The Big Lie of Cinema [archived newspaper article]

 "Be careful, Benito, this is full of traps."

The Huffington Post

By Victor Matellano

9/14/2021

“Neither the kisses are real, nor the punches touch the face. In the cinema everything is a lie”. This is the mantra that I heard over and over again in my childhood.

 

My father was not from the film industry, but like many Spaniards who lived in the outdoor shooting areas, he worked over and over again in genre films, foreign films and co-production films, as a horseman or as an extra. That was an important bonus, and participation in an exotic world, and fun, without any kind of vocation. So much fun, that they even kicked him out of the filming of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, for losing his mind.

 

The many adventures of those years, and their anecdotes, yes with Sophia Loren, yes with Robert Taylor, yes with the other Robert, Shaw, later shark hunter for Spielberg, nurtured my childhood as Indians, cowboys, soldiers and gladiators, always all seasoned with that demystifying mantra, "everything is a lie in the cinema." A mantra that ended up causing a rebound effect in me, so much so that I decided to dedicate myself to the industry where lies were created.

 

In these times when Wes Anderson shoots in Chinchón, and Spain welcomes the filming of foreign western series such as The English, which is being recorded in Tembleque or El Espinar, those who participated in those other past filming, remember that phenomenon as singular. Some of those shootings were with Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, Tato, one of the men who introduced the western to Spain continuously, since the 1950s, with El Coyote and La Justicia del Coyote, although a previous pioneer had been Eduardo García Maroto, with his vile goldin 1941. Well, this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Tato Romero Marchent, the director with whom the Italian Alberto Grimaldi began production, and one of the filmmakers who inaugurated the western town of Eduardo Manzanos in Hoyo de Manzanares, the first stable in Spain. On that set, For a Fistful of Dollars is filmed, which other Italians decide to finance, encouraged by the successes of Romero Marchent. And thanks also to the profits that Grimaldi obtains from the films with Romero Marchent, he can co-finance For a Few Dollars More, the great success, including the construction of the splendid western town of El Fraile in Tabernas.

 

If you talked to Romero Marchent, he would vehemently claim, not without reason, that the spaghetti western, a term that I detest, had started thanks to him, and not Sergio Leone. Yes and no. I do not believe in the question of the definitive iconography, which Leone actually invents more or less consciously, with more or less chance. But yes, with Tato's films, a whole stable factory of Eurowesterns was started and established, for which it was necessary to build sets, elaborate costumes, props, and errands. And, finally, it is true that the name of the Roman eclipsed that of the Madrilenian, and somehow, the legend was established. As said in The Man Who Killed Liberty ValanceWhen the legend becomes reality, publish the legend. The lies of the cinema, or the half truths.

 

This 2021 is also celebrated, fifty years since the filming of one of the exponents of the so-called landismo, set in this case in that world of Eurowesterns filming, Vente a bigar al Oeste, by Pedro Lazaga. An absolutely interesting visual document, starring Alfredo Landa, which was filmed with the title Vente a bigar a Almería. But, except for a couple of shots, the film is not shot in Almería but mostly in Madrid, and in this case the supposed western town of Tabernas is replaced by that of Colmenar Viejo, and that desert, by that of Ciempozuelos. As happened other times, the lie of the cinema.

 

In Vente a bigar al Oeste , leaving aside the morality of this type of cinema of the time, I am afraid that in a reliable way, characters and circumstances common to the filming of those films are portrayed: the false promotions in the press; mistreatment of extras and specialists; the casting boss who does his corruption to sneak his own; the starletthat it is involved with the producer, and therefore it is one of the engines, perhaps the most important of the project; the alcoholic Spanish actor, who was someone in the theater in Madrid, but in that Almería only acts as an extra with a phrase; and the world of the one called by some “europudding”, that is to say, the mix of nationalities in the team, in which each one speaks their language on stage, or in the absence of dialogues, unconnected phrases or numbers are said, all in tótum revolutum ... "Be careful, Benito, this is full of traps," Landa tells himself, when he opens a door and discovers that a set is just a facade. A very curious world, but also terribly cruel. Under the illusion of a stunning world, the crappy ...

 

Come and flirt to the west. He was talking about that cinema ... Well, only about that cinema ...? Because they sound familiar to me, I hear, as current, the demonstrations of power of all kinds, the stomping, the betrayals and bridging, the snobberies and egos, both in production, as in distribution, as in festivals. That seems, that is said, that is discussed now, as reality or legend, while we always talk about the great family of cinema. Perhaps not so different from what happens in other groups or other professions in this country. Fernán Gómez said that, more than envy, contempt was the national capital sin. Maybe.

 

Yes, Dad, it's getting harder for you to remember that, but now I'm telling you. You were right. Not all the fights, not all the kisses are for real. Or so it seems. Perhaps they are part of the trap, of the great lie of the cinema.

But, while ... " The show must go on ".