Jorge Grau

Born on October 27, 1930 in Barcelona,  ​​Jorge Grau  began in the world of painting, achieving success with his exhibitions in 1952 and 1956. But from that year onwards he began to feel fascinated by cinema, and got a scholarship to study at the Centro Sperimentale della Cinematografia, in Rome. He ends up working as an assistant to  Sergio Leone , in  The Colossus of Rhodes , and becomes friends with  Federico Fellini  and  Michelangelo Antonioni . In Spain, he works as an assistant director for José Luis Sáenz de Heredia , in  Diez fusiles await , and as a secondary actor in the comedy  La rana verde , by  Josep Maria Forn.

After directing various short documentaries on cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, ​​he made his fiction debut as a director and co-writer with the promising  Summer Night , starring  Francisco Rabal , which follows the journey of various characters during the night of San Juan. He then achieved great success with  El espontáneo , which follows in the footsteps of a fired bellhop who, in desperation, plans to throw himself into the ring in the middle of a bullfight, in search of an opportunity. They are followed by the experimental  Actaón , about a fisherman and a foreign woman, and  A love story , about a young married couple who are expecting a child. He is fired from the musical  Tuset Street , concluded by Luis Marquina , due to disagreements with the protagonist,  Sara Montiel . “It is known that she was used to the fact that the people she worked with were at her service. Then they told me that if she wanted to sign the film once it was finished, but when I saw it, it seemed to me that that was not what I wanted to have done ”.

Despite the fact that  Jorge Grau  was considered an auteur filmmaker at the time, he gave a turn to more commercial cinema. In co-production with Italy, he shoots  Bloody Ceremony , a reconstruction of the macabre story of Countess Bathory, who bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth, and  Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead , a cult film with an ecological message, since zombies they wake up because of an ultrasonic machine that the government authorizes to eliminate insects. For this film, he won the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos Award for best director in 1975. “It is one of the films I am most happy with, despite the fact that it was commissioned,” he declared.

Too bad he hadn’t continued on the path of the terrorfantasy. Instead, he founded one of the most disastrous subgenres of Spanish cinema, Destape, with the film  La trastienda , successful at the time for the first full nude, by actress  María José Cantudo , but without any point of interest. He continued in this scandalous line with titles such as  The Unspeakable Secret of a Good Boy ,  The Nap   or  Love Letters from a Nun , which overshadowed what had previously been an impeccable career.

After the magical comedy  The stranger-oh! on Cruz del Sur street , where  José Sacristán  gives life to a guy who imagines he is having unusual adventures, and  La puñalada , about bandits in Catalonia during the 19th century, says goodbye to cinema in 1994 with  Better Times , about a dancer from El Molino, the famous Barcelona venue for erotic shows.

Jorge Grau  not only wrote his films but also published various books. The essay on acting “The actor and the cinema” stands out, but he was also the author of “Confidences of a discontinued director”, his memoir, and numerous plays, such as “La sal”, “La cascara de la nuez” or “Navidico Pirulí”.