The Spanish film industry produced some bizarre cult
films in the 1960s that the American director makes a wink in his last film.
That was the phenomenon
There was a time when Spain hosted a western film
industry. The producers managed to take advantage of stony and desert lands, in
search of natural scenarios such as Death Valley or the endless extensions of
land in Arizona and Utah, and surrounded themselves with technical and artistic
craftsmen with the obsession to clone, with spicy drops of ultraviolence, to
the most characteristics of American cinema, the one that glossed the epic of
the birth of a country looked upon as the greatest world power for centuries.
The calls to the western European of the sixties and seventies are constant in
the modernity that the director Quentin Tarantino represents for several films,
and in this last summer’s premiere that searches for totems reaches the visual
and narrative paroxysm, if that was possible in the cinema of the director of
Tennesee, who dives into references of bad taste, old-fashioned, light draft
and prestige, who have always accompanied him since he attended to clients in
his famous video store.
But one of those ingredients pointed out in “Once Upon a
Time in Hollywood” comes to life thanks to the premiere and moves many
teenagers and I, captivated by the effluviums of the premiere, to wonder what
role Spanish cinema played in that subgenre from the west to Europe, that perversion
of the classic canons that had been created under Californian studies and with
big names in front of and behind the cameras. Today we call it "chorizo
western", or better "western paella", looking for an
association of ideas with Italian pasta that is more appropriate to the
typically Hispanic gastronomic product. Some have tried to rename it as
"cooked western" or even given its Almerian geographical ancestry as
"gazpacho western", but paella seems to prevail among the propaganda
labels with which this certain tendency of homeland film production based on
themes, characters, stories and shootings of classic American cinema.
"Tuned"
names
If in Italy they were able to export the things they were
doing (many of them also shot in Spain) Sergio Leone, Georgio Ferroni, Tonino
Valerii or Sergio Sollima, the most misplaced Spanish directors, those who left
the conventional cinema circuit, renamed their names to be recognizable in his
new dusty and powder-laden environment: thus, Joaquín Romero Marchent became
Paul Marchenti, Manuel Esteba is Ted Mulligan, Ramón Torrado was reborn as
Raymond Torrad, José María Elorrieta mutated into Joe Lacy, José Luis Madrid
did it as Jim Delavena and even a director of great prestige in the postwar
period such as Ignacio Iquino, with black films of incalculable value, was
reborn as Steve McCoy to direct in the false towns of the border the arrival of
errands and those faced with shots in the saloons of the city.
Do not forget: Alfonso Balcázar was Al Bagran in this
maelstrom of mutations, whose start was even ahead of the arrival of the Spaghetti
western, the landing of Leone, Eastwood and Morricone to our country. The
cinema of the Spanish west, of only Spanish production and always shot within
our country, came to attract very recognizable stars of the American billboard:
Ernest Borgnine, Joseph Cotten and a young Telly Savalas. Almería or Burgos
were the Spanish Monument Valley individuals in which the production teams that
normally worked in coproduction with Italian producers or other countries were
installed.
Western novels
A great advantage of this fast-flowing and vertiginous
oblivion film flow was to have its own literary bases, supported by the western
novels that captivated several generations of readers. Marcial Lafuente
Estefanía, J. Mallorquí, Silver Kane, Frank Caudett or Curtis Garland, who also
hid their interesting pseudonyms behind the typewriter. The central years,
those of greater quality in the titles produced, coincide with the irruption of
this western to the Spanish: from ‘64 to ‘68, with a Madrid leader who took the
flag that shortly after would be internationalized thanks to the Italians.
Joaquín Romero Marchent always showed a special interest
in the epic of American West cinema, and moved his myths to Spain. In the casts
of his films, always clones of the great successes of classic western, we can
see names like Edmund Purdom, Paul Piaget, Gloria Milland, Helga Sommerfeld,
Robert Hundar and Fernando Sancho, Miguel Palenzuela or Jesús Puente. In the
sunsets full of dust and mud, the music of composers who exerted great
influence of Rustichelli or Bacalov always exaggeratedly punctuates, as shabby
as the eternal close-ups and exasperating zooms that can be seen at the rate of
several dozen per minute.
In the initial phase, before Leone landed in Spain to
shoot his trilogy, the Spanish western was nevertheless quite pure, seeking to
assimilate in artistic canons the North American super western who keeps the
quintessence of the genre: Lang, Walsh, Wellman, Zinneman, Not to mention the
absolute masters Ford and Hawks. And we can even affirm today, with the
perspective of the years, that at times it is superior to spaghetti to the
extent that these defects or formal vices had not yet corroded.
Titles for the
video library
Romero Marchent sought in his originals “The Taste of
Vengeance” (1963) or “Seven from Texas” (1964) the white mountains, the green
meadows, and the clean air that Shane of Deep Roots himself could look for, and
then the transalpine filmmakers they would pervert even using the same wicker
as him. By that time, Ramón Torrado had already directed “Welcome, Padre Murray”
(1963), with a somewhat discolored patina of quality and including the thematic
nuance of revenge the thematic nuance of racism with a black priest.
These brave men threw themselves even for the myths of
the west: Torrado filmed “Cavlary Charge” (1964) with Allan Scott and Frank
Latimore. A young José Luis Borau debuted in the feature film with “Brandy”
(1964), with a script written alongside José Mallorquí and a setting in
Tombstone, a city renamed Losatumba for national viewers. “Doomed Fort” (1964)
by José María Elorrieta, “Five Dollars for Ringo” (1965) by Juan Xiol Marchal, “A
Dollar of Fire” (1965) by Nick Nostro, the prestigious Leon Klimovsky in 1964
with “Billy the Kid”, and in 1966 with Barbed Wire of violence, “Clint the Loner”
(1966) by Alfonso Balcázar with a hoarder George Martin as the protagonist ...
although he was not the only one.
Richard Harrison was used many times to break the camera
lens in those close-ups of “El Rojo” (1967). Harrison had been in the preselection
of possible actors for “A Fistful of Dollars”, and he always joked to
acknowledge that withdrawing from the struggle for the role for the benefit of
Clint Eastwood was his greatest contribution to the cinema.
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