When it comes to any sort of average, there is always a temptation of perceiving it as an allegory - especially if we are talking about an environment unfriendly towards freedom of speech like the Francoist Spain. Whether the double meaning is really intended, remains in question in case of pictures like
El Extraño Viaje by Fernando Fernan-Gomez, a film noir set in a small nameless town. The story of wickedness and perversion hiding under a façade of decency could be a hint to a bigger picture of what was happening, or could be just a capture of the twentieth century's uncertainty and paranoia found not only in Spain but elsewhere. However, in case of Luis García Berlanga's
¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall! (
Welcome Mister Marshall, 1952) a political message is certainly there.
 |
 |
How propaganda works: Villar del Río's inhabitants are
convinced of accepting the Marshall Plan in five minutes |
A classical satirical comedy dealing with the theme of Spanish identity,
¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall! was created in the middle of Franco's forty years reign. The infamous caudillo's regime was officially nationalist and conservative, although by the 1950s the censorship grew relatively weak - so the overtly left directors like Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem got an opportunity to make their films without really being afraid of any punitive action.
Bienvenido was the second of Berlanga's overall 21 films - by this time his style hadn't yet been elaborated and he hadn't yet met Rafael Azcona who would write the filmmaker's most successful oeuvre. However, as early as in his sophomore effort Berlanga ventured upon a critical comment on the very core element of the official agenda - Spanish nationalism.
Reactionary theorists tend to seek for a role model society in countryside communities, or rather in some non-exisiting idealized place called A Village. That is exactly where Berlanga heads for - an average locality of Villar del Río (literally, a village by the river): five or six streets, a plaza, a church, a cafeteria-cum-club-cum-mayor's office; bus connection to the provincial seat. Berlanga's films are known for having a choral quality, which means the frame is densely populated with characters in various social relationships with each other; these relationships are made clear through non-stop rapid dialogues. Even if there is a protagonist (which is not the case of
Bienvenido), it's not an individual character that is in focus but a society. Not to be confused with an indiscrete crowd - for one thing, each member of a society has his or her own distinctive role in it, and also one of Berlanga's talents was to make all his numerous characters easily distinguishable with a couple of characteristic traits. For this type of storytelling an isolated small community like Villar del Río is a perfect setting - in some eighty minutes of running time the whole social system of the place is outlined. This average village is also a model - not a role model of what Spain should be but rather a synecdoche of the whole nation, an epitome of what it really is.
 |
| McCarthyism as imagined by a Francoist |
The film starts of the reel - in five minutes or so we are introduced to the inhabitants of the village. A big event is announced by a local official - the arrival of American diplomats who enforce on the Spanish soil the so-called Marshall Plan - a program of humanitarian aid to post-WWII Europe and an early countermeasure to the increasing Soviet influence in the region (in fact, Spain never received a cent from the program). The rustic elite are at first reluctant but eventually grow enthusiastic, seduced by the transoceanic milk and honey promised to them. What begins as a light-hearted, maybe a little condescendent comedy about those loveable village folks, the salt of the Spanish earth, at some point turns out to be something quite the opposite. Behind the charming eccentricity of the village's cloth-eared alcalde, god-fearing priest and old-fashioned nobleman a dark side is revealed. The myth of the saint simplicity and purity is being destroyed little by little - you can't tell at which point the kindly irony gives way to bitterness, and the slight comic exaggeration, to a downright grotesque. (Berlanga would develop his skill of gradually turning things upside down in his later work - the most exemplary is
El Verdugo (1963), a screwball comedy sliding by the end into horror, Berlanga's trademark sequence shots acquiring the suspenseful feel of an undying nightmare.)
Not only the characters disapprove the idealistic image of true Spain by their actions and attitudes, they also deliberately fake this image to please the Americans. Enter a flamenco dancer and all other aspects of Andalusian exoticism: Villar del Río is transformed into a phoney southern village. Rundown houses are camouflaged under fake white walls and openwork ivied balconies, the villagers put on folk costumes and take guitars in their arms. The village is, in fact, by no means Andalusian - it's situated someplace in the central region of Castilia - but who cares anyway? Spain-ness thus is a construct - formed in many respects from the outside, as the villagers employ external stereotypes about Spain.
 |
| Yet another great performance by El Verdugo's José Isbert |
Nationalism also leads to isolation and subsequently to ignorance, and the residents of Villar del Río are as prejudiced about American culture as Americans presumably are about their own. The night before Mister Marshall arrives four leading characters are dreaming. This is the climax of
Bienvenido, as its grotesque reaches the highest point here. Alcalde's dream, for instance, is a parody of Western genre movies with all
Bienvenido's characters dressed as cowboys and speaking gibberish English. Meanwhile the cowardly padre who knows that most Americans are Protestant is having a nightmare about being captured by KKK and interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. What the poor fellow does not know is that HUAC and Marshall Plan he waits for so desperately are two links of the very same anti-communist chain. Political right knows few national differences.
