Luis García Berlanga

Spanish director Luis Garcia Berlanga played a key role in bringing international attention to his country's cinema with the release of Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall (1952). The award-winning film featured a screenplay written by Berlanga and his former classmate from the Spanish Institute of Cinema (class of 1949), Juan Bardem, who went on to become one of Spain's most important directors. Born into a wealthy family, Berlanga was 18 when he was forced into the military to fight Russians alongside German soldiers with Spain's Blue Division. Had he refused to enlist, Berlanga's father, imprisoned Republican politician José Garcia Berlanga Pardo, would have been executed. Upon his discharge from the military, Berlanga studied philosophy in Valencia and later enrolled in film school. After graduation, he and Juan Bardem founded their own production company, Altamira. The two co-wrote and co-directed Esa Pareja Feliz (1951). A comedy in the popular neorealist manner, the film was panned and bankrupted Altamira. Berlanga and Bardem's more successful sophomore effort was produced through the Communist-run Union Industrial Cinematografica company, which Berlanga helped establish in 1949. By the mid-'50s, Berlanga's increasingly iconoclastic efforts placed him in disfavor with the Franco regime and his films were often censored. Still, Berlanga continued making quality films such as Placido (1961), for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Berlanga's most famous film, El Verdugo/The Executioner (1963), a black comedy about a reluctant executioner and his bride, was considered too political by censors and was heavily cut. His 1973 film Grandeur Nature/Life Size, a French-Spanish-Italian co-production, was banned in Spain until 1978. Life improved considerably for Berlanga after Franco's death. To celebrate, he created his popular "Nacional" trilogy (1978-1982), in which he satirized modern Spanish life; during this time, Berlanga also helmed the Filmoteca Española. In 1985, Berlanga took on the Spanish Civil War, offering a no-holds-barred look at what really occurred in La Vaquilla/The Cow. In the mid-'80s, Berlanga began editing a series of sexy novels. In 1994, after a seven-year absence from feature films, Berlanga returned with Todos a la Carcel.

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide