Subtitled by TVE Accessibility.
In the mid-70s a group of friends, all of them inexperienced,
but movie lovers,
they bundled the blanket over their heads
and with four hard, two interiors and three and a half weeks of filming
they decided to make a movie.
Thus was born “Tigres de papel”
and with it the so-called “Madrid comedy”.
Names as well known later as Carmen Maura, Emma Cohen
the Felix Rotaeta
they illuminated the debut in the direction of Fernando Colomo.
-How do you not swallow the smoke?
Trágatelo!
-But if I don’t know how to swallow it …
-But Juan is your husband …
-Well, my ex …
No, but he’s a very normal guy, you’ll see.
– It is not that I repress you, you are the one who does not know how to dialogue.
-Because you won’t let me.
-Tomorrow we have the bikini.
-What’s that bikini thing?
-Popular unity, popular unity!
-It turns out that Carmen and I finished at the end of summer
and after a month the uncle was already involved with her.
He was fucking lurking.
-Lay down now, just like that,
for later, if I’ve seen you, I don’t remember …
– “Join theory to practice and go to the end”:
This is what Marxism-Leninism says.
Luis, good night, how are you?
Very well.
Let’s talk about the first film
of an indispensable director to understand the last 40 years
of Spanish cinema.
The truth is that Fernando Colomo is a very important director
in the last 40 years of Spanish cinema,
not just because of the number of movies he’s made,
who has done many, has rolled with great regularity,
but because, either as a director or as a producer,
he has made films that have later set a trend
in Spanish cinema.
When he considered making “Paper Tigers” he already had a certain career behind
but not so much as a director, but as a decorator,
because he had studied Decoration at the Official Film School
and had decorated the shorts of some of his companions,
like Imanol Uribe, for example.
But he had a vocation as a director,
Since as a teenager I had already made shorts in Super-8,
and decides to launch into the direction
and makes a trilogy of shorts, which are:
“You are going to be a mom”, “In an imaginary country”
and “Imperial Pomporrutas”,
where the actors are Félix Rotaeta, Miguel Arribas and Carmen Maura,
that would also appear in “Tigres de papel”,
it would be his first movie.
-It is difficult to find a producer for a long
without first having a shoot or contact with the public
or have done some things.
It’s not just the director’s first film;
it is also the first film of the actors and the technical team.
Much risk, there …
It is a lot of risk, but it is also very important,
because this film represents a generational change in Spanish cinema.
It is not so much that they debut, because they already had theater experience
or doing little papers,
but here they really take responsibility for the first time.
The most specific case would be that of Ángel Luis Fernández,
the cinematographer,
that later he would be one of the great cinematographers
and I would work with Almodóvar, for example,
or Miguel Pueblo, who was one of the first sound engineers
which worked in direct sound.
This movie is one of the first movies shot with direct sound.
And then there is the case of the actors as well.
But not only this generational change is at the level of names;
also at the topic level,
This film marks a new sensibility in Spanish cinema.
In the movie there is a lot of talk about politics,
but it is not a political film, it is much more than that.
Let’s say it’s a comedy, with politics in the background.
Politics is present from the very title:
it is an express quote from Mao Tse Tung.
But it’s not a political movie
in the sense that it does not defend a thesis or a political ideology.
-Practice and theory
They must be a thing that develops together;
they must always go together.
Because otherwise…
For example, repression, what happens?
Well, you will never understand what repression is
until you feel it in yourself, until you live it.
-The movie is counting
that the attempt is at the height of some young people.
It is up to par, politically,
although the ideological nuances are not understood.
He’s up to it, emotionally,
although, deep down, your vision of the couple is quite conventional.
-It turns out that Saturday
It’s the only day we have to be together and see each other
and it is precisely when it occurs to you to knit,
that you could do it all week at home.
-Or, for example, in the urge to smoke joints
Even if you don’t know how to swallow the smoke
He is talking about a group of people who want to be up to date
but they do not know very well what it means to be up to date.
And how did Fernando Colomo manage to carry out his debut?
What were the production conditions?
The movie was pretty cheap, it cost like nine million,
when the average budget at the time was around twenty.
Those nine million
he got them with participations of individual people
of around 200,000 pesetas.
– What I wanted, above all, was to make a movie.
But it had to be a very cheap movie.
So I made the cheapest script in the world,
that it was of three gentlemen, come on, of two gentlemen and a lady,
that they talked a lot,
and then it occurred to me to think about progressives,
who are the ones who speak the most.
-Having such a small budget, marked the shoot a lot,
especially in the days of filming, which was in just three weeks,
and this forced to be able to shoot few planes.
Of course, this to shoot a few planes
greatly influenced the staging of the film,
in the sense that, in the end, the shots are very long
and it is played on a single plane.
This, on the one hand, makes all the responsibility and all the stress
fall on the actors, who had to rehearse long before,
but also that between those same actors
a very special tension was created.
There are shots of up to nine minutes with people continuously talking,
but a lot of things are happening in those dialogues.
The actors perfectly reflect that tension that exists
between what they want to be and what they really are.
Yes.
The actors are very well chosen, because even physically
they show you that attempt to dress and groom in another way,
like trying to break taboos and atavisms.
The main actress is Carmen Maura,
who already had some experience in small roles in cinema,
and that at that time she was the muse
of an independent theater group called “Los goliardos”
and that it was very important;
And, well, he made this movie, then he made the second Colomo movie,
later he started with Almodóvar and became the star he is now
She also shares the cast with Joaquín Hinojosa,
who had also worked in cinema,
But he had a very hard face, very hard features,
with which, he always played a very specific type of role.
Here, however, he acts as a progressive proselytizer
who wants to convince others at all costs.
-To some extent,
I had been typecast as an “impenetrable face” a bit.
So the movie,
which is a very fresh work, very of everyday characters,
It has served to give that new image.
-And then there is Miguel Arribas,
who played a very common role in cinema at the time,
that it was the Spanish who was awakening to many things.
And it was to arrive and kiss the saint
because it was an immediately successful debut feature:
It hit the public, liked it a lot.
It was a box office hit because I think that same generation
that Fernando Colomo wanted to represent in the cinema,
was represented and went to the rooms to see herself,
and even, which is very healthy, to laugh at herself.
Also, “Paper Tigers”
created what was later called the “Madrid comedy”,
which is like a new urban look
to some emotional problems of a generation of young people of then
And that makes the movie
has already transcended its comedy category
and has become a classic,
because not only does he keep making us laugh,
it helps us understand each other.
And besides, we finally broadcast it,
because we have talked about this film many times in many discussions,
speaking of comedy,
which was a good chance to get it back.
Thanks, Luis.
And you.
Forty years have already passed since the self-confidence, the freshness,
the naturalness and disaffection of Fernando Colomo’s cinema
burst into Spanish cinema.
Qualities that remain unchanged in “Isla bonita”,
the last film, comedy too, premiered by the Madrid director
two years ago now.
Tomorrow will be one of the guests
to the colloquium of “History of our cinema”.
– .
