Spanish Cinema Road Trip

Posted by morlockjeff on May 29, 2011

Any dedicated cinephile who has traveled to London and Paris knows that those two magnificent cities are a film lovers’ paradise catering to the discerning movie buff with countless repertory cinemas and alternate screening venues (museums, holy shrines like the BFI and the Cinematheque Francaise, hole-in-the-wall movie clubs, etc.) But who knew that Madrid was just as hot wired with its eclectic, diverse offerings, both grand and intimate theatres and movie-mad audiences?

It makes sense, of course, when you consider the number of world class directors, actors, cinematographers and screenwriters who have come from Madrid and other parts of Spain – artists like Juan Antonio Bardem, Luis Bunuel and Carlos Saura who continued to create enduring, often subversive work in despite of government coercion and censorship for most of their careers under the Franco regime. Today it is Pedro Almodovar and actors from his films like Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, and Javier Bardem (the nephew of Juan Antonio Bardem) that most moviegoers associate with the capital of Spain.

But that wasn’t the reason we wanted to go there. No, there were other higher priorities on our southern Spain travel itinerary – The Prado, The Alhambra in Granada, the Alcazar in Seville, the laidback beach resort of Nerja and the nearby Nerja Caves, not far from Almeria where countless Spaghetti Westerns were filmed. Still, it was an unexpected bonus to have lots of wonderful options in the evenings when it came to cinema choices. And we found ourselves returning more than once to the Cine Dore in the Lavapies neighborhood of Madrid.

During April the Cine Dore was featuring retrospectives on French director Alain Cavalier and David Cronenberg and tributes to writer Miguel Delibes, actor Antonio Ozores and director Miguel Gato. There was also a sprinkling of one-off screenings such as La Calabaza Magica (1986), an animated feature from Spanish director Juan Bautista Berasategi, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934) and Walt Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio. Our visit coincided with the Cavalier and Cronenberg programming.

The Cine Dore lobby has a tapas bar with beer and wine and tables for sitting, an excellent film bookstore stocked with rare collectibles and movie memorabilia and the walls of the theatre are framed with original movie posters. There are three screens and in one of the smaller venues I saw a double bill of Alain Cavalier’s first directorial effort, the 1958 short Un Americain and MISE A SAC (1967, aka Pillaged aka Midnight Raid), a tense and ingeniously crafted heist film in the grand tradition of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966 aka Second Breath) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970, aka The Red Circle).

Based on The Score, a novel by American crime writer Donald E. Westlake working under the pseudonym of Richard Stark, MISE A SAC follows the meticulous planning and execution of an elaborate robbery by a twelve man team in a rural mining town at night. After commandeering the town’s main telephone switchboard and taking the employees hostage, the town bank, jewelry store, payroll office of the local factory and other prime locations are looted with clockwork precision. But the weak link in the plan proves to be the mastermind and financier of the commando-like raid who self-destructs in one of the movie’s many surprising plot twists.

MISE A SAC, shown in a near flawless 35mm print, features a cast of familiar looking French character actors but the one who will be most recognizable to Francophiles is Michel Constantin as Georges, the cool, tight-lipped group leader who tries to keep things from unraveling once the robbery goes awry. Constantin, with his craggy, thug-like features and imposing physical presence, exudes the kind of screen charisma that Steve Mcqueen and Charles Bronson possessed yet he is not nearly as well known in the U.S. In fact, he co-starred with Bronson in both The Family and Cold Sweat (both 1970) but Constantin is probably best known for his roles in Le Trou (1960), Jacques Becker’s superior prison break drama, Jacques Deray’s The Outside Man (1972) with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret, and Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (1978), which inspired the Quenton Tarantino remake.

The Alain Cavalier retrospective made me realize how little I actually knew about this filmmaker who co-wrote and directed one of my favorite films of the eighties, Therese (1986), a haunting and austere portrait of a Carmelite nun (Catherine Mouchet) known as “The Little Flower of Jesus”; she died in 1897 but was canonied in 1925. Told in minimalistic but beautifully lit vignettes, Therese is a complete departure in style and subject matter from MISE A SAC and two earlier Cavalier films I’ve seen, Le Combat dans I’ile (1962) and L’insoumis (1964 aka The Unvanquished); the former is a psychological drama depicting a volatile ménage a trois between a left wing idealist, his wife and a militant anti-communist and the latter a politically-charged kidnapping thriller starring Alain Delon and set in Algiers.

On the basis of these four films, I have to say that Cavalier is much more than a versatile craftsman; he’s a complex, multifaceted filmmaker who is too difficult to peg. The retrospective at the Cine Dore bears this out with other equally diverse and unexpected selections from his filmography including La Chamade (1968), a glossy romance (based on Francoise Sagan’s novel) which was a commercial hit in France and starred Catharine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli, and Le Plein de super (1976, aka Fill ‘er Up with Super), a road trip movie that follows the misadventures of four thirtysomething male friends.

The following night we returned to the Cine Dore for a rare 35mm showing of David Cronenberg’s THEY CAME FROM WITHIN (1975) which has been distributed under many different titles in its day including Shivers aka The Parasite Murders and Frissons. Despite the obvious low budget and the use of a mostly unknown cast (with the exception of Italian cult horror star Barbara Steele), Cronenberg’s first full-fledged commercial feature introduces all of the director’s signature obsessions in embryonic form. From the distrust of modern science and technology to a pronounced anxiety toward the sexual revolution and the human body, THEY CAME FROM WITHIN is a cautionary horror tale in which parasites, which were bred to help cancer victims, are accidentally introduced into the water supply at a modern, all-service luxury high rise. Once the parasites enter the body either through water or sexual contact or burrowing into any oriface (hence the infamous bathtub sequence of a penis-like critter creepy-crawling its way toward Ms. Steele’s private parts), the vicims begin displaying the telltale signs of infection – they either become insatiable sex maniacs/rapists or psychotic killers or a combination of the two.

The film plays like a crude trial run for Cronenberg’s next feature film, Rabid (1977), but it is much more satiric at times than the latter film and has moments of genuine black comedy that push the boundaries of good taste. The Madrid audience took it all much too seriously at first as if they were watching a film by the Dardenne brothers but then some viewers began to chuckle as the nasty critters made their appearance (one leaps out of a dryer and attaches itself to the face of a laundress, another victim vomits up several that have been breeding in his stomach). By the time, the film’s hero, a local doctor (Paul Hampton), tries to escape from the complex to alert the authorities, the guffaws become more frequent as Cronenberg presents increasingly outrageous scenarios – a mother and small daughter are attacked in an elevator and ravished by a waiter who smears cherry cheesecake all over them with orgiastic glee. The madness comes to a boil when every hallway in the building is teeming with sexual deviants and crazies and a man with two prepubescent girls on their knees wearing dog leashes appears at a stairwell door. As the fleeing doctor backs away nervously, his response got the biggest audience laugh of the night.

Cronenberg would certainly go on to refine his technique and approach while delving further into squeamish subject matter but THEY CAME FROM WITHIN is still remarkably prescient (a nightmarish metaphoric horror from the future that prefigures the coming AIDS epidemic and Ebola virus). Besides Barbara Steele, who looks deliciously decadent here, you may also recognize Lynn Lowry in a major supporting role as the doctor’s nurse and lover. Lowry has appeared in such genre favorites as I Drink Your Blood, Sugar Cookies, George Romero’s The Crazies, and Radley Metzger’s Score.

The Cine Dore retrospective on Cronenberg was amazingly comprehensive and even included his early experimental films Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970), Fast Company (1979), a drag race action thriller aimed at the drive-in market, and more recent fare such as Spider (2002) and Eastern Promises (2007). The theatre is such an enjoyable social center for moviegoing that it almost made me want to linger longer instead of heading off to Seville the following day.

As expected, the historic quarter of Seville offered so many sightseeing diversions and culinary delights that we didn’t even think about movies until we got to Granada and discovered our hotel room near the Alhambra had a flat screen TV, broadcasting an array of exotic movie networks including one that specialized in vintage Mexican genre films. It was here that I saw my first Mil Mascaras movie – LOS CANALLAS (1969 aka Angeles Infernales). One of Mexico’s most famous professional wrestlers, Mil, along with Santo and the Blue Demon, also enjoyed a film career, appearing in seventeen features as a masked crusader for justice and an unbeatable champion in the ring.

As soon as the credits began to roll on LOS CANALLAS with its proud parade of brightly colored wrestler masks, I was hooked and started taking photos of it with my iPhone because I was pretty sure no one would believe my description of it and I wanted proof it existed (it’s actually available on Amazon). Mil Mascaras’ arch rival in this franchise entry is no demonic wrestler or superhuman nemesis but a whip cracking female hellion (Regina Torne) accompanied by her gang of juvenile delinquent devotees known as the Ruthless Gang of the Infernal Angels. Ms. Torne has already amassed an impressive collection of wrestler masks from many a famous champion she has now conquered and humiliated…..and Mil is next on her list.

In one of the more amazing sequences, Torne and her gang manage to rip Mil’s mask off…and there’s ANOTHER one on underneath that looks more like a stocking over the face. In a panic, he runs out into the street hiding his face as if he was stripped naked in public. Luckily he is rescued in the nick of time by two loyal fans. Since this is a Mexican wrestler flick, the plot is interrupted at regular intervals for some action in the ring with Mil body-slamming an opponent into submission. The novelty here is that there are several musical interludes as well including a nutty Egyptian-themed dance number and dashes of sadism a la Flash Gordon, voodoo curses and sexy damsels in distress. It may be dumb fun and infantile but Regina Torne chews the scenery with such glee and delight that Mil comes off looking rather drab and boring in comparison.

Ms. Torne’s career was mostly confined to the Mexican B-movie mill with such titles to her credit as Las Luchadoras vs el robot asesino (1969), Blue Demon contra las invasoras (1969) and Los hijos de Santanas (1972). But some of you may know her from The Big Cube (1969), an over-the-top LSD melodrama starring Lana Turner, or her art film breakout hit, Like Water for Chocolate (1992).

While we were staying in Granada, we also stumbled upon a unique art gallery installation at the Centro Jose Guerrero which houses a fantastic collection of works by the painter Jose Guerrero from his formative years in Granada, Madrid and other cities in Europe. The special exhibit entitled “Escenas Fantasmaticas: Un dialogo secreto entre Alfred Hitchcock y Luis Bunuel” was a film/video project by Jesus Gonzalez Requena that, as his show promised, created thematic and visual parallels between the two filmmakers’ work through selected film clips.

Juxtaposing scenes on the same screen with iconic shots from both masters, Requena demonstrated artistic connectivity via bloodied fingers (in The Birds & The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz), fire imagery (in Rebecca & A Woman Without Love), stains on skirts (in Stage Fright & Susan), toilet motifs (Psycho & L’Age d’Or) and a lot more in an exhibit that spanned three floors and served up many more film sample comparisons from Tristana, Un Chien Andalou, Vertigo, etc.

There were no movies to tempt us in the beach resort of Nerja but once we were back in Madrid we couldn’t resist perusing the movie listings again and had to make some hard choices over conflicting schedules. Despite the tempting Cine Dore offerings of more Cavalier and Cronenberg titles, we couldn’t resist the 35mm horror festival at the Cine Estudio in the Bellas Artes center entitled “En Los Bosques de la Noche: Antologia Del Cine De Terror 1931-2008.” It included such influential movies as The Innocents, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Bride of Frankenstein and Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf.

We felt lucky and privileged for the opportunity to see Kaneto Shindo’s KURONEKO (1968) and Mario Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY (1960, aka La Mascara del Demonio) on the big screen. Unlike the Cine Dore, however, attendance was relatively low for both screenings which was puzzling. I don’t know if it was due to earlier screening times – 5 pm instead of 8 pm – or the fact that it was a less residential neighborhood or that most of the films were easily available on DVD. At any rate, it was a pleasure to revisit the classic Japanese ghost story KURONEKO which I hadn’t seen since the early 1980s when I was able to view a widescreen 16mm print from Corinth Films.

The story of a mother and daughter-in-law raped and killed by wandering samurai during a civil war, the movie is both a revenge thriller and a supernatural love story – the two women return as shape-shifting cat demons who seduce and dispatch solo samurai they meet in the deep forest. They meet their match, however, in a war hero who confronts them and turns out to be the long lost son of the spectral mother. Unfortunately the print was worn and nicked from numerous exhibitions (this was obviously not the newly remastered print that played at New York’s Film Forum this past year). At one point, it broke and the projectionist had to do some quick surgery. Despite this, KURONEKO was as poetic and entrancing as I remembered it (The word on the street is that the Criterion Collection is going to release this on DVD/Blu-Ray in the near future).

On the other hand the 35mm print of BLACK SUNDAY (in Italian with Spanish subtitles) was magnificent. I have only seen this film on DVD on both my computer monitor and our outdated TV screen so this was a revelation to me. Closer to Italian opera in its sweeping emotional pitch and tragic storyline, the movie lives up to its legendary reputation and then some. Barbara Steele (who became the cinema bookends for this trip with THEY CAME FROM WITHIN and BLACK SUNDAY) has rarely looked more beautiful or mesmerizing, the gliding, luminous black and white cinematography transports you to another world and century. And the gothic, misty atmosphere and evocative music score are unexpected yet exceptional for what is usually dismissed as low grade genre fare for the undiscriminating horror fan. This screening of BLACK SUNDAY might have been the highlight of our movie experiences in southern Spain.

There were other cinematic temptations in Madrid of course. The art center Casamerica, which presents music, theatre, lectures, dance and other events, also programs cinema; during our visit, we had opportunities to see Even the Rain, Iciar Bollain’s 2010 film about a film crew making a movie about Christopher Columbus in Bolivia (it stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Luis Tosar) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Oscar-nominated Biutiful. Other alternatives were the Sala Berlanga (named after Spain’s acclaimed director Luis Garcia Berlanga [El Verdugo, Life Size]) which showcases contemporary art house fare, the four screen Golem Cinema which specializes in current European releases, the Renoir Plaza de Espana which was showing the Coen Brothers’ True Grit and The Kids Are Alright among other selections when we were there, and La Enana Marron, known for its experimental film, documentary and indie feature programming (Among recent screenings were I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (a doc about the band Wilco), The Quay Brothers’ In Absentia, shorts by Norman MacLaren and Jonas Mekas, and Fernando Arrabal’s Viva La Muerte.

Instead of any more cinema excursions, we opted for something a little more offbeat – a trip to Madrid’s Museo de Cera. Think of it as a much more wacky Madame Tussaud’s. It starts off impressively with numerous historical figures from the past with a heavy focus on Spain (Isabella & Ferdinand, Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco Goya) before transitioning into 20^th century and recent pop culture. If you’re a soccer fan, odds are your favorite FIFA World Cup champion is in here. As for international film and music celebrities, the museum is a mash-up of real (Michael Jackson, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe) and fantasy icons (Freddy Krueger, The Joker, The Wolf Man). A few of the figures are startlingly lifelike (you wouldn’t want to spend the night in here) but many are so far off the mark you have to laugh.

To top it off, there is a “Terror Train” ride for the kiddies (though it was mostly adults queuing up to ride it when we were there). This funhouse train takes you through several lame scene recreations from such films as Star Wars (the alien bar sequence complete with madcap music) and Jurassic Park. Just when you think you are done with the Museo de Cera, they herd you into “The Simulator,” a space capsule shaped ride that jostles you around as you watch a large screen/windshield that propels you through some vertigo-inducing landscapes. It’s about as effective as the spaceship ride entrance into the hilarious theme restaurant/tourist trap Mars 2112 in the heart of NYC’s Times Square.