Packed with fun facts, World Film Locations: Madrid offers a fascinating—and often surprising—tour of the many film representations of Madrid. For jetsetters planning a jaunt to this richly cinematic city, the book also includes photographs of locations as they appear now and city maps with information on how to locate key features.
Packed with fun facts, World Film Locations: Madrid offers a fascinating—and often surprising—tour of the many film representations of Madrid. For jetsetters planning a jaunt to this richly cinematic city, the book also includes photographs of locations as they appear now and city maps with information on how to locate key features.
World Film Locations: Madrid
126
World Film Locations: Madrid
126Paperback
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Overview
Packed with fun facts, World Film Locations: Madrid offers a fascinating—and often surprising—tour of the many film representations of Madrid. For jetsetters planning a jaunt to this richly cinematic city, the book also includes photographs of locations as they appear now and city maps with information on how to locate key features.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781841505688 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect, Limited |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2012 |
| Series: | World Film Locations |
| Pages: | 126 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
World Film Locations Madrid
By Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2011 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-568-8
CHAPTER 1
UPFRONT
MADRID
City of the Imagination
Text by LORENZO J. TORRES HORTELANO
There is a long list of directors who have wonderfully represented the city of Madrid. We could have chosen from Juan de Orduña, Saenz de Heredia, Neville, Nieves Conde, Bardem, Fernán-Gómez, Saura, Garci, Colomo, Almodóvar or Amenábar, but it would be wrong to say that any one of them is the director of Madrid. However, another reason is because Madrid, as a city of the imagination, does not really belong to any one person but, rather, it belongs to all. This includes those directors who pass through the city at some stage of their lives and those who remain there. Wherever they come from, Madrid will always be their second home (as also happens to the characters in Surcos/Furrows, Nieves Conde, 1951). Furthermore, Madrid, for those who come for the first time, often leads to an epiphany – like the one the main character experiences in Noviembre/November (Achero Mañas, 2003).
This awakening to a world of imagination is not just something that happens to characters who populate the films made in and about Madrid; it is something that can also be seen in certain directors. The most obvious case is Pedro Almodóvar, who was born in a rural environment and did not come to Madrid until he was 22 years old. In his films we can see how the characters blend perfectly with the streets of Madrid – as in the classic scene where Carmen Maura is 'washed' by a municipal employee on the street in La ley del deseo/Law of Desire (1987). But, at the same time, it also seems clear that Almodóvar's Madrid, although shot on location, is also partially invented by his imagination. His worldwide success has created a particular yet imaginary depiction of Madrid that international spectators now expect to find and recognize. Some of Madrid's most important Almodovarian elements can indeed be found today, if the visitors know what, and where to look for them, though it is not so much in Almodóvar's settings, with their characters and preference for bright colours, but in the vitality and passion of a city that is gritty and offers the best of itself through its people and culture.
Following Almodóvar's example, we can see a glimpse of Madrid as a city of imagination, but not as an imaginary city. Carlos Saura once said: 'Madrid desde el punto de vista estético y visual, no es ninguna maravilla' ('Madrid from the visual and aesthetic point-of-view, is not that special'). It is not as tidy as Barcelona or as beautiful as Seville, Paris or Rome, nor as evocative as New York or London, but Madrid has something that, in a sense, makes it stand out from all these cities. Nowhere else in the world can visitors feel at home, yet be continuously surprised, as the city is constantly reinvented at every turn. This sheer vitality and reinvention is reflected in the films in which Madrid is the protagonist.
But Madrid can also be rough, messy and dirty, and have chaotic traffic. Even as early as 1929, Nemesio Sobrevila depicted it as such in El sexto sentido/The Sixth Sense. Which reminds us that, without showing the extreme griminess so akin to postmodern aesthetics, Madrid has never in history been beautifully imaginary. But let us not have a distorted view of Madrid. It is also a relatively safe city compared to other major capitals. According to Monocle magazine, in its 2010 index, Madrid is the tenth most liveable-in city in the world and that same year it also ranked among the twelve greenest European cities. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Madrid is the Spanish city that, more than any other, has welcomed immigration throughout its history.
But then, where does Madrid's true film identity lie? It can lie in its monumental grandeur. Madrid's architectural heritage comes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Later, in the early 1920s, its rulers came up with the idea of giving Madrid a cosmopolitan Presence, creating what became one of the main imaginary scenarios of the city: the Gran Vía. As with many other public works in Madrid, it took several decades to complete and, therefore, it lacks a homogeneous appearance. But it is still one of the most sumptuous and iconic arteries of the city, where imaginary worlds are consumed in abundance, is the home of the largest theatres in the city as well as all the biggest book and music stores.
Perhaps what makes Madrid so special is its world-class cultural offerings: for instance the unique 'Eje del Prado' ('Prado's Mile') with its wonderful collection of museums (Museo del Prado, Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, etc). This would have surprised Rita Hayworth in The Happy Thieves (Georges Marshall, 1961), when, with Rex Harrison, she has to steal a Goya.
Or maybe it lies in the verbenas and corralas of a more provincial Madrid of yesteryear; in the recent edgy manifestations like La Movida; or in the current cosmopolitan and hectic bars, sidewalk cafés and endless nightlife.
But probably where Madrid offers some of its best performances in regard to film is beyond all those places. It is actually found in the lives of its anonymous citizens, in its neighbourhoods and streets, where life boils and changes constantly and continuously. This is the aspect of Madrid that beckons film producers, directors, and screenwriters from around the world and compels them to tell stories that can appeal to everyone. One of the many examples is the beginning of La buena estrella/Lucky Star (Ricardo Franco, 1999), which takes place in an inhospitable area on the outskirts of the city.
The representation of Madrid in cinema is a continuous surprise, full of life in its purest form, unadorned and unsweetened. Thus, the best films are those in which Madrid is not just shown as a tourist location but a city in touch with its deepest cultural roots; in popular events such as the open-air verbenas with their Carnival feel; in artists like Goya and Velázquez, both recognized as masters of light and shadow, but are truly, above all, masters of human psychology. The best cinema of Madrid, as in their canvases and the urban landscape, delineates the life and struggles of the characters. In short, Madrid in cinema is a landscape, a set, but one where its characters are alive and, so, make it come alive.
THE ASSASSINATION AND BURIAL OF DON JOSÉ DE CANALEJAS / ASESINATO Y ENTIERO DE DON JOSÉ DE CANALEJAS (1912)
LOCATION
Puerta del Sol, 6 (at Carretas corner) and Spanish Parlamient (Carrera de San Jerónimo)
DON JOSÉ DE CANALEJAS (1854-1912) was a lawyer and politician, progressive, regenerationist and liberal, who became President of the Council of Ministers of the Spanish Government. Among his most notable achievements was the abolition of the death penalty and the development of a broad democratic agenda. This silent semi- documentary short-film about Don José de Canalejas' assassination and subsequent funeral is divided into two parts: the first is a fictional recreation of the murder (perpetrated by the anarchist terrorist Manuel Pardiñas) at the actual scene of the crime, just in front of the San Martín bookstore – which closed down in 1995. The second is edited with documentary images of the funeral in Madrid – mostly from Puerta del Sol and the main entrance to the Spanish Parliament. It is packed with people showing their respects to the assassinated President. These two parts, edited without interruption, present two interesting features: firstly, the shop window with the bullet holes acts as a link to both segments; as a location in the fictionalized one and later as documentary footage, when the shop assistant shows the actual effects of the shooting; secondly, since this was a high level political assassination, stressing the murderer's markedly friendly gesture of tapping Mr Canalejas' shoulder seemed to fuel multiple conspiracy theories. Regarding the film's mise-en-scene, if we keep in mind that a decade earlier, Edwin S. Porter had used the close-up with dramatic intention, in this film The Great Train Robbery (1905), the editing would seem to demand a close-up of the murderer's treacherous gesture, or perhaps an insert of the trigger being pulled. But the directors, maintained a long shot, focusing our interest on Mr. José de Canalejas and in the Madrilean space around him – and not on the killer. ->Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano
THE SIXTH SENSE/EL SEXTO SENTIDO (1929)
LOCATION
Around Cibeles and Callao
CARLOS AND LEÓN have opposing views of the world. While Carlos is optimistic, León is pessimistic. One day Carlos sends his friend to see Kamus, the inventor of the 'sixth sense', a machine much like a film camera that has the capacity to capture the objective truth. 'Este es el verdadero Madrid visto sin ninguna deformación literaria' ('This is the true Madrid, seen without any literary deformations') Kamus tells him. 'Este aparato nos da la sensación del verano mejor que cualquier literato' ('This device gives us the feeling of summer better than any writer'). Different views of Madrid's landmarks appear on screen, intermixed with street scenes. Among them there is one scene in which Carmen, Carlos' girlfriend, gives money to another man. Confronted with this seemingly-unquestionable evidence, León interprets the images according to the social conventions he believes in. He tells Carmen that Carlos does not want to see her anymore and later he informs Carlos and lets him know that Kamus has the proof. Carlos visits Kamus and immediately recognizes the man in the filmstrip as Carmen's father. The misunderstanding does not come from the images but from the different interpretations that can be construed based on the information and values one holds. El sexto sentido is a somehow naïve, clumsy and simplistic silent film, but at the same time it displayed a clever critique of Dziga Vertov's acclaimed Film Truth (Kino-Pravda) newsreels. It also moves us to reflect on the relationship between reality and its representation, on the capacity of our tools to objectively reproduce and respond to reality. It also shows the primacy of image over word – an issue even more pressing today when we rely on a growing number of screens for much of our access to information about the world. Simply for this reason, Sobrevilla's film deserved to have a larger echo than it did, but unfortunately it never opened commercially and remains a forgotten little gem. ->Helio San Miguel
FAIR OF THE DOVE/LA VERBENA DE LA PALOMA (1935)
LOCATION
Barrio de la Paloma
BASED ON one of the jewels of Spanish zarzuela, whose script could be considered the forerunner of the sainete farce (a popular Spanish comic opera piece) years before the 'grotesque tragedies' of Carlos Arniches. The film version by Benito Perojo hybridized Hollywood narrative with popular cultural musical tradition to become one of the great masterpieces of Spanish cinema. It also exemplifies a developing Republican 'national popular' cinema a year before a military uprising will overshadow any festivity. The characters (Don Hilarión, Casta and Susana, Julián, 'Señá' Rita, chulapas and chulapos – Madrid girls and boys in traditional dress), are more than just stereotypes of the residents of the corralas of Barrio de la Paloma and display a pure but undeniable realism. The film, an extraordinary success in its reconstruction of a brotherhood of 1893, stands out for its exceptional sophistication of sets, costumes and props. It adds new situations to the original script and transforms others, testimony to the progressive interests of a director who always aligned himself with the small concerns and intimate anguish of the workers who star in the story and whose class position in the film is accurately reflected. The night sequence in which Julián seeks Susana in the crowd shows a love affair on the verge of a happy ending against the bustle of carriages and boats, the paper chains that adorn the streets and the stalls selling fritters and donuts. ->José Luis Castro de Paz and José Ramón Garitaonaindía
TOWER OF THE SEVEN HUNCHBACKS/ LA TORRE DE LOS SIETE JOROBADOS (1943)
LOCATION
Plaza de la Paja and Calle de la Morería
FOLLOWING HIS ESCAPE from the ancient catacombs and synagogue built deep beneath the historical (Jewish, Arab and Christian) centre of the old city, Basilio Beltrán (Antonio Casal) attempts to lead the police to the subterranean chamber where he and Inés (Isabel de Pomes) have been held. Meanwhile, the film's evil genius, Doctor Sabatini (Guillermo Marín), the chief hunchback and architect of the counterfeiting operation that Basilio has exposed, lays explosives at different points of access to his underground lair which he dramatically blows up. Pillars and beams come crashing down, the impressive spiral staircase collapses before our eyes, and the screen fills with clouds of dust and fallen masonry. The mise-en-scène of this film is clearly and consistently indebted to the early Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927) and Robert Weine (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920); famous for German Expressionism, but rarely more so than in this sequence. Cinematographically impressive, this scene is a precursor of later disaster films. It provides a unique example of 'the fantastic' within Spanish film history. Generically, it condenses in one scene the formal and aesthetic tension that pulsates throughout the film in its entirety, between the taut hybrid of German expressionism and the locally specific, popular theatrical and musical forms associated with Madrid. In this sense, the implosion of the city, its collapse upon itself, serves as an apt metaphor for the undoing of the discursive artifice that is Madrid. ->Steven Marsh
SUNDAY CARNIVAL/DOMINGO DE CARNAVAL (1945)
LOCATION
El Rastro and Plaza de Cascorro
CLEARLY IN THE STYLE of the Spanish playwright Arniches, (famous for his sainetes or comic-theatre plays), and artistically influenced by the paintings of Francisco de Goya and José Gutiérrez Solana, Domingo de Carnaval is set in the slums of 1917 Madrid. The carnival was banned by the Franco regime and the film is a celebration of well-planned dissent. Despite the formal crime plot – about the murder of a secondhand dealer in a neighbourhood corrala (a popular residential building of traditional Madrid) – Neville's framing goes beyond traditional narrative function to delight in a display of popular authenticity, in the style, perhaps, of the carnivalesque, theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin. Alongside the crime element there is a love story between the two main characters: the young cop (Fernando Fernán-Gómez) and Nieves (Conchita Montes), who is the daughter of one of the salesmen. The director gives maximum visual relevance to the background, which bustles about behind the main action. This explains the predominance of wide-, long- and medium-long shots that convey the popular bustle of El Rastro, a famous flea market in Madrid, and nearby areas such as Plaza de Cascorro. Neville, forgoes the conventionally 'dramatic', diluting the plot development in order to show life in the crowded streets. His camera even stops at the stand of charlatan, Salvador Báez (a famous market salesmen in the 1940s), and a gypsy woman selling ointment for 'scabs'. ->José Luis Castro de Paz and José Ramón Garitaonaindía
(Continues...)
Excerpted from World Film Locations Madrid by Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano. Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
IntroductionMadrid: City of the Imagination
Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Map of Scenes 1–8: 1912–1951
Madrid in Motion: Squares, Corralas, Markets, Verbenas
José Luis Castro de Paz and José Ramón Garitaonaindía de Vera
Map of Scenes 9–16: 1955–1965
Iván Zulueta: Films of Madrid's Underground
Steven Marsh
Map of Scenes 17–24: 1967–1984
Embracing Normalcy: Madrid Gay Cinema at the Turn of the New Millennium
Helio San Miguel
Map of Scenes 25–32: 1987–1997
Madrid: Unexpected Dream Factory
Helio San Miguel
Map of Scenes 33–38: 1997–2002
Beyond the Cliché: Madrid in Twenty-first Century American Thrillers
John D Sanderson
Map of Scenes 39–44: 2003–2009
Bright Young Things: Neo-existentialism in Madrid cinema of the 1990's
Rafael Gómez Alonso
Resources
Contributor Bios
Filmography