Many years ago, José Luis López Vázquez was asked by his son if he could make a documentary about him, and the actor replied with an expression he used on numerous occasions: “What nonsense!” This is how the documentary of the same name by Roberto J. Oltra with the justification of his title and with a sharp underground reflection on the actor’s talent (because so much talent for comedy and drama in one person might seem almost nonsensical). Directed by José Luis López Magerus, the eldest son of the protagonist of Berlanga cinema, the great films of Saura, the masterpiece of Forqué, the tourist and Swedish genre, the best comedies with Gracita Morales, the guy George Cukor lead him to wanted Hollywood… In short, a retrospective, now available to watch on Movistar Plus+, of the life and work of the performer, whose 100th birthday was celebrated in 2022, a filmmaker (because it is undeniable that he gave the stamp of authorship in the films), whom Berlanga called “the artist of the Revolera” and defines José Sacristán on screen, impressed by his looks and his compositions, as “the damned López”.
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The effort of What nonsense! It is born of a son’s love for his father, an absent man feverishly devoted to his work. Although the actor admits in a late interview that he wished he could have a steady family for almost a lifetime, reality – or himself – took him down different paths, and he’s had multiple partners and love affairs throughout his life. López Magerus has become his father’s interlocutor, keeper of his memories and his work for love, not because his father told him to. The interpreter never lavished himself on grand speeches or confessions with his descendants; the latter, on the other hand, describes memories and stories of the myth of Spanish cinema with admirable and commendable skill.
On screen, the family material shines in the conversations between López Magerus and José Sacristán, who radiate intimacy and respect for the subject of conversation, as if reading a letter of intent left in writing by the sitter without easily breaking into tears. For this reason, the documentary serves both “to get to know him a little better,” emphasizes one of his daughters, and to portray “a wretched man,” according to the self-definition of the owner, “one of the most impressive looks that a camera has ever recorded,” says Sacristáns happy comment.
Luis García Berlanga with José Isbert and José Luis López Vázquez on the set of Los jueves, milagro in 1957. Basabe (Seville Municipal Photographic Library, ICAS-SAHP)
López Vázquez was unique in countless aspects. Like in your suitcases, for example. His son recalls always traveling with a plastic juicer to prepare his morning juice, a San Pancracio and a resistance to hot water in a glass for his teas. Likely echo of its humble origins. His mother, a seamstress in Madrid, decided not to marry her son’s father so as not to accompany him as a civil servant to his destination: the prison of Teruel. That is why López Vázquez is the product of his mother, a woman who was a fan of the cinema they went to together. Fernando Méndez-Leite, critic and President of the Spanish Film Academy, underscores his astonishing ability to work, his enormous register changes and the roots of his style in silent films. During the Civil War, A Night at the Opera was on the program on Madrid’s Gran Vía and López Vázquez saw it on countless occasions and became a staunch follower of the Groucho Marx church.
Carlos Saura and Rafael Azcona in disguise with José Luis López Vázquez in the Marco Ferreri film El cochecito (1960).
It may be that from Groucho Marx – whom he honored on screen on various occasions, such as The Little Scarf Games, Robbery at Three and even more explicitly in Operation Mata-Hari – he inherited this passion for the Mustache has come and gone throughout his career. Even something that Luis García Berlanga defined as characteristic of López Vázquez, the revolera with which he ended his sequences in the cinema, that bullfighting detail of the final adornment, from the bow to the gift, that Marx also practiced.
López Vázquez is the creation of several people and himself. If he succeeded, it was obviously due to his talent and willingness to work (he was able to do a film, a series and play theater at the same time, and this simultaneous work detracts from not his magic, as can be seen in Plácido, which he shot in Manresa, while in Barcelona he shot Cuidado con las personas formales at night), but his career as a costume designer (he drew exceptionally well) and as an assistant director crossed her ways with Enrique Herreros, who asked him to replace an extra in María Fernanda, la Jerez (1947), where she has her first eight seconds of fame; and later, already involved in the Classical Theater Company, Alberto Closas (who assisted him in the theater), Rafael Azcona (who understood that through him he could explain the Spanish human condition and who was the one who recommended him to Carlos Saura , after years of collaboration with Berlanga) and Luis García Berlanga, from whom he became a fetish actor and with whom he made 11 films. What nonsense!, talks about everything that finds its most inspiring moments in the love moments of his son López Magerus and in the numerous materials from the family archive.
José Luis López Vázquez, in “My Dear Young Lady”.
López Vázquez was touched on the screen by mythical phrases from Spanish cinema, such as “Fernando Galindo, a suitor, a friend, a slave, a servant” or “I am the son of Quintanilla, the one from the sawmills”, and with everything , his great weapon was his gaze. In Saura’s cinema (particularly in The Garden of Earthly Delights); in My Dear Lady by Jaime de Armiñán; in El bosque del wolf and It is not good that man is alone, both by Pedro Olea; In Antonio Mercero’s La Cabana, their gazes build universes. “He had a gift, but he didn’t systematize it or explain it,” they say. And that’s what made George Cukor fall in love, after having him in Viajes con mi aunt, he wanted to take it to Hollywood. “He met with a committee from Metro Goldwyn Mayer, who presented him with a blank check. My father got scared, he described himself as “lazy with words”. He returned, although he remained friends with Cukor,” recalls López Magerus. After all, he was 100% Spanish. As Luis Alegre points out, “He had in mind the grotesque tragicomedy of Spain.”
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