• 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