Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 06/09/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Plácido (Luis García Berlanga, 1961)

Cast: Cassen, José Luis López Vázquez, Elvira Quintillá, Manuel Alexandre, Mario Bustos, María Francés. Screenplay: Luis García Berlanga, Rafael Azcona, José Luis Colina, José Luis Font. Cinematography: Francisco Sempere. Art direction: Antonio Cortés. Film editing: José Antonio Rojo. Music: Miguel Asins Arbó.

Luis García Berlanga in fine form with yet another satire that conceals the knife edge within a depiction of village eccentrics. This time, it's the ostentatious and superficial charity of the bourgeoisie that gets the knife, as the title character (Cassen) tries to keep the truck on which he and his family's livelihood depends from being repossessed.