I find myself writing these lines on a very special day, the October 6, Spanish cinema day. A cinema that has been widely disparaged by pedants who thought that better cinema was made in France, Italy or Sweden.. A Cainite belief that denotes absolute ignorance about cinema. So, for those of us who like cinema, wherever it comes from, I write these lines, more as a cinephile than as an economist.
Cinema is an industry. Let’s not forget that he was born in a fair booth to earn money. That is why the cinematographic decade of the 1960s is so important for Spain. Let me put you in context.
After the war, CIFESA arrived, which allowed cinema to recover from the war and gained broad support from the public.. From this time we have hits like “El Clavo” (Rafael Gil, 1944), “La Leona de Castilla” (Juan de Orduña, 1951) or “El Ultimo Cuplé” (Juan de Orduña, 1957), the highest-grossing Spanish film until , in 1970, Alfredo Landa arrived and snatched it away with “You won’t want the neighbor on the fifth floor.” Cinema for the general public.
Thanks to the good work of the workers in Spain and the cheapness of working here, A seasoned American producer arrived, who realized what a diamond in the rough the Spanish film industry was. He started with “Captain Jones” (1959), and many others would follow such as “El Cid”, “55 Days in Peking”, “The Fall of the Roman Empire” or “Golfus of Rome”. And after him came others like the incomparable Sergio Leone.
All this hustle and bustle was the best for the industry, as it caused Spanish producers, directors and screenwriters to think big. And from there exploitation cinema was born. Comedies, westerns, horror movies and much more. A factory that didn’t stop. Some were intended for domestic consumption, such as those by Don Paco Martínez Soria, and others were intended for foreign audiences, such as those by Paul Naschy, Eugenio Martín or Juan Piquer Simón.. But whatever the case, very successful films.
It’s these films that kept the industry going, even though critics hated them.
The existence of this more commercial cinema does not mean that there was no more “refined” cinema. During this time we found Luis Buñuel filming two films in Spain. With Juan Antonio Bardem, Berlanga, Borau, Neville, Ladislaus Vadja and even there was Orson Welles filming the best adaptation of Shakespeare. Before the 1980s, eight Spanish films had been nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which came with José Luis Garci’s “Start Again.”
The two cinemas coexisted. Both with their audience. Until the misnamed “Miró Law”. With this law, the profitability of the film was separated from the tickets sold. Its approval, on the day of Santos Inocentes of 1983, seemed an omen of the bad joke that awaited us. On paper, subsidies were going to be given to films with high cinematographic quality, but in the words of a director who suffered from it, Mariano Ozores: “the subsidy was only given if you were close to the PSOE.”
And this law, which should be called Solana, and not Miró, caused what we are still experiencing today, an indifference on the part of viewers towards national cinema.
This week has been the film festival, and Despite the fact that tickets cost €3.5, the Spanish films have not been chosen ahead of the rest. Of the 1,198,062 people who have packed the theaters, less than 14% have gone to see a Spanish film. We have popular works on the billboard and works recommended by critics, but they are not of interest to the public.
Introducing politics into the industry has made the public feel indifferent. A story can make you fall in love or generate hate. It can make you laugh or cry. Indifference is the worst punishment.
I finish these lines in the Plaza Mayor de Graus, the scene of a film massacred by critics “Villaviciosa de al Lado” (2016), but also another praised at the Berlin Festival such as “On the other side of the tunnel” (1994). I like both. The fact that films like the first are made does not prevent films like the second from being made. I invite you to go to the cinema, to make the Spanish film industry great again. Watch what you want, but go to the movies.
I’ll leave it to you that the culture councilor from Graus arrives, I’ll see if I can convince him to have more cinema here. Will you come?
2023-10-08 07:16:07
#Cinema #party #indifference
