mario camus

Mario Camus, born in the Cantabrian capital on April 20, 1935, and the son of a tailor, studied Law, although he did not finish, because when he was 21 he preferred to enroll in the Official Film School, where he graduated in directing. He is considered a member of the ‘new Spanish cinema’ generation, along with filmmakers such as  Carlos Saura , Basilio Martín Patino , Miguel Picazo or José Luis Borau . 

He started in the cinema as an assistant director, although his first important job was as a scriptwriter for Los golfos, by Carlos Saura , from 1960. On television, he was responsible for notable episodes of Los camioneros and Curro Jiménez , two enormously successful series.

As a director for the big screen, Mario Camus got off to a good start, with titles like Young Sánchez , The Visit That Didn’t Ring the Bell and A Woman Dies . With the film With the East Wind (1967), he suffered a commercial debacle, which is why he was relegated to more commercial titles, such as When you are not here , Say what they say , At sunset , at the service of the famous singer Raphael , That woman, with Sara Montiel  and the western The Wrath of the Wind , with Terence Hill .

He established himself as one of the most important directors of Spanish cinema with a well-remembered literary adaptation,  La colmena , based on the novel by Camilo José Cela . With this title he won the  Golden Bear  of   the Festival and of Berlin shared with the British film Belfast, 1920 . It is followed by his most important work,  Los santos inocentes , which faithfully captured the work of Miguel Delibes . It was for Alfredo Landa  and Franciso Rabal the joint prize   for best male performance at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. 

Despite his prestige, he did not consider himself an author. “Films are awarded to an author, but there are fifty people working on them,” he commented in an interview. Mario Camus sometimes dabbled in the theater. For example, he was responsible for directing “Why are you running, Ulises?”, assembly based on a work by Antonio Gala . In 2011 he released the book “29 stories”, which compiled several of his literary writings.

From the 90s he continued to succeed with titles like The Color of the Clouds .  In the last years of his career, he undertook new shoots widely spaced from each other, with feature films such as  La ciudad de los prodigios -adaptation of the famous novel by Eduardo Mendoza- , La playa de los galgos and El prado de las estrellas , from 2007, which It was his last film job. He received the National Cinematography Award in 1985, the Goya for Best Original Screenplay for  Shadows in a Battle , in 1993, and the Goya de Honor in 2011.

Mario Camus spent his last years in retirement in Santander, wanting to make more films, but resigned to the difficulty of getting them off the ground in Spain. “It’s more difficult to get financing than to shoot a movie, that is, having to go see a little boy or so-and-so, and being sent from one to the other… We were like beggars and we still are.”

Married to Concha Bergareche, whom he met in the sixties when she was an assistant director, the couple had seven children.