HEIFER
For Florentino Sanders.
the highly topical again forces us to change our plans hastily publishing and we have to echo the sad news, death in Madrid last November 13 by Luis García Berlanga, one of the greatest directors of English cinema to whom we owe titles, among many other works, such as "Placido," Welcome Mr. Marshall "," The Executioner ", and of course" The Heifer ".
As you may have guessed just read the title of this review, if you have a favorite movie components of this writing, this film is none other than "HEIFER" that is in our opinion, despite criticism from some moviegoers and occasional historian, one of the masterpieces of English cinema. This mix tape is back Civil War and bulls, bulls and Civil War, all with a point of irony and humor wasting. What more could we ask from this wording?.
Gracía Luis Berlanga and Alfredo Landa at a time of the shooting of the film.
for many years as a reporter I had taurinoguerracivilero opportunity to meet many good people and to any other character. Of all these good people today want to talk to one of them, Don Carlos Hall, which I can consider as a friend, which is a real honor for me. Don Carlos is an elderly person, but still in an enviable physical condition and a clarity that many of us would like. A Don Carlos as many English people play to make war, but with the addition that he would start it touched on one side and finish in another. Some years ago I did an interview for the magazine Front Madrid, focused on his experiences in the period between the Proclamation of the Republic and the end of the war. Throughout the time that Don Carlos stood on both sides lived a number of incidents and adventures, which at one time was compromised their physical and even their lives. The peculiarity of having been on both sides of it lies in a privileged position from which you can make judgments with an objectivity available to very few. Some time ago we were talking not remember what and left the issue of the heifer, and Don Carlos changed the face:
- Have you seen Florentino?, Is great. I've seen do not know how many times and never tire of seeing. As evidenced in the film is much like as they did that, the characters, situations, people, the military ...
With a view like this, what more critical about the movie we want?. Although placed in morlaco in luck, and morlaco, I can not waste this opportunity afforded me for the showcasing and stop commenting on this gem of the film.
Another moment of shooting the film in the town of Sos del Rey Catolico.
The Heifer was filmed in 1985 on a script by Berlanga, Rafael Azcona tandem with another big late our cinema does not do many dates, a couple indispensable to know the English cinema of the second past half century. Although the date of the making you might think that the movie was created in conjunction with the definitive establishment of democracy in Spain and a chronological distance sufficient conflict in order to address the issue without raising rashes, the truth is that the script was conceived by these two geniuses about 30 years ago in Franco's dictatorship, although the project would be parked for obvious reasons, maybe this will be the first paradox of this unique film. The film gives rise to a set of parallels or metaphors, and no doubt that this is an antiwar movie that shows us how absurd it can be a war, especially if it is of a civil war.
The film begins on a hot summer between the trenches in front of some unknown Republican. In the first scene, a soldier in his underwear crosses the line of trenches asking his colleagues, dressed in a manner not very different and a little martial attitude, rolling papers snuff for further trade pitting on neutral ground with the other side . The vision of this long scene, which provides the backdrop for the credits, you can take the viewer to think that a scenario is unrealistic, or deliberately exaggerated to create a more comical and grotesque. However, the situation should not be far from those lived in fronts that remained stable over long periods of conflict. Similarly we say that barter objects were common among the contenders.
During the exchange of paper on neutral ground for snuff, the Brigade Castro, played by Alfredo Landa (an officer with many years of service, determined to maintain discipline as the cornerstone of an army, but nobody obeys), learns that on the other side are preparing a big party with lots of food and drink (something unusual in the Republican zone), which will be the culminating act of a heifer bulls. From this information, the Brigade will devise an ambitious plan, which will raise the moral done of his troops and also allow them to put something in their stomachs. The plan is none other than once dressed in uniforms of the other side and after crossing the lines, seize the heifer, and by the way spoil the party and delivered a major psychological blow to the enemy.
The Brigade Castro (Alfredo Landa) presents his plan to the Lieutenant Broseta (Jose Sacristan).
transmits his idea to his superior, Lt. Broseta, played by José Sacristán (before the start of the war was a barber and therefore lacked any military training), who ends up accepting the plan and decides to put in place without ask anyone's permission. Next to the brigade and Lieutenant, the team will be composed of a former priest-turned-proletarian ideals and worldly vices also an amateur bullfighter named "Lima's (if not called to be in Lima but by working in a workshop and have great skill with lime) and a soldier, Mariano, a native of the town where the festival is to celebrate and therefore familiar with the terrain and local customs, which will guide the group. This role is played by Guillermo Montesinos. You see this group reflects quite well what could be the Republican army, where temperatures are somewhat lax discipline and a great lack of control, with officers from the improvised range of sectors and with little or no military training, as well as a band more concerned with personal issues that the future of the war.
But back to the movie in the evening the group was infiltrated enemy lines with the help of a private guard, which is responsible for distracting the guards on the other side, and here we will not give details of how it does for if any of you have not yet seen the film. After a series of vicissitudes, some of them very comic but not detail, our players are already in Francoist zone, miraculously going unnoticed as members of other military and passing all sorts of adventures. It is in this part of the film where Berlanga takes to make a portrait of what it was Franco's Spain, like it did before the Republican, based on some characters like Commander (Agustín González), Marquis (Adolfo Marsillach), the Countess, the priest, the sergeant that no one peep, not to mention the barber played Luis Ciges, actor discussed below, among others. Where we see a Spain authoritarian, exclusivist and class, in which the church, the army and the most ancient aristocracy, play a decisive role.
Cart T26 Zaragoza Military Academy which was used during the filming of the movie.
Although there has been to study the scenes of the film for not gutting in hypothetical and unlikely event that any of you has not seen it yet, we have no choice but to reveal the outcome (even at the end of this Chronic can you watch the final minutes of the same in one of the videos of sun and flies). The film ends with the heifer dead in no man's land between the lines on both sides being devoured by vultures. As already mentioned, The Heifer is a film that can be provided to establish many metaphors, and perhaps in that match more people is to identify the Heifer with Spain, torn by a terrible fratricidal struggle in which neither side has actually win, and the vultures with which they took advantage and took advantage of that conflict. You see, this film has all the ingredients for this language from the consider as one of the masterpieces of English cinema, and we recommend its viewing who is not already done so and who, if this is done, we also recommend that see her again, as it has done many times Don Carlos Sala, an expert in these matters. But back to
Berlanga, who by age and family circumstances also experienced the Civil War. When produces the July 1936 coup Luis García Berlanga had just turned 15, and the war continues to be a novel experience: "There persecution, death, but look, amid the chaos I felt I was living a long vacation. I found out what were the friends, I learned to find joy in books. Schools were abolished, stole books, intelectualicé me. " , a period in which he lived experiences Weird" In the Civil War went to a palace where he had lived a marquis naked photos he kept in which fucking saw him, and kept jars in which hair had been stored pubic, with its specifications: This is the girl may, in twelve years, this is the girl What, seventeen. The tubes kept on aspirin. " age But it would behoove joining the army, becoming part of a medical unit "I moved in was called The Fifth Bottle, and I was in the Battle of Teruel, forty degrees below zero."
But the end of the war would not lead to problems for the Berlanga family. His father, José Pardo García Berlanga was a long industrial winemaking family tradition in the area of \u200b\u200bUtiel Requena, was Member of Parliament and a Senator for many years of his life for the constituency of Requena, and produced the 1936 coup Republican activist in the Union .. Martínez Barrio's party, which in his memoirs, and as he relates Luis García Berlanga has something like this: "My father did not have the political passion of my grandfather, but he continued on, doing his duty. His political boss, Martinez Barrio, in his memoirs something like this: come to me Manteca (who was a close friend of my father) and García Berlanga; are few golfers who are always playing pool in the military casinos, going to hookers , some golfers. I remember that every Sunday I brought magazines, this magazine Chronicle where he had aunts naked, something very tasty for jovencillos like us. For what still has Martínez Barrio is very important to Manteca and Garcia Berlanga told, as they are so in touch with the military casinos, which is preparing a military rebellion. He adds Martínez Barrio, the very raw, "Because they are a go-between have not done much attention." If they had listened! ".
Interim Government of April 14, 1931: Standing: Indalecio Prieto, Marcelino Domingo, Casares Quiroga, Fernando de los Rios, Lluis Nicolau d'Olwer, Francisco Largo Caballero, José Giral, Diego Martinez Barrio. Seated: Lerroux Alejandro, Manuel Azana Niceto Alcalá Zamora, Julian Besteiro and Alvaro de Albornoz. Even
militants in a Republican party and having war zone struck by the government, the war would be an ordeal for the director's father, by virtue of his employer with one hand, and his status from Republican to finish war with the other: "My father left because he chased the anarchists, and notice that I wanted to anarchists. He went to Torrelodones, with Colonel Republican sleeves, and then returned to Valencia. We could not go to our ancestral home, it had been burned, were after him, and then went to Tangier. " In Tangier would be arrested by Franco after the war and the father of Luis García Berlanga be put to death. Berlanga's family moves to try to avoid it and had to go through what it called the black market of Death: "My brother, who was the one wearing the house, he learned that there were two people in Madrid, one was an eye doctor and his sister, who charged the black market of death ... You gave a significant figure and getting the replacement of the sentence. My father had a power plant and a farm with many acres, with many pine trees, which were used to make boxes of oranges ... And we had to sell everything to reach that figure in the black market of death ... At the end of the sentence was commuted to twenty years in prison ... Imagine what would happen to those who had no money, or with those who did not know that it was black market because they were being taken forward, a bastard ... My father was three or four years in prison, had a serious heart condition and died when it should be 60 years. It was not very old. "
Luis García Berlanga (with cap in hand and mustache) with fellow goes to the Russian Front as part of the troops of the Blue Division.
also to curry favor with the victors Berlanga will point to the Blue Division " I was because I asked the family, because my father was to request the death penalty. But what really motivated me to go was a girl. I was in love with her, I thought that being in the Blue Division would remain in love with my courage and did not send me no letter, and it was my girlfriend's closest friend. I was also because I was asked, maybe used to commute his sentence to your father. I also went because he was a friend of the Falange, which then were not, which played the ball was me, but fortunately nothing happened to me. Never fired a shot, never killed anyone, did throw shooting championships light poles, but he never shot a man. They put a monitor in a watchtower, but could see nothing, and I invented things. When climbing the tower, where I spent nine months, he felt no fear of the Germans. It was a terrible wind, and what I feared was Dracula. Once, going up that hole, I fell and was saved by the gun remained in diagonal, and I could get ... And my biggest fear was to meet Dracula. ".
Farewell to the volunteers of the Blue Division in the North Station in Madrid. Coincidentally
in English cinema is another case of close parallel with the de Berlanga. I mean the actor Luis Ciges, whose father also was active in Republican Union and was Civil Governor of Avila. But the father was not so lucky Ciges like Berlanga and would be shot by the rebels a few days of the coup d': "I had a happy childhood but then earned little. My father was a writer and a Republican politician. My mother was the daughter of the bourgeoisie (Azorín was the sister) and only painted and took care of the kitchen. We were four brothers. I was 15 when he killed my father, a Civil Governor of Avila. On August 3, 1936, luggage made to go to Cuba as ambassador, Civil Guard arrested him. The next day he was killed by nationals of a shot in the head, in the cemetery. They stole all the man did not leave a bitch. So my mother and my sister went to a convent, and I and my brothers to one of friars punished. No eating, we tried fatal, was a horrible thing. When the war ended, we were given a choice: stay there or go into the Third Order and Police. So we went, my brother and me. A Elizondo, with requetés, to walk the train tracks if there was fireworks, and close the brothels we saw open. "
Components of the Blue Division browse the mark in a moment of rest.
As Berlanga, Ciges would also require the Divisió Blue: "Then we went to Russia of volunteers, or mercenaries. With a Hunting Group Tank Assault and Blue Division. We had machine guns, hand grenades and smoke, but had no tanks. My mother earned our paychecks into frames. We were from October to October, in Poland, Leningrad ... I was clueless number two and sent me the weirdest things. Cross the field with a wheelbarrow. Climb a mountain sled ... There was no bus, we traveled 1,200 kilometers in a month. In summer, 56 below zero. Then I did the military in Seville, until I drove by me the boss, took out food for the poor and the prisoners of Socorro Rojo. After a while I was doing as a German spy in the Mine Shaft (shaft of Orense, Pontevedra and Lugo) and I went to Avila with bronchitis. Studied two years of medical school and placed me in a tuberculosis sanatorium. There were 400 sick, very sick. As I was quite cured of fear, put me on autopsies. Then had a pabelloncete nice outside and there was a girl with whom I wanted to marry. To make a practice of fidelity. But she would not live there and I came to Madrid "
And so far this chronic wanted to serve as a modest tribute to the great English director Luis Garcia Berlanga was the author of a masterpiece with which we are deeply identified the components of the writing of Sun and Flies: "HEIFER. Florentino
Sanders.
THE SUN AND FLIES VIDEOS
Dear readers, we offer here are two interesting sections, in addition to chronic dedicated Berlanga. First a snippet of the documentary "Aliens of themselves" in which Ciges Berlanga and tell us their experiences on the Russian Front. And secondly, the final scene of the movie "HEIFER" metaphorical synthesis of what was the English Civil War.
stranger to himself.
Documentary in which Luis Garcia Berlanga and Luis Ciges tell us some of his experiences in the Blue Division
HEIFER (FINAL STAGE) . Latest
scenes from The Heifer.
Florentino Areneros.
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