genious. the comedy tone is perfect. the criticism also. it has minor problems? yes. but it's so well made and conceived that laughing out loud and applauding is the only thing i can do. if you know or understand a bit of spanish watch this by any means necessary. if you don', you'll have more problems on understanding but...watch it too... it's an amazing movie.

As is almost always the case with the films of Berlanga, this film is a comedy on the surface, which hides a very hard and crude criticism of the situation of Spanish society during the dictatorship. In those years, Spanish filmmakers couldn't speak freely and openly about the dismal state of their country, so they had to pass their message to the audience between the lines. Berlanga was a master at doing this, and Plácido is one of his finest examples. The abysmal differences that existed between the very poor (the majority of the population at the time) and the very rich, who treated the rest with utter contempt and ridiculous condescency, is portrayed with such strength that it can't leave anyone indifferent. But it is done in the form of a comedy, and a very funny one, full of absurd situations and memorable dialogues, but also a very black one, with some scenes, especially near the end of the movie, which are on the edge of the truly macabre. A true masterpiece from one of the greatest Spanish directors.