Guillermo del Toro and Contemporary Spanish Cinema
Guillermo del Toro has stated many times that The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) are brother-sister companions. These two films constitute del Toro’s only Mexican-Spanish co-productions, with children as the main protagonists and set in Spain (at the end of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and in Franco-fascist Spain of the 1940s, respectively). With their imaginative narratives, political undertones, and technical innovations, these two films have been the subject of numerous essays and articles that tease out how they function simultaneously as repressed historical memories, fairy tales, gothic stories, and variations of the horror genre. But another pairing between one of del Toro’s above-mentioned films and a Spanish film produced by del Toro can also tease out themes of trauma, how secrets of the past impact the present, childhood and/in violence, and social rites of passage in an interesting way: The Devil’s Backbone and Juan Antonio Bayona’s debut feature The Orphanage. In these two films, the intimate connection between play and violence amongst children, or put another way, the fine line that separates play and violence, is the seed from which such themes develop. The Devil’s Backbone is set at the tail end of the Spanish Civil War, in an orphanage in the middle of the remote Spanish countryside. It deals with a boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve), his experiences of being left at the orphanage, and his gradual discovery of the history that the place has witnessed in the midst of the war. This history involves the death of Santi, one of the orphans, another of the orphans’ possible involvement in his death, and Santi’s ghost wandering at the orphanage amongst the boys. The Orphanage, produced in part by del Toro, tells of married couple Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and Laura (Belén Rueda) and their adopted son Simón (Roger Príncep) moving into what once had been the orphanage where Laura had lived before being adopted herself. Simón disappears without a trace and Laura suspects a phantasmal hand behind his disappearance. A former caretaker at the orphanage then appears at Laura’s doorstep, which leads her to confront the orphanage’s past of the deaths of several children and its possible relation to her son’s disappearance. The Liminal and the Ritual The delicate transition from (childhood) play to violence and its consequences shapes the kind of worlds that The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage present, the kind of characters that populate them, and the series of events that occur to the characters. The traumatic consequences of this transition are the deaths of children, in the large-scale context of war and the small-scale context of a family, respectively. Each film is about unearthing the past that lead to such deaths. Inversely, each film is about scrutinising the present that maintains this past a secret and known only to the very few. The ghostly element comes in to visualise the traumatic pasts in question and their ongoing resonance in the present. Yet the child ghosts that are such an important element in both of these films do not serve to scare or shock. Rather, they reflect back, or recall, to the world of the living the actual horror that lies in humans, young and old, regarding war or discrimination. Both of these films’ worlds are therefore marked by liminality, or the in-betweenness marking the before and after of change: between childhood and adulthood (age), play and violence (social), past and present (temporal), hidden and known (status), ghost and flesh (corporeal). Significantly, ‘liminality’ in anthropological terms is the intermediate stage of a rite of passage. The child ghosts in these two films have adult counterparts that embody this quality. These adult counterparts have a personal association with the orphanage that positions them in that liminal space between childhood and adulthood. In The Devil’s Backbone, that link is Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), who spent fifteen years of his life at the orphanage (Figures 1-2). Though he hated his time at the orphanage and wants no one from the outside world to find out that he had lived there, he has returned to work at the site as the groundskeeper to steal the gold hidden at the orphanage. The kind of man that he has become (a distillation of a fascist, stopping at nothing to get what he thinks is due him, from children and adults, men and women, alike) is related directly to his childhood experiences of abandonment. In The Orphanage, that link is Laura, who was once a resident at the orphanage that she and her husband have now made their home (Figures 3-4). Unlike Jacinto, Laura is more at peace with her (brief) time spent at the orphanage: she and her husband have not only bought the former orphanage as their home, but they also want to use part of it to house and care for disabled children. The kind of experiences that she suffers in the film (her son’s disappearance and presence of ghosts in the home) is related directly to her childhood friendships at the orphanage. Both of these adults at the films’ conclusions enact a reverse rite of passage that brings them back to their childhood, though under differing circumstances and degrees.
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The Gothic and the Fairy Tale
The liminal state in a rite of passage is often marked by physical isolation, even invisibility, in relation to society. This element of isolation and invisibility from society is perhaps most expressed in the Australian Aboriginal ritual of the walkabout, a journey through the wilderness undertaken by a male adolescent. The walkabout can last up to half a year, after which the adolescent returns to society as a changed person. The element of isolation and invisibility in The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage manifests itself in both films through a singular setting: an orphanage, in the middle of the countryside and by the seaside, respectively (Figures 5-6).
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In The Devil’s Backbone, after Carlos is left at the orphanage with no explanation, his entry into its world involves multiple initiation rites that thrust him (and his new friends) into premature adulthood. During his first night at the orphanage, his brief encounters with Santi’s ghost and his entry down in the cellar where Santi’s ghost mainly resides act as initiation rites to be accepted by the other boys. Later in the film, his place among the boys fully accepted and the hidden past of Santi’s death revealed by one of them, Jaime (Íñigo Garces), together they transform the cellar into a place of collective struggle against the fascistic Jacinto. In The Orphanage, in his own way Simón also undergoes a rite of passage. In fact, his rite of passage is a lot more accelerated than Carlos. Through the ghosts of Tomás and of Laura’s childhood friends (who are never seen on screen), Simón learns very quickly of his adopted status and his mortality, secrets that Laura and her husband were keeping from him. Significantly, the singular setting in both films is also a mark of gothic fiction, as the container of a secret, sometimes a treasure, and the site of violence and traumatic past that gives birth to the secret and the narrative drive to unearth it. More specifically, in gothic fiction, underground structures such as cellars, catacombs, caves, and the like have particular resonance. Architecturally and spatially, these underground structures bring together the plot points of secrets, treasure(s), unknown traumatic pasts, and even ghosts. Both The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage are marked not only by their sole isolated settings, but also variations of subterranean spaces. In The Devil’s Backbone, it is the cooking area with a hearth, which is not only where the safe storing the gold is hidden but also the entryway to the cavernous cellar where Santi’s ghost dwells (Figures 7-8). This cavernous cellar was, in fact, the site of Santi’s death. In The Orphanage, it is the house’s outdoor shed where Laura sees the one who killed her childhood friends at the orphanage without knowing it early in the film. But it is also the cave by the seaside where Simón first meets the ghost of Tomás, whom Laura gradually learns was a deformed boy whose mother Benigna (Montserrat Carulla) worked at the orphanage and had hidden him from her colleagues (Figures 9-11). While playing with Laura’s friends, who were hounding him to take off the paper bag that served as his mask, Tomás died. Lastly, it is also the house’s basement, whose secret entryway is a door inside a closet and where Laura eventually finds not only her son but also Tomás’ past (Figures 12-13).
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Tempering both of these films’ gothic fiction elements is their fairy tale aspect. Children at the center of the narratives constitutes but one manifestation of this fairy tale aspect. Related to children protagonists is the thematic of abandonment, encapsulated by the very purpose of an orphanage, where Carlos ends up in The Devil’s Backbone and where Laura and Simón remain, despite their adopted family ties. The singular, far-flung setting of the orphanage in both films echoes this theme of abandonment. Another manifestation of the fairy tale aspect comes in the form of objects. In particular, keys in both a literal and figurative sense of enabling the crossing of thresholds are prominent in the two films (Figures 14-17). The notion of crossing thresholds links back to the liminality of these microcosms, between past and present, ghost and human, child and adult, play and violence. Thus, keys denote not just keys or door knobs to open doors or safes but also old photographs to access the past. In The Devil’s Backbone, connecting these literal and figurative keys is Jacinto. He surreptitiously steals the keys from Carmen (Marisa Paredes), the orphanage’s head administrator and teacher, one at a time to find the one that would unlock the safe containing the gold. He also has the keys to the cooking area whose cellar is the site of Santi’s death. And towards the film’s conclusion, he discovers the old photographs of himself as a baby and boy, with his parents, constituting a rare moment of introspection on his part. This moment is a pause in his role as the fairy tale ogre who towers above the children and menaces them because he knows no other way to express himself. At the end of the film in his final confrontation with Carlos and the other boys, the film compares him to the extinct woolly mammoth, about which the boys learn in a lesson with Carmen in the middle of the film. In The Orphanage, connecting the literal and figurative keys is Simón. Following his encounter with the ghost of Tomás in the cave, he performs a very fairy tale-esque gesture of leaving a trail of shells from the cave to his house for Tomás to follow; in this way, the shells serve as a variation of a key to access a space (Figures 18-19). Subsequently, a game of pursuing object-related clues (or keys) begins at the house, which leads Simón to unlock literally and figuratively the knowledge of his adoption and illness. When he disappears, he becomes a kind of key himself for Laura to access the secret past involving Tomás, his death, and those of Laura’s friends at the orphanage.
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Definitions of a Ghost
As mentioned earlier, more than anything, the child ghosts in The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage reflect back, or recall, to the world of the living the actual horror that lies in humans, as opposed to serving as mere scare or shock tactics. We return to the thematic realm of the liminal and the ritual, of childhood and adulthood, ghosts and bodies, play and violence. Santi’s ghost in The Devil’s Backbone and the ghosts of Tomás and Laura’s childhood friends in The Orphanage are products of human actions instead of something fantastical. At the same time, these films are careful to avoid demonising the human element that ends up being much more horrific than the ghosts: Jacinto and to a lesser extent Jaime in The Devil’s Backbone and Tomás’ mother Benigna and to a lesser extent Laura’s childhood friends.
Through the vehicle of ghosts, these two films enact encounters with the traumatic, the horrific, the flawed, and the unknown, in other words, for Carlos in The Devil’s Backbone and Laura in The Orphanage. These encounters with the more melancholy and unsettling, darker, and uglier facets of life constitute rites of passage in their own way. When initially confronted by the notion of ghosts, both Carlos and Laura recoil from or deny them, based on their seeming incomprehensibility. In doing so, they recoil from or deny the actual pasts, marginalised and hidden, to which they refer. Yet in the course of the films, both Carlos and Laura, among others, learn to face what they do not know or understand. This process of facing the incomprehensible and therefore fearful is made literal with the ghosts in both films. Taken further, in the context of the ritualistic, liminal, and confrontational, The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage’s encounters with ghosts chart the process of not only facing the incomprehensible and fearful but also realising one’s connection to it, on a humanistic level.
Both films ponder definitions of the ghost: The Devil’s Backbone in its prologue and The Orphanage midway through the narrative. Both films ask, plainly, ‘What is a ghost?’ In so doing and through their definitions, they emphasise the characters’ encounters with the ghosts as something beyond the function of scaring audiences and towards something like ethical action and responsibility, in keeping with the idea of one’s connection to the incomprehensible and fearful, on a humanistic level:
The Devil’s Backbone: ‘A tragedy doomed to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion, suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph.’
The Orphanage: ‘When something terrible happens, sometimes it leaves a trace, a wound that acts as a knot between two time lines. It’s like an echo repeated over and over, waiting to be heard. Like a scar or a pinch that begs for a caress to relieve it.'
Each film’s definition of a ghost shares characteristics with the other: repetition; something between living and dead, or past and present; and a physical pain with an indexical counterpart that is not always seen but asking to be acknowledged. In their philosophical definitions of a ghost, these two films locate themselves in a nearly Levinasian realm of face-to-face encounter, echoed literally by Carlos’ meeting Santi’s ghost in The Devil’s Backbone (Figures 20-22) and more figuratively by Laura playing along with the ghosts of Tomás and her childhood friends (Figure 23).
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In his 1984 essay ‘Ethics as First Philosophy,’ Levinas writes,
‘A responsibility that goes beyond what I may or may not have done to
the Other or whatever acts I may or may not have committed, as if I were devoted
to the other man before being devoted to myself. Or more exactly, as if I had to
answer for the other’s death even before being. A guiltless responsibility,
whereby I am none the less open to an accusation of which no alibi, spatial or
temporal, could clear me. It is as if the other established a relationship or a
relationship were established whose whole intensity consists in not presupposing
the idea of community. A responsibility stemming from a time before my
freedom – before my (moi) beginning, before any present. A fraternity existing
in extreme separation. Before, but in what past? Not in the time preceding the
present, in which I might have contracted any commitments’ (83-84, The
Strikingly, in his audio commentary to the 2013 Criterion DVD of The Devil’s Backbone, del Toro states along similar lines about the gothic romance, which can also apply The Orphanage:
‘It’s the only genre that teaches us to understand the otherness. At its best,
it is probably the most humanistic genre there is, because by being fascinated
by [and] by being sort of in love with the monsters, we are exercising, in the
abstract, the most beautiful form of tolerance: a desire to understand the
other […], as opposed to trying to destroy it and wipe it from the face of the
earth.’
Rowena Santos Aquino is a Lecturer in the Department of Film and Electronic Arts at California State University, Long Beach. You can find her on twitter, @FilmStillLives.
I thought that I'd start my consideration of 2013 by looking at the Spanish films from the past year that I haven't managed to see yet. I usually choose ten films, but in the last few months a host of films have piqued my interest. I've deliberately avoided choosing films that I mentioned at the start of the year (with one exception) and also those 2013 films that I've already acquired on DVD but haven't watched yet (which include Ayer no termina nunca (dir. Isabel Coixet), A puerta fría (dir. Xavi Puebla), Alacrán enamorado (dir. Santiago A. Zannou), and Barcelona nit d'estiu (dir. Dani de la Orden)). As usual, titles that appear in square brackets are my translation when there doesn't appear to be an official English language title. I've also indicated if a trailer lacks subtitles (several of them are wordless, so I've only said ‘no subtitles’ if dialogue is included).
15 años y un día / 15 Years and One Day (dir. Gracia Querejeta) Drama. Trailer (no subtitles). From the synopsis, this doesn't really sound like anything out of the ordinary - a mother (Maribel Verdú) sends her delinquent son (Arón Piquer) to stay with his ex-miltary grandfather (Tito Valverde) in the hope of straightening him out. I'm guessing that it's a 'learning experience' for everyone. It's on this list because it's Spain's entry for the Foreign Language category at the Oscars - so I'm a bit curious about it (also curious to see if this maintains the trend of being the film nominated by the Spanish Academy to represent Spain, but ending up not being the one they award Best Film at the Goyas - this always strikes me as being similar to end of year lists where people nominate films for the impression they give of themselves rather than what they actually like. The 'tasteful' film goes into consideration for the Oscars, but the actual 'favourite' wins the Goya. Sometimes.).
I've deliberately avoided replicating my 'Forthcoming Spanish Films in 2013' list from last January, but of the films on that list this one has moved to the top of the pile. Manuel Martín Cuenca's La mitad de Óscar / Half of Oscar was in my end of year top 5 in 2011 and it sounds as if he has again created a window into the life of a taciturn man (here played by Antonio de la Torre) whose solitary existence is disturbed by the arrival of a woman who brings with her echoes of the past. La mitad de Óscar seemed to me to partly be a study in loneliness, or how our loneliness becomes apparent to us when it is thrown into relief by the company of others - the trailer for Caníbal suggests something similar, but it is a good exercise in revealing atmosphere rather than plot (and I am deliberately going in as blind as possible). I also hope to catch up with the director's earlier film, La flaqueza del bolchevique / The Weakness of the Bolshevik (2002).
Con la pata quebrada / Barefoot in the Kitchen (dir. Diego Galán)
Documentary.
A history of how women have been portrayed onscreen in Spanish cinema (utilising clips from more than 150 films from the 1930s onwards), and by extension (one would imagine) revealing something of their changing status within the country itself. Given that it is co-produced by El Deseo, I'm hopeful that it will make an appearance on DVD at some point.
El futuro / [The Future] (dir. Luis López Carrasco)
A house party in 1982, in the aftermath of the PSOE's historic general election victory. This hasn't acquired distribution in Spain yet, but has been playing on the festival circuit to some acclaim (see Michael Pattison's guest post about SEFF) and has been championed by several Spanish film publications as being part of the burgeoning 'otro cine español' (as have several other films on this list). I'm hoping that it will either reach a VOD platform or a UK festival (that I actually manage to get to!).
Gente en sitios / People in Places (dir. Juan Cavestany)
Comedy. Cast: nearly every actor currently working in Spain. Seriously.
A fragmented, but collective, take on the country and its people at this time of economic crisis - generally getting a raw deal at the hands of the ruling classes. If ever a situation cried out for a touch of cinematic esperpento (a jet-black humour characterised by a grotesque distortion of reality with the intent of critiquing society), then it is surely that which Spain is currently undergoing (although how much reality actually needs to be distorted in order to make it grotesque at the moment is open to debate). By all accounts it is a very funny film, but also more political than it may appear at first glance.
The feature debut of editor (Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012) is among his credits) Fernando Franco, La herida follows ambulance worker Ana (Maria Álvarez) who (unbeknownst to her) suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder (characterised by extreme swings in emotion and self-destructive behaviour). That's not really a 'plot' and my understanding is that it's more of a character study than a narrative, which means that it will stand or fall on Álvarez's performance - she has won several awards for the film, including 'Best Actress' at San Sebastián - 2013 has been a good year for female performance in cinema generally, so I'd like to catch up with the one that has stood out in Spanish cinema.
Història de la meva mort / Story of My Death (dir. Albert Serra)
Drama.
Another veteran of the festival circuit (winning the Golden Leopard in Locarno) and another film yet to be released in Spain (it has only played the Filmoteca de Catalunya so far, although rumour has it that it will get a cinema release in early 2014). It is one of only two 'Spanish' films in Sight & Sound's top 30 of 2013 poll (the other being Blancanieves - and in the battle of mythical figures, Dracula and Casanova rank higher than Snow White in this instance) and, while the film has not won favour in all quarters (and Serra's self-aggrandisement can be rather abrasive), it has cropped up often enough for me to think that I should try to see it if the opportunity presents itself.
Los ilusos / The Wishful Thinkers (dir. Jonás Trueba)
Described as an 'intermission film', Los ilusos seems to be about in-between spaces - it follows a filmmaker in between films, passing the time with friends and loved ones, and his (and their) exploration of the spaces of Madrid. I don't know if Trueba has been highlighting issues surrounding distribution and exhibition in Spain, but there is only one copy of the film and he has been accompanying it on its travels - and it is another film that has received attention for its low budget (it was filmed over several months as and when people were available to work on it). This seems markedly different to his previous film, Todas las canciones hablan de mí / All the Songs Are About Me (another former 2011 favourite of mine) and I'm eager to see where Trueba is heading.
Two people (Aura Garrido and Javier Pereira - referred to simply as 'Her' and 'Him' in the credits) meet at a party, they spend the night together, but the next morning the game of seduction takes on a darker psychological hue. Both actors have been praised for their performances, with Garrido (who also stars in Los ilusos and is one of my 'faces to watch') picking up several awards. I've avoided reading too much beyond the initial synopsis.
Todas las mujeres / [All the Women] (dir. Mariano Barroso)
Originally a 6 part TV series from 2010 in which veterinarian Nacho (Eduard Fernández) interacted with a different woman who signified something important in his life (his wife, his lover, an ex-girlfriend, his mother, his sister-in-law, and his psychologist) in each episode, the film reworks this into a tight ensemble piece (with all of the same cast - Michelle Jenner, Marta Larralde, Petra Martínez, María Morales, Nathalie Poza, Lucía Quintana) without an ounce of fat on it. Fernández falls into that category of actors I would watch reciting the phone book, but the reviews suggest that the women match him.
Tots volem el millor per a ella / Puzzlement (dir. Mar Coll)
[Note: a literal translation of the title would be We All Want What's Best For Her - the film is also known by its castilian Spanish title, Todos queremos lo mejor para ella]. Geni (Nora Navas) is recovering from a traffic accident, but as she does so she finds that her old life holds little attraction for her despite the encouragement of those around her for her to return to 'normal'. As her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, she can think of only one thing: escape. This is a case of the combination of director and actress attracting my attention - I still haven't seen Mar Coll's directorial debut, Tres dies amb la familia / Three Days with the Family, for which she won Best New Director at the Goyas in 2010, but she seems to be quietly carving out her own space for herself. I saw Nora Navas for the first time in Pa negre and she really impressed me there - this looks like a role she could have some fun with.
Tres bodas de más / Three Many Weddings (dir. Javier Ruiz Caldera)
Low budget festival bait may be something of a trend in this list but that doesn't mean that I haven't had my eye on the more commercial end of the market as well (several of the films I had on my January list, such as Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (dir. Álex de la Iglesia) and La gran familia española (dir. Daniel Sánchez Arévalo), fall into that category - I'm waiting for them to appear on DVD). Tres bodas de más arrived in Spanish cinemas in early December (having premiered at Venice as the closing film), just in time to give the Spanish box office some much-needed oomph. The basic set-up is that Ruth (Inma Cuesta) has the misfortune to be invited to not one but three of her exes' weddings in the space of one month - what ensues has been described as Howard Hawks meets the Farrelly Brothers, which sounds...an unlikely combination, but I've also seen Cuesta's performance described more than once as a gender reversal of the Cary Grant-as-nerd roles (Ruth is a marine biologist and her nerdishness is signalled via the international shorthand of Very Large Glasses). Cuesta has the comic chops to be very funny and Javier Ruiz Caldera's Promoción fantasma / Ghost Graduation is a sweet-natured film that seemed to actually like its characters rather than simply set out to ritually humiliate them, so fingers crossed for this one (although I will admit that finally seeing the trailer while writing this post has dampened my enthusiasm somewhat). Bonus: Rossy de Palma plays Ruth's mother.
Those are the films that I'm particularly looking to catch up with, and each seems to have occupied a significant place in the landscape of Spanish cinema in 2013, but there are many others in the mix (not to mention the numerous 2012 titles I've yet to get hold of). Several of the films mentioned above are due to arrive at Filmin in the first quarter of 2014, so they should make a return appearance here in the coming months.
My contribution to Shadowplay's Late Film Blogathon, in which I should be discussing Luz de domingo, but mainly focus on the career of Alfredo Landa because I really disliked the film.
Alfredo Landa, 1933 - 2013
In the introduction to the edited collection British Stars and Stardom, Bruce Babington states that indigenous stars:
'[...] give things to home audiences that Hollywood luminaries cannot - reflections on the known and close at hand, typologies of the contingent, intimate dramatisations of local myths and realities - which, when they fit into Hollywood's categories, make the performers who embody them world stars, while others remain local stars - but no less meaningful for that.' (2001: 10)
It has often struck me that while there is a certain amount of pride manifested when one of 'our own' makes it in Hollywood (they're ours! we spotted their potential first!), often those who remain geographically closer are regarded with greater affection; they're more clearly marked as belonging (exclusively) to us and we can pat ourselves on the back for having recognised a talent that is (we think) under-appreciated elsewhere. [Possibly it's only the British who have this sense of smugness with regard to our actors, but I think it's probably universal]. I happened to be logged in to the blog's twitter account when the news of Alfredo Landa's death broke back in May, and for the rest of the day my timeline was filled with an outpouring of affection from Spain that seemed universal (there was no sign of the usual twitter phenomenon where people feel the need to berate those who are moved by the passing of someone they didn't actually 'know'). What was striking though, was the range of films and characters that were mentioned - while Landa owed his iconicity in Spain to a particular set of films (which resulted in a sub genre, landismo, being named after him), his career as a whole had three quite distinct stages (his fame originated from the middle one). So while the blogathon requires me to focus on the end of his career, I'm going to start by outlining how Alfredo Landa's image / persona developed.
Having started out in the theatre, Landa entered the Spanish film industry, in his own words, 'por la puerta grande' [by the big door] - his first proper screen credit was as part of the ensemble cast (José Luis López Vázquez, Manuel Alexandre, Agustín González, Cassen, and Gracita Morales forming the illustrious company in which he made his debut) in José María Forqué's Atraco a las tres / [Bank Robbery at Three O'Clock] (1962) [the opening credit sequence, which introduces the characters, is above] in which a group of bank employees decide to rob the branch they work at. It is probably my favourite Spanish film that I've watched this year - a timeless comedic masterclass that to my mind recalls the best of Ealing. Landa's character, Castrillo, is the youngest of the group and the most reluctant to take part in the robbery (all quavering voice and tremulous glances), but is eventually made the getaway driver (in one set-piece they teach him to drive). There followed a series of supporting roles / ensemble parts in films such as El Verdugo / The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1963), Casi un caballero / [Almost a Gentleman] (José María Forqué, 1964), Historias de la television / [Stories of the Television] (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1965), and La cuidad no es para mí / [City Life is Not For Me] (Pedro Lazaga, 1966).
In the late 1960s Spain was undergoing a period of massive economic development and extremely slow liberalisation as the Franco regime attempted to attract foreign investment - this was known as desarrollismo (literal translation, 'developmentalism'), and initiated the transformation of Spain from a largely rural country to an industrialised (urban) society. This was however tightly controlled by the regime and its expression on film came out in markedly different forms. On the one hand, you had the proponents of the 'nuevo cine español' (filmmakers such as Carlos Saura and Víctor Erice) who represented the fractures in Spanish society (necessarily) opaquely via metaphor and symbolism, and on the other you had the popular cinema in the form of the paleto (country bumpkin) comedies and la comedia sexy ibérica (iberian sex comedy) - it was in the comedies that Landa made his name by representing a masculinity under threat, filled with social anxieties caused by rapid social change (including the changing status of women), often living the life of the economic migrant, and manifesting the conflict between tradition and modernity. In this context, Alfredo Landa came to stand for 'the average Spaniard'. In the late 1960s, Landa represented the likeable rogue, a charmer driven by irresponsible pleasure-seeking (usually sexual) desires, an anarchic imp who was nonetheless usually reined in by the end of the narrative and married off to a nice Spanish girl to settle down within the expected norms of conservative Spanish society.
Performing Antón's 'gay' alter-ego in No desearás al vecino del quinto (Ramón Fernández, 1970),
Landismo arrived with No desearás al vecino del quinto / Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour From the Fifth Floor (Ramón Fernández, 1970), a film that attained such a high level of box office success that its record remained unbeaten until the release of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios / Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988) almost twenty years later. The film effectively launched Alfredo Landa as a national star and led to the coining of the term landismo, which has been defined as:
'[...] the offspring of the confusion and the uncertainty, in a country immersed in too many changes that it did not understand too well. It also shows a code half-way between perplexity and doubt...characters trapped on the crossroads between tradition and modernity, the new Spaniard was undecided between the stability he had just abandoned and the fuzzy and uncertain perspectives that were slowly forming on the horizon' (Diccionario del cine español, p.493 - translation taken from Vivancos 2012: 45)
This is summed up early in the film by one of the characters describing her generation as being too modern to be provincial, but too provincial to be modern - Landa often occupies that no-man's land in between these two sides of Spanish society. The plot of No desearás... concerns a young, handsome gynaecologist (Jean Sorel), working in provincial Toledo, who is continuously assaulted by husbands, fathers, and brothers outraged that he has seen their womenfolk in a state of undress. In the same town is Antón (Landa), a boutique owner and fashion designer who spends all day around scantily-clad women without any of the physical threats because he is widely assumed to be gay (homosexuality is never actually mentioned within the film - the coding is done visually through Antón's dress and modes of behaviour). However when Sorel's character goes to Madrid for a conference, he bumps into Antón in a club and discovers that the 'homosexuality' of the latter is just a masquerade to allow him to develop his business without violent misunderstandings - he's actually a randy heterosexual male who spends a week of debauchery in Madrid every month, seducing Swedish air hostesses who cannot resist his iberian charms (suspension of disbelief is required for this latter aspect and it is a source of the comedy that ensues when Antón takes Sorel's innocent character out on the pull). The friendship that develops between the two men leads the townsfolk of Toledo to believe that they are having an affair (Antón is the eponymous fifth-floor neighbour of the title) - 'hilarity' and more violence follow, alongside a conventional ending of sorts that sees both men reunited with their respective spouses (in secret) but maintaining the charade of their own relationship for business reasons.
The film was loudly dismissed by commentators at the time, in the way that 'popular' cinema often is (for example, the President of the Association of Film Distributors declared in 1982 that '80% of this country's film output is not culture' (cited in Triana-Toribio 2003: 114). Bless), and alongside other popular films of the era it has been paid little attention in a critical sense until relatively recently (because of their supposed lack of artistic merit). Spanish friends I have spoken to about landismo (this is the only one of those films I've seen so far) seem to regard the films as something of an embarrassment, a bit naff. The film is definitely of its era but Landa's affability shines through despite the dodginess of the film's gender and sexual politics - to me, it didn't seem all that different to the British Carry On series, insofar as there is a lot more tease than show (it's something of a misnomer to call them sex comedies given the lack of sex, or indeed actual nudity) and the central performance is one of genial familiarity (there is also a parallel with the Carry On films in the way that, over time, an extended group of familiar faces who share multiple screen credits build up a linked association in the minds of the public). But landismo came to an abrupt end as censorship faded out in the late 1970s and the destape (literal. 'undressing') took off - no need for films that hint and tease when anything goes. What followed was Landa's reinvention as a 'serious' actor (the third stage of his career), which is widely agreed to have been achieved with three particular films: El puente / [The Bridge] (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1977); El crack (José Luis Garci, 1981); and Los santos inocentes / The Holy Innocents (Mario Camus, 1984).
I haven't seen the first of those films, but it apparently takes the temperature of the nation by having Landa cross the country on a motorbike and having a series of encounters with different social / political groups. El crack, which I'll return to as it connects to Landa's last film, showed a darkness in the actor that had previously gone untapped, but it was with Los santos inocentes that he cemented his reputation as someone to be taken seriously - Landa shared the Best Actor prize at Cannes with his co-star Francisco Rabal (who gives an extraordinary performance). The film is an example of the cine de calidad (quality cinema) pushed by the then-Socialist government (a reaction to the already-stated perception that most of Spanish cinema didn't count as 'culture') - they were mainly fairly staid literary adaptations with high production qualities and low audience turnouts; the cine de calidad generally didn't tap into the audience desires of 1980s Spain (perhaps because so many of them harked back to Spain's past, which a lot of people were trying to forget), which were perhaps better served by the comedia madrileña and directors such as Fernando Trueba, Fernando Colomo, and of course Pedro Almodóvar. Based on the book by Miguel Delibes, Los santos inocentes is about a way of life, as the inhabitants of a rural estate (in the 1960s, if one can take the women's fashions as a marker) seem to be stuck in the servitude of the previous century and live in terrible poverty and squalor. Landa plays Paco, el bajo (Paco, the low - that is how he is referred to by other characters) who loyally serves his señorito Iván (Juan Diego) to the detriment of his own health. He is famed for his sense of smell, and in one sequence crawls on all fours sniffing out the game shot down by his master. Landa was atypical casting insofar as his performance took many by surprise (I would describe his performance as minimalistic, in sharp contrast to his usually ebullient manner in the comedies), but in some ways the film also taps into the rural associations created by his earlier roles (the flat cap is a continuity of iconography in Landa's image and career), an association that continues in films such as El bosque animado / [The Enchanted Forest] (José Luis Cuerda, 1987) and La marrana / The Sow (José Luis Cuerda, 1992).
Following a scent in Los santos inocentes
So, back to El crack and Landa's professional association with director José Luis Garci. In total, they made seven films together: Las verdes praderas / The Green Meadows (1979); El crack (1981); the imaginatively-titled El crack 2 (1983); La canción de cuna / [Cradle Song] (1994); Historia de un beso / The Story of a Kiss (2002); Tiovivo c.1950 (2004); and Landa's last film, Luz de domingo / Sunday Light (2007). Las verdes praderas was Garci's third film and along with his first two (Asignatura pendiente / [Pending Subject] (1977) and Solos en la madrugada / [Alone in the Small Hours] (1978)) could be considered the tail end of what was known as the cine de la tercera vía (Third Way cinema), an attempt (engendered by producer José Luis Dibildos) to make films that engaged with the social change that was underway, in a form acceptable to the regime, but that were also commercially viable. They were aimed at the middle classes and those who felt that the Spanish comedies that were dominating the box office were somehow beneath them. Las verdes praderas is essentially about the middle-class hell of the responsibility of owning a weekend getaway in the countryside, as Landa's self-made man (prized by his ad-exec bosses for his 'common touch') finds it nigh on impossible to get any time to himself when he and his family visit their chalet for the weekend. It is as dull as that sounds, although Landa's innate likability makes you root for him - certainly his wife's (María Casanova) decision to 'liberate' them by torching the place at the end felt like the right decision (although I may have just been pleased that it signalled the end of the film). But there's enough 'supposed' comedy in the film for it to operate as a crossing over point for Landa.
In El crack - widely considered one of the actor's best films and performances - Landa plays detective Germán Areta, looking for a missing girl and finding that he pushes a lot of noses out of joint as a result. When the powers that be decide that the best way to get him to back off is to mess with his de-facto family - his girlfriend (Casanova again) and her small daughter - he instead goes on full attack. The film has dated and although it aspires to noir status (it's dedicated to Dashiell Hammett) it doesn't quite pull it off - for all that Garci is acclaimed as an aficionado of classic cinema, it only ever feels like a copy rather than an original - but Landa is completely transformed; there is no lightness to his performance, and the heaviness of the burden his character carries is reflected in the seemingly infinite sadness in his eyes. I haven't seen the sequel (it doesn't appear to have ever had a DVD release), and aside from the Cuerda films mentioned above, the only other role of note that Landa had in the late-80s / early-90s was as Sancho Panza to Fernando Rey's Don Quijote (a genius casting pairing) in a luxurious TV series directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón (I've watched one episode of the five parts so far - it is available on DVD with English subs - and am enjoying it immensely). I also haven't seen Canción de cuna, which brings us to the next Landa / Garci project, Historia de un beso, which along with El crack is the only one of the Garci films that I rate in any way. Told through the framing device of Julián (Carlos Hipólito) in 1949 returning to the village where he grew up for the funeral of his uncle (celebrated author Blas Otamendi (Landa)), the film concentrates on the events of 1925 and the parallel coming-of-age of the nephew and a late romance of the uncle. Blas is an outsider - an author better-known outside of Spain than within and unwilling to kowtow to the regime or the Church - but respected within his community and adored by his nephew. The film is sentimental but not in a sickly fashion, and both it and Landa have a twinkle in their eyes that allowed this viewer to pack away her cynicism for a couple of hours.
The trusty squire and the knight errant
As I also haven't seen Tiovivo c.1950, that means that we have finally reached the purpose of this post: to discuss Alfredo Landa's last film. Should I take part in the Late Film Blogathon again, I will make my choice a little differently - namely by choosing a film of interest rather than simply a late film of someone I'm interested in. Because there's no way around it: Luz de domingo is a dud. It would be more enjoyable if it were out-and-out awful, but it's merely forgettably mediocre. Landa announced his retirement before the film was actually released and, although it's useless to speculate about such things, he doesn't really seem as if his heart was in it. I don't understand the critical acclaim that Garci has received and his films are generally an anathema to me - although accusations of wallowing in nostalgia are regularly levelled against him (and he proudly declares himself to not be a 'modern' filmmaker), he is usually described as a good director of actors and generally proficient on other fronts. And yet this is someone who won't use just one establishing shot when he can use five (usually to show how many extras are in the scene but in a way that fails to give a sense of spatial relations), regularly leaves shots to hang for a couple of seconds longer than required (is someone about to come through that closed door? No. Oh ok, then), and arbitrarily crosses the 180 degree line in the middle of a scene (and by arbitrarily, I mean that the change in camera position doesn't seem to reveal / signify anything beyond suggesting that the director changed his mind part way through filming the scene). All of which makes his filmmaking sound considerably more interesting than it actually is - the reason those things stick out is because of how pedestrian the rest of it is (as I said in my previous post, Tyne Tees' Catherine Cookson dramas were directed with more verve). It's fair to say that it wasn't my cup of tea, and in fact it (or more accurately, the scene outlined below) put me in a foul mood. [Warning: spoilers follow]
Simplistic symbolism 101: the red dress (the only time a colour that vivid is worn in the film) signals imminent danger in the form of the red motor car they are watching approach
The film primarily concerns itself with the wrangling between two political factions in the small village of Cenciella in the early 1900s -one headed by the corrupt mayor, the other by one of the few landowners who doesn't bow down to him, Joaco (Landa). Into this mix comes outsider Urbano (Álex González), the new idealistic council secretary who promptly falls in love with Joaco's granddaughter, Estrella (Paula Echevarría). The newcomer wins over the grumpy older man with his sincerity. But when both men displease the mayor (Joaco by refusing to sell him some of his land, Urbano by refusing to let the mayor pass new taxation laws that are designed to bankrupt Joaco into submission), he decides that his only recourse is to hurt the person they have in common: Estrella. More or less out of the blue comes a gang rape sequence where the mayor sets his three wastrel sons on the young couple the weekend before their planned wedding: Urbano is tied to a tree and forced to watch (along with the audience) while his fiancee is brutalised by the three men and their servant. This is by no means Irreversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002), but for all of Noé's provocations, I find the brutal trauma of the attack on Alex (Monica Bellucci) in his film more honest in the style and execution of its filming than the 'artfully' composed and framed assault filmed by Garci. This scene seriously disrupts the world of the film - and it should do given the impact on the life of Estrella (who almost entirely disappears from the film after this point - the incident is never discussed in her presence and she barely utters another word), but it is not in keeping with the tone of the film up to this point. [One of the Spanish reviews argues that the scene divides the film in to two and that the second half is more like something directed by Michael Haneke, which feels wide of the mark to me but is an indication of the tonal rupture it causes]. The rest of the film feels unsettled but also strangely placid; Urbano marries Estrella as planned, they leave the village (it transpires that she's pregnant as a result of the rape) without recourse to the law, and Urbano refuses to let Joaco defend the honour of his granddaughter. The young man reaches for saintliness and is fairly uninteresting as a result. In fact the older generation provide most of the colour of the film, and it seems revealing that the young couple are rarely shown in conversation (their romance is communicated via a series of vapid smiles); the more interesting interactions transpire between people with 'pasts', whether the boarding house landlady from Seville and the much-travelled musician in love with Vienna, or the Uruguayan bar owner who shows Joaco a series of postcards detailing her life in New York (where Joaco has also previously lived).
One of the more interesting pairings in the film
The conversations with the bar owner are among the few sequences where the spark returns to Landa's eyes, and although he received top billing he doesn't dominate the film until right at the end when, with Urbano and Estrella packed off the New World, Urbano gives Joaco the all-clear to finally extract revenge for his granddaughter. Violence erupts once again (but too late for there to be a sense of catharsis) as Joaco shoots two of the mayor’s sons as they ride through the forest and then parades their corpses through town for the church congregation to witness. He shoots the remaining son and the mayor himself in a stand off as they exit the church, before being shot and killed himself by the guardia civil. There’s a certain poignancy to his dying onscreen in his last role, but I was left with more sadness that the opportunity to give him a memorable last appearance was frittered away. To a certain extent, at least in terms of the theme of vengeance, Joaco could be said to hark back to Landa’s performance in El crack (men who hurt the women his characters love meet a violent end at his hands in both films) but this echo really only serves to highlight that of the films he made with Garci, only El crack really endured as part of his star image or persona. The more personable and affable side to his persona was established at the start of his career (in films that are apparently subject to countless repeats on Sunday afternoon TV in Spain), and I would argue that despite his proving himself in ‘serious’ roles, it is those early comedies (possibly in conjunction with the TV sitcoms he appeared in the 1990s/2000s) that hold the key to the enduring affection with which he is regarded by Spanish audiences. He was awarded the Goya de honor the year following his retirement and ended his speech by saying that this was ‘adiós, y para siempre’ [goodbye, and for good] – he stuck to his word.
The past couple of years I've enjoyed reading the various contributions to Shadowplay's annual Late Films Blogathon, but have been too disorganised to take part myself. This year, when I saw David Cairns's first callout, I thought "Right, get to it!" and had a think about what I could contribute. The idea is to write about a film from late in a person's career - sometimes people go out with a bang, and sometimes with a whimper. It doesn't have to be a recent film, or someone who has recently died. But Spanish cinema has had many losses in 2013 (in a multitude of contexts), so I thought that I would focus on someone who had died in the past year. There are many big names on that roll call - producer Elías Querejeta, directors Bigas Luna and Jess Franco, the iconic Sara Montiel, for a start. I tend to write about actors more than directors, so I thought I'd write about an actor who is iconic in Spain, but little known abroad: Alfredo Landa. Unfortunately his last film, Luz de Domingo / Sunday Light (José Luis Garci, 2007), is a dud (Tyne Tees' Catherine Cookson dramas were directed with more verve) but I'm hoping to be able to link it back to his earlier films and come up with something interesting. My post will go up later in the week, but in the meantime keep an eye on Shadowplay as David Cairns will be linking to the various blogs taking part.
Alfredo Landa in his first screen role in the brilliant Atraco a las tres (José María Forqué, 1962)
