Luis Garcia Berlanga

Luis García Berlanga Martí, from Valencia, was born on June 12, 1921, just over a month before the Annual disaster, into one of those bourgeois families whose customs he would later sharpen in his films. His father had been a deputy during the Second Republic and was later imprisoned for his membership in the Popular Front. The young Luis studied at the Jesuits and at a refined Swiss boarding school, to later enroll in Law and Philosophy and Letters. He dropped out of college to enlist in the army, in the notorious Blue Division, in exchange for the government applying pardons to his reclusive father. “He had an adventure component, because I believed that by being there he was going to conquer all the girls when he returned to Valencia. And in fact, some of the prettiest wrote to me in Russia.”

He fought on the Russian front for a year, and when he graduated he had decided to dedicate himself to the cinema, which had been his vocation since he was little. “I had dreamed of being an architect, decorator, poet, until I discovered that my thing was the cinema in the middle of the projection of Don Quixote , by Pabst. That’s when I told myself that he was going to be a director. I had a kind of revelation ”, clarifies the filmmaker, who had a family history, since his uncle, Luis Martí, wrote El faba de Ramonet , the first film spoken in Valencian. “My father did not take it well. He told me that he could be a painter, but film directors were surrounded by men who painted their faces all the time, and that couldn’t be good. He had a huge obsession with homosexuals, ”explains Berlanga.

Willing to achieve his dream, Berlanga gets his uncle to give him a letter of recommendation addressed to Vicente Casanova, the boss of Cifesa, an important producer. And although he traveled to Madrid, due to his shyness he spent three days walking around the Cifesa building, not daring to go up. “In the end I returned to Valencia without presenting the letter and said that they had told me that Casanova was traveling,” explains the director.

Shortly after this episode, which was about to ruin his vocation, the call for admission of students of the first promotion of the Institute of Cinematographic Research and Experiences of Madrid was made public. Berlanga passes the entrance exam and enrolls in the center, where he has José Luis Borau and Juan Antonio Bardem as classmates . “Berlanga came the first day with a little hat of a good boy, from a good family, and I really didn’t like him,” said Bardem, who in the end became a great friend of his. Berlanga makes his film debut with three shorts ( A walk through an ancient war , Three songs and The circus ).

Shortly after, a group of students from the Institute create a production company, and raise some money for one of them to direct a film. Since they couldn’t decide between Bardem and Berlanga –each one with their own project–, in the end both got together and wrote La huida together , which was going to be a social drama. The day before they start filming it, they back out, for fear of failing and end up changing it for a comedy, Esa pareja feliz , with Fernando Fernán Gómez and José Luis Ozores .. Apparently, Bardem was more in charge of directing the actors, while Berlanga was more aware of the technical part. The film was very well received, especially since its humorous depiction of the daily problems of a young sub-tenanted couple is a breath of fresh air in the Spanish film scene, dominated by folkloric productions.

Next, Berlanga and Bardem were commissioned to shoot a musical that was to extol the figure of Lolita Sevilla , a promising copla singer. Both co-write the script, along with the ingenious playwright Miguel Mihura ., and they have the wisdom to respect the conditions of the agreement –they had to include three of the aforementioned songs– without, however, ceasing to compose a very personal work, which describes the Spain of the time, very aware of what is done in the United States, and shows rural customs and social reality, marked by economic problems. He expressed the precariousness in details such as the map of the school, in which the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still present, dissolved in 1919 (Berlanga adopted as a custom to make a reference to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in each of his films, even if it was forced). . Although at first they were going to direct Bardem and him in tandem again, the former ended up resigning. “He withdrew at the end because he did not reach an economic agreement with the producer. Since then he reproaches me for having made common cause with him.

Welcome Mr. Marshall is a declaration of principles, and the model that all ‘berlanguian’ cinema will follow. It is an ensemble film, like the ones that would follow, and the director was completely unleashed in terms of his satirical humor, very critical of the reality of the time. He would follow the same scheme in Novio a la vista , Calabuch and Los jueves, milagro . In 1955, the filmmaker was one of the participants in the so-called Salamanca Conversations, promoted by Basilio Martín Patino , to analyze the future of Spanish cinema, and try to give it a realistic air, committed to reality. Plácido –Criticism of some Christmas customs– is his first feature film withRafael Azcona , with whom he had previously written the short A tram is sold . Together they collaborated again on El verdugo , one of his best works, due to the elegance with which they dealt with such a thorny subject as the death penalty. “Azcona had great discoveries. I remember him saying that one day the producers would discover that movies are useless. That if no film was projected, people would continue going to the movies, to warm up, to kill time, or to kiss the bride. After an hour and a half, the lights will come on and the next ones will enter, ”Berlanga explains about his collaborator in Las piranhas , Long live the boyfriends! , Natural size , Moors and Christians ,La vaquilla , an episode of the collective film Las cuatro verdades and also in La escopeta nacional and its two sequels: Patrimonio nacional and Nacional III .

In 1980, Berlanga received the National Film Award, followed by the Gold Medal for Fine Arts, in 1981, and the Príncipe de Asturias Award for Arts, in 1986, but interest in his films gradually declined, as if the fact not having to circumvent censorship would relax his wit, and exalt his side more prone to easy and coarse humor. He criticized the Spain of the pitch in the unequal All to jail and after the series Blasco Ibáñez said goodbye to feature films with the failed comedy, unbecoming of his talent, París Timbuktu .