Standing at the antipodes of what Roland Barthes advocated in his legendary essay Le mort de l'auteur (1967), which defended a reading of the work apart from the author, with the exhibition 'Interior Berlanga' CaixaForum invites us to revisit the legacy of one of the most lucid and representative filmmakers of 20th century Spain, Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010), through an intimate, personal and unpublished archive that illuminates his work based on the author's biographical contextualization.
Focusing on what is off-screen – on those objects and documents from his daily life, now re-signified as objects worthy of observation based on their recontextualization in the museum space –, curators Sol Carnicero and Bernardo Sánchez Salas have articulated an exhibition that is conceived as a sequence plan that aspires to reconstruct Berlangui's gaze – a unique gaze that was able to grasp the complex social, political and cultural panorama of the Spain of his time like few others.
Berlanga durant un rodatge. Col·lecció Filmoteca Espanyola.
At once local and universal, his cinematography – which includes such acclaimed titles as Bienvenido, Mister Marshall! (1953), Plácido (1961), El verdugo (1963), La escopeta nacional (1978), Patrimonio nacional (1981) or Todos a la cárcel (1993) – becomes a satirical chronicle of his time that reflects with humor and intelligence on the power structures, hypocrisy and double standards of institutions and individuals; themes that are still so relevant today.
Programa de mà en forma de dòlar de Bienvenido, Mr.Marshall!, que va ser motiu d'una denúncia al Festival de Canes per falsificació de moneda (1953). Col·lecció Filmoteca Espanyola.
In contrast to the screening of feature films that we all know, the curatorial proposal of the CaixaForum presents us with a careful selection of letters, sketches and drawings that show the most procedural aspect of his films: scribbles with his original ideas, schematic notes of his approaches and storyboards with different scenes. All these documents, exhibited together with objects equally relevant for a deeper understanding of Berlanga the author, allow us to revisit the filmmaker's work from the comparison between the formless origin of an idea and its final formalization in film. The decision to collect everything that had been left out of the shot in a sequence shot – in homage to the director's indisputable narrative stamp – responds to the desire to reverse the direction of the camera to show not the reality represented but the sensitivity and consciousness that portrays it, an exercise that, although Barthes would disapprove of, is informative regarding the original meaning of a work that, in its universality, transcends personal and geographical horizons to reflect on the contradictions of the human condition.
Cartell de Plácido. Arxiu Berlanga. Col·lecció Filmoteca Espanyola.