Carlos Saura died of respiratory failure in Madrid this Friday. With his death shortly after his 91st birthday – he celebrated it on January 4th – disappears the last classic of Spanish cinema, which since the rupture and the freedom with which he impregnated his very long filmography, has become a benchmark for the great European became auteur cinema. He was also an artist with such a curiosity about the different facets of life that his dry, powerful dramas, a line of exploration of human beings, emotional and social relationships, and family drives, began in Los Golfos (1960) and ended with El seventh day (2004), added his passion for musicals that would take him from Blood Wedding (1981) to El rey de todo el mundo (2021), from flamenco to Mexican music, although he also traveled through the Jota, tango, fado or Argentine folklore.
Tomorrow, Saturday, he would receive an honorary Goya, making it a posthumous award. The President of the Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite, justified the award: “For his extensive and highly personal creative contribution to the history of Spanish cinema from the late 1950s to the present day.” On February 3, Las paredes hablanda, his latest feature film, premiered , a robust documentary on the evolution of art on walls, from prehistoric caves to modern day graffiti. In doing so, he underscored the validity of the looks of a creator active for seven decades: he might not have been the most prolific filmmaker (although he never stopped working), but he was the longest-lived. His death was due to his breathing problems and the rapid decline in his health, which has been crippling after nearly 90 years of physical and mental strength since last year following a minor stroke and subsequent fall while walking his dogs at the end of the summer.
Elías Querejeta and Carlos Saura (right) follow the voting night of the general elections of June 15, 1977. CÉSAR LUCAS
At the end of confinement, in September 2020, Saura defined his talent: “Imagination. I’ve used my imagination to tell stories that I like and think others will enjoy. Then they don’t like her anyway, but what are you going to do, you’re not always right. Just the fact that they let you tell your own stories, take a step forward, that’s what I’ve been trying to do all my life.” Saura has watched a lot of films, “because that’s how I learn what I don’t want. What I do want; what am I going to do? I don’t know, I’m aware of what it isn’t,” and he defined himself as “a happy creature who’s directed about 50 movies and shot the movies that he wanted. And that’s a miracle.” Immersed in his own work, of course, away from social relationships and sometimes even from his own children (he had seven with four partners), as Félix Viscarret showed in the documentary Saura(s).
Carlos Saura, at his home in 2018 Samuel Sanchez
If one had to briefly summarize Spanish cinema, Saura would form the quartet of masters with Luis Buñuel, Luis García Berlanga and Pedro Almodóvar, the engines that have promoted national cinematography. At Saura’s house in Collado Mediano, in the mountains of Madrid, one of his passions, in addition to the countless photographs he has taken himself, is a portrait in which he can be seen with Buñuel, hugging and laughing. With Berlanga he not only shared decades of contemporary work, but also screenwriter Rafael Azcona, who was the one who included José Luis López Vázquez in Saura’s filmography.
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From the start, the director, screenwriter and author received recognition from critics, audiences and the major festivals: a Golden Bear for Fast, Fast and two Silver Bears for Best Director at the Berlinale; twice Grand Jury Prize in Cannes, where it participated in eight editions; Golden Clam of Honor of San Sebastián; three times nominated for an Oscar (twice for Spain and once for Argentina) … Of course he has won all kinds of recognition in Spain, from national cinematography to the gold medal of the film academy and merits in the visual arts. In March he received the Biznaga de Oro from Carla Simón at the Malaga Festival, bringing together the last two living Spaniards to win the Berlinale. And the same has happened outside as well, such as the European Film Academy Honorary Award, various honoris causa promotions and awards in various competitions throughout his career and life.
Carmen Maura and Andrés Pajares receive instruction from Carlos Saura on the set of “Ay, Carmela!” at the Teatro Lara in Madrid on October 25, 1989.
This life began on January 4, 1932 in Huesca. His father, a prosecutor, became secretary to the finance minister and for this reason the Saura family moved to Madrid and from there to Valencia and Barcelona to accompany the government of the republic during the civil war. Carlos Saura was the third of the four children of the marriage; The eldest son, Antonio, eventually became one of the most important Spanish painters of the 20th century. Some of the filmmaker’s first memories were of the turmoil of the Civil War, as he recalled last year when presenting the short film Rosa, rosae: “That priest, those bombings, those murders make me relate to the subject. With the film, I exorcised those memories. The civil war has not yet been adequately treated in the cinema. If anything, a little. Many of me speak of those years, true. But they are missing. My current fear is that this confrontation will happen again in Spain. Because of the conflicts that exist between the parties, because of the violence that is expressed verbally… It scares me. We didn’t learn anything.” From those years, he recalled the cry “The Light!” so the lightbulbs wouldn’t serve as a guide for snipers or enemy bombers. The phrase could be heard in his films Cousin Angelica and Sweet Hours, and gave one title of his novels He has also since that time confessed to the pain of distance from his family in his comings and goings (it was on one of those transfers to Barcelona that he discovered cinema by watching Walt Disney films) and how, after the When the war was over they sent him to Huesca with his grandmother and her aunts.”I never understood why the good guys became bad and the bad guys became good overnight.”
Carlos Saura and Rafael Azcona in disguise with José Luis López Vázquez in the Marco Ferreri film El cochecito (1960).
When the Sauras settled in Madrid in 1941, Carlos started going to the cinema a lot to see The Prince of Zenda, Lost Horizons and in general adventure films and films by Lana Turner and Loretta Young. It was also the time when another of his passions, photography, was born. He started photographing a girl he fell in love with at the age of nine and never stopped photographing. Carrying a camera around his neck his entire life, he kept an impressive collection of cameras at his home in the mountains, some of which he restored himself. For another hobby, painting, he also had felt-tip pens and pencils on hand. By mixing both arts, his “photo dinosaurs” were born. Of all these impulses he said: “I have a very strange profession: to do what I want. Except for a few years when circumstances have forced me to fulfill tasks that they have given me in life to take care of the children. But I like too many things. For example, I would have liked to play a musical instrument. It was not possible. My mother was a pianist. I like the cello. I consider music theory to be the only universal language there is.” A music lover, part of her filmography has focused on dance; In addition, he fitted the songs he liked into his fictional titles. “As time went by, I became interested in more and more things. This discrepancy, in which they sometimes criticize me now, is the opposite of what they accused me of during the Franco regime, when they told me that I was not starting from the same thing.
Director Carlos Saura (right) with Manolo Sanlúcar (left) and Paco de Lucía during the shooting of “Sevillanas” Santos Cirilo
He began his artistic career with photography. Saura achieved the position of Official Photographer of the Music and Dance Festival of Granada and the Santander Theater and exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid in November 1951 at the age of 19 and participated in group exhibitions of the group Tendencias with his brother Antonio. At that time he had already shot a 16-millimeter documentary about the San Isidro meadow and his relationship with Goya, which he never edited. He began studying industrial engineering, which he gave up shortly after, at his brother’s suggestion, to join the Madrid Institute of Cinematographic Research and Experiences (IIEC), where he received a degree in film directing. There he met Julio Diamante, Jesús Fernández Santos and Eugenio Martín and, as a student, attended the Salamanca Conversations in 1955, which turned Spanish cinema upside down. The following year he married Adela Medrano and in 1957, after graduating from the IIEC, traveled to Montpellier to meet Ibero-American filmmakers and thus discovered the cinema of Luis Buñuel. “The marks Buñuel’s work has left on me are permanent. It’s the first time I see the essence of our future cinema reflected on the big screen: humor, but an indirect, bitter humor without wit. […]; a deep love for those beings that society tends to reject and the struggle that Buñuel constantly wages against hypocrisy and lies”.
The year censorship ended in Spain, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher revolutionized the city with their European presentation of George Lukas’ Star Wars. The same edition, that of the year ’77, Luis Buñuel received the Golden Clam of Honor and closed the festival with “The Obscure Object of Desire.” Festival Archives
The documentary film Cuenca (1958) attracted attention with its prize at the Festival of San Sebastián, and his first feature film Los golfos (1960), shot when he was only 27 years old, produced by Pere Portabella and co-written by Mario Camus, reached an international peak with Cannes, where Saura personally met Buñuel. It’s also the beginning of his painful relationship with Franco’s censorship, which banned him from several screenplays, delayed the release of many of his films, and always had him in its sights. Three lengths later came La caza (1966), the beginning of his collaboration with producer Elías Querejeta and Oso de Plata for best director at the Berlin Festival. Saura admitted: “Some say it’s my best film. It’s okay, but I don’t think so. Sometimes I feel the need for violence to appear in my films, it depends on my mood. It is true that The Hunt can be seen as a metaphor for the Civil War. But the one that most closely matches this episode is Oh, Carmela!
Carlos Saura in his house in Collado Mediano with his favorite camera in 2020.BP
With Querejeta came powerful works such as Peppermint frappé (1967), El jardín de las delicias (1970) – kept by the censors for seven months -, Ana and the Wolves (1973), Cousin Angélica (1974) – censorship banned the screenplay twice , and on the third, and once filmed, six ministers saw him before giving him final approval, ‘Cría cuervos’ (1976) -his first solo screenplay-, Elisa, my life (1977), Mama turns 100 (1979) -sequel Ana and the Wolves – and Hurry Up (1981) – her openness to the problems of the youth of the time. It’s a great cinema that has no equal, with a dry, direct style, sometimes almost abstract and of course a faithful reflection and cartography of the ills that ailed Spain. It is also a period marked by his pairing with Geraldine Chaplin and the cementing of Saura as a myth of European cinema.
In 1981 he began his other great creative line in cinema, the musical, with Bodas de sangre: “Dancing gave me another dimension. The first film in that regard was Sevillanas… Elías Querejeta told me, “You made a brutal mistake. Watch what you do’. A Frenchman warned me: “Wow, Saura, are you doing a Spanish dance now? You are lost…’. There is something magical about dancing, especially flamenco. No dance in the world is so clear and distinct, especially with women: she raises her hands and there it is, in her fingers, the sky itself, the fluttering of the doves. From the waist down is the earth, Patapan, Patapan…I’ve studied this with gypsies all over the world, from Rajasthan to India…They went everywhere and adapted the music that was out there”. He would complete the trilogy with Antonio Gades with Carmen (1983) and El amor brujo (1986).
This is how Saura entered his most eclectic era, immersing himself in music such as sevillanas (1992), flamenco (1995) – where he began his collaboration with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who brings unity to the dances – or tango (1998). El Dorado (1988) joins the ranks at its premiere, the most expensive film in Spanish cinema, La noche oscura (1989) – on the other hand, an intimate film about Saint John of the Cross -, Oh, Carmela! (1990) – his return to co-writing with Azcona, a box office success and winner of 13 Goya Awards including direction and screenplay -, Shoot! (1993) – in which he began his relationship with the actress Eulalia Ramón, whom he married in 2006 and is the mother of his little daughter Anna -, Taxi (1996), Pajarico – with which he remembers his family in Murcia -, Goya in Bordeaux (1999) – a tribute to his admired painter -, Buñuel and King Solomon’s table (2001) – inspired by his beloved Buñuel and the atmosphere of the college dorm – or The Seventh Day (2004).
In addition, Saura has staged theatre, musicals and operas and his photographs have been featured in numerous exhibitions. Since 2004 his cinema has been eminently musical, with incursions into short films about the civil war and the world of Goya. His film grandchildren, creators like Carla Simón, Paco Plaza or Carlos Vermut, justify their work in a way that previous generations didn’t. In 2009, Saura pointed out to Diego Galán: “Mario Camus told me that it’s actually not so bad that in this country the work of others is cruelly criticized because you can’t fall asleep like that.”
“I like life in every moment; I rarely look back,” he said. And that explains why he’s one of the few masters of cinema who hasn’t made a Twilight movie, a career throwback, or a childhood throwback. He never faced death because dying was never in his plans. Saura is active with a TV series and a long project. As he wanted.
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