
José Vivó
1916 - 1989¡Bienvenido, Míster Marshall!
Luis García Berlanga
José Isbert, Lolita Sevilla
A small Spanish town, Villar del Río, is alerted to the upcoming visit of American diplomats and its ruling townsmen begin preparations to impress the American visitors, in the hopes of benefiting under the Marshall Plan. Hoping to demonstrate the side of Spanish culture with which the visiting foreign officials would be more familiarized, the Castilian citizens don unfamiliar Andalusian costumes, hire a renowned flamenco performer, and re-decorate their town in Andalusian style, meantime waiting for their uncertain arrival.
Welcome Mr. Marshall!
La colmena
Mario Camus
Ana Belén, Concha Velasco
As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.
The Beehive
The Cuenca Crime
Pilar Miró
Amparo Soler Leal, Héctor Alterio
Osa de la Vega, Cuenca, Spain, 1913. Gregorio and León, employees on the estate of the village's mayor, a powerful landowner, are arrested and accused of the murder of José María el Cepa, a shepherd who mysteriously disappeared three years earlier.
The Crime of Cuenca
La venganza de don Mendo
Fernando Fernán Gómez
Fernando Fernán Gómez, Paloma Valdés
Don Mendo, Marquess of Cabra, gallant and dashing knight of medieval Castilian, is also a virtuous mandoline player and a specialist in climbing towers. But he has a bad run, all played and all lost at seven-thirty (card game), and lost his honor playing in his latest escalation of love to the apartment of his beloved and beautiful Magdalena. Don Nuño Manso de Jarama, father of Magdalena, has pledged the hand of his daughter to the Duke of Toro, and surprises Don Mendo in the room of Magdalena. To save the honor of his beloved one, Don Mendo says that no love has led him to the Tower, but he has climbed to steal. Magdalena is clean of all suspicion, and he is condemned to die buried in the castle wall. The Marquess of Moncada and other noble gentlemen, all friends of Don Mendo, facilitate his escape.
La venganza de don Mendo
El Lute: camina o revienta
Vicente Aranda
Imanol Arias, Victoria Abril
In Spain of the 1960s, a poor family of quinquis - a nomadic ethnic group with a tradition as old as that of the gypsises of Spain but with even more obscure origins - have a nomadic life marked by poverty. The son, Eleuterio Sánchez Rodriguez, nicknamed "El Lute", steals some chickens and is condemned to six months in jail. El Lute moves to the slum outskirts of Madrid with his common law wife, Chelo, starting an itinerant life as a peddler of pots and pans and living in a quinqui shantytown. He gradually embarks upon as life of petty criminality, eventually participating in the theft of a jewelry store during which a bystander is killed.
Lute: Forge On or Die
El crimen del capitán Sánchez
Vicente Aranda
Victoria Abril, Fernando Guillén
Madrid, Spring 1913. During a visit to the casino, a beautiful 20 year-old woman catches the eye of a 50 year-old rich widower. But the gamble he is about to commit is far greater than he suspects.
El crimen del capitán Sánchez
La plaça del diamant
Francesc Betriu
Sílvia Munt, Lluís Homar
Colometa is an average housewife with two children to care for in the late 1930's, as the Spanish Civil War is starting and her husband goes off to fight. She had been an ordinary woman working in a shop when she met the lively carpenter who married her, and their life together was without major problems. But now she is forced to raise her children under straitened circumstances, and after her husband dies, her life undergoes another major change as she marries for the second time. Underneath Colometa's acquiescent, forebearing exterior must lie just a few discontents, a few unrealized dreams - but they never surface as she blithely moves from one episode in her life to another.
La plaça del diamant