Celebrity Biographies
Carlos Saura
For several decades, the only internationally recognized Spanish directors were Aragonese. The maestro Luis Buñuel was succeeded by Carlos Saura, whose films garnered awards at the most prestigious festivals, long before the irruption of some man from La Mancha whose name I don’t want to remember. Saura is perhaps the director who best described Spain at the end of the Franco regime on the screen.
Born in Huesca on January 4, 1932, Carlos Saura Atarés is the son of a civil servant and a pianist, who instilled in him a love for art and culture, both in him and in his older brother, Antonio, who dedicated his life To painting. Although Carlos Saura began his school studies at the San Viator school, in Huesca, with the outbreak of the Civil War, he moved to Madrid with his family, and later to Valencia and Barcelona.
After the conflict, he studied Industrial Engineering in Madrid, although his great vocation was always photography. He managed to exhibit his snapshots for the first time at the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid, in 1951. From that moment on, he combined his studies with photographic work. The Abc newspaper came to publish one of her photos on her cover. Also interested in cinema, and advised by his brother Antonio de él, he entered the Institute for Cinematographic Research and Experiences (IIEC), where he studied directing. His end-of-course short, La tarde del domingo , was so well received that he ended up being recruited as a teacher at the school, a job he held until 1963.
After the medium-length documentary Cuenca , he opened a new path for Spanish cinema with his first feature, Los golfos , which, influenced by Italian neorealism, described the situation of a group of marginalized youth. It was followed by Llanto por un bandido , co-written with Mario Camus , where Francisco Rabal played José María “El Tempranillo”, one of the most famous Spanish bandits.
The great turning point in Saura’s career occurs when he associates with the producer Elías Querejeta . His first joint work was the historical The Hunt , which earned him the best director award at the Berlin Festival. The chronicle of a hunting day turned out to be a parable of the wounds of the Spanish Civil War.
With Querejeta, Carlos Saura shoots the best films of his filmography, which are distinguished by their critical look at the problems of Spanish society at the time, through a symbolic, reflective and intellectual style, which achieved tolerance of censorship. He won the Silver Bear for directing again with Peppermint Frappé , starring his partner at that time, the actress Geraldine Chaplin , who would also be present in Stress is three, three , The Garden of Earthly Delights , Ana and the Wolves , Cría crows , Elisa, my life , Blindfolded and Mama turns 100 .
From this period, among Saura’s films, La cousin Angélica stands out , which investigates the mechanisms of memory, through the memories of an editor who occasionally returns to Segovia, where he lived his childhood. In the style of Wild Strawberries , by Bergman, the adult lead actor ( José Luis López Vázquez ) interprets the sequences from the past, when he is supposed to be a child. He won the Jury Prize at Cannes.
In the 80s, without Querejeta and Chaplin, although his films are less well-rounded, he maintains a high level with titles like Hurry, hurry , return to the world of juvenile delinquency dealt with in Los golfos . Blood Wedding marks a huge shift in his career toward the musical. From that moment on, music would have a great importance in his cinema, especially in titles such as El amor brujo , Sevillanas , Salomé (2002) , Fados or Io, Don Giovanni .
El Dorado , a failed recreation of Lope de Aguirre’s odyssey, best treated by Werner Herzog , was at the time the most expensive production in Spanish cinema. Nor did The Seventh Day , his version of the crime in Puerto Hurraco, work. With Oh, Carmela! He swept the Goya ceremony, as he won a whopping 13 awards.
The most visually brilliant Carlos Saura films are those photographed by the master Vittorio Storaro : Flamenco , Taxi , Tango and Goya in Bordeaux . Also of interest is his approach, from an atheist perspective, to his admired Saint John of the Cross, in The Dark Night .
Saura has also taken his first steps as a literary author, as he has written novels such as “Esa luz” or “Pajarico solitario”, which gave rise to his film Pajarico . He has been distinguished with the Order of Arts and Letters of France, and named Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He is the father of a son, who he had with the director Adela Medrano, and a daughter, the result of his relationship with the actress Eulalia Ramón .