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Welcome Mr. Marshall! – 1953 Berlanga
- The debut film from Spanish auteur Luis García Berlanga
- Welcome Mr. Marshall! is made in the vein of Preston Sturges. An average small village in Spain prepares themselves for the arrival of American visitors—and comedy ensues
- 78-minutes that fly by, very low ASL- average shot length. It is like Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) in that way- Berlanga doesn’t let any one shot or scene linger
- Fernando Rey provides the hilarious voice-over narration. He even freezes the frame to stop time, changes the story and says “It’s easy- just like that”—Berlanga manipulating form – “I’ll introduce him later”. The narration introduces the inhabitants (Berlanga makes ensemble comedies about an entire community- so there are a lot of characters) and the setting – a dense, fast-moving opening nine minutes of narration.
- Witty- “old men remembering the harvest they never had”, a great reoccurring joke where the broken tower clock in the center of town is moved by hand (by a guy who is drinking)
- “Villar del Rio”- population 642”
- Berlanga takes on hypocrisy, skepticism of politics, war
- Back to back, three surrealism sequences of the leaders of the town “calm down” says Rey’s narration “it is only a dream”
- Recommend/ Highly Recommend border
Drake2021-03-16T14:12:48+00:00
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@Drake Hi, Drake! longtime reader of your site (I think I found it last year, when was I looking for best Monty Clift or Burt Lancaster performances). I want to compliment you on the website it’s very interesting and informative.
Although, I think we have pretty different approaches regarding the evaluation of movies, I respect your system and your argumentaion. Keep up the good work.)
@MadMike- thank you for coming to the site and for sharing this here. Much appreciated!