"Balada Triste de Trompeta" Title Sequence from David Guaita on Vimeo.
Balada triste de trompeta is one of the films that I'm hoping to write a longer piece about. At the moment, however, I have become slightly distracted by the opening credits, which manage to condense around forty years of Spanish history into just over two minutes. They are designed by David Guaita (incidentally, I think that all of the reviews I've read mention the opening credits in glowing terms, but none of them actually mention the name of the designer), and you can read an interview with him (in English) about the process of making the sequence on his blog.
I think that he’s right that the sequence probably has more impact for a Spanish person, but even as a non-Spanish person who does not recognise every individual included (I’ve actually worked backwards by making a list of key figures in the regime and then googling them to find out what they looked like, and I also looked at the list of people thanked by Álex de la Iglesia in the end credits to put a few more names to (the non-political) faces), the combination of the music with the rhythm of the cuts and the intercutting with icons of horror cinema gives a sense of deep foreboding.
When I’ve got a bit more time, I’ll write a detailed piece about it because I think that these two-and-a-bit minutes are a mini-masterpiece of filmmaking.
