“There is only one genius in Spanish cinema, and that is Rafael Azcona,” said Oscar winner Fernando Trueba.
With the screening of “Belle Époque,” for which Trueba won an Academy Award and Azcona co-starred, this week’s New York showcase “To Goya – New Spanish Cinema” provides a rare opportunity to shine a light on a figure who has shaped Spanish cinema, past and present, but is little known in the United States.
The event was organized by Spain’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, ICAA Film Agency and ICEX Export Trade and Investment Commission in a year when ICEX seeks to spotlight Spanish talent through the campaign “Where Talent Ignites – Spain Audiovisual in Spain”. But what was Ascona’s?
France has New Wave and Italy has Neorealism. If Spain has a real film tradition, it is Azcona, who co-wrote Italian Marco Ferreri’s The Little Apartment (1958) and El Cochesito (1960) (both based on Azcona’s novels). It was partially built on by Luis Berlanga’s Spanish films Placido (1961) and The Executioner (1963), the latter of which was acclaimed by critics and Film Affinity. Voters voted it the best Spanish film of all time.
Made in the late 1950s, when Spanish cinema was falling into the thrall of neorealism, the film brought a new acerbity to the mix, reflecting the esperpent black humor of Spanish cinema. Its creator Ramon del Valle-Inclan famously claimed that “Spain is a variant of Europe.”
With Spain still in the ravages of a disastrous Civil War, the hard-edged, dark comic book sought a departure from the myth of material progress peddled by Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, which ruled Spain.
Characters fight to acquire basic symbols of the American dream, such as an apartment (“The Little Apartment,” “The Executioner”) or some form of car (“El Cochecito,” “Placido”). They fail, and they fail ridiculously. In The Executioner, a flurry of coincidences, mishaps, confusion, and compromises finds mild-mannered José Luis from being caught in bed with the daughter of Spain’s national executioner to being dragged into the execution chamber as Spain’s new official executioner, scouring the world as if he is about to be executed.
With this hard-edged neorealist comedy, Ascona, Berlanga, and Ferreri brilliantly highlight the fundamental lack and oppression of the society Franco created.
Some of this was reflected decades later in Belle Époque (1992), written by the Azcona leader with Fernando Trueba and José Luis García Sánchez. It begins in 1930 with a young Fernando deserting from the Spanish army and wandering the countryside trying to live his life. He was quickly arrested and handcuffed by two private security guards. Its main character is Manolo, an old freethinker.
For Ascona, his best films ended in suicide, say director David Trueba and his close friends. Belle Époque is bookended by two books.
It’s also a comedy of frustration. Fernando falls in love with each of Manolo’s four daughters, but the first three reject long-term relationships after having sex once. He marries Luz, played by 18-year-old Penelope Cruz. He leaves for America in pursuit of another myth: the American Dream.
What else did Azcona bring to the table? He made himself into an agent provocateur, saying, “I have nothing to say. I’m just initiating or complicit in something that someone else will end.” But the directors he worked with asked for a different opinion. “We were united by a common pessimism about society and its misery, about how it cannibalizes individuals and liquidates all freedoms and dreams,” Luis Berlanga wrote in the Spanish newspaper ABC on March 26, 2008, two days after Azcona’s death.
“But I was always indecisive and never satisfied. He was a business brain with a skill for creating perfect structures packed with wit and humour,” Berlanga admitted.
For “Belle Époque,” Trueba, Azcona and José Luis García Sánchez met for lunch over 18 months to discuss character stories and sequences. “One day, he pulled out a little notebook. If you were working with Azcona, that was a big moment,” Trueba recalled in Fernando Olmeda’s 2010 RTVE documentary, “Impressive Diables: Rafael Azcona.”
It’s all about the structure of Belle Époque. There is also a bright ending in which Fernando gets his girlfriend. But the real ending is much more benign. Manolo’s daughters, his wife, and Fernando, now Manolo’s good friend, all abandon him. The film plunges him into almost complete solitude.
“What we have to learn from Rafael Azcona is to look at human beings with humor and compassion,” says Fernando Trueba in Impressindibles.
Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Azcona lived in Madrid with his wife Susan Udelman and children Daniel and Barbara (he was a devoted family man), but worked in Italy, including co-writing the script for Ferreri’s biggest scandal and commercial success, La Grande Boeuf. In this work, four middle-aged men suffering from ennui come together and literally eat themselves to death.
Azcona wrote seven of Carlos Saura’s films. They had some hilarious moments. For example, in “My Cousin Angelica” (1974), the protagonist’s uncle returns from an injury sustained in the Spanish Civil War wearing a Fascist Falange uniform, with his arm permanently fixed in a cast at the angle of a Fascist salute. Spain’s hardcore Francoist right was furious. The Balmes cinema in Barcelona was hit by a bomb attack. As critic Diego Galán pointed out, the film’s huge box office success (25 million pesetas by September 1974) was a vote for Spanish cinema for change in Spain.
Azcona wrote two excellent films with Jose Luis Cuerda: “The Enchanted Forest” (1987) and “Butterfly” (1999). Dream Girl (1998), directed by Fernando Trueba and co-written with David Trueba, Manuel Ángel Egea, and Carlos López, gave Penélope Cruz her first full starring role.
However, Ascona remains unknown in the United States. I must say that he was very cowardly. A video clip of Azcona winning Spain’s National Cinematography Award in 1982 shows him smartly walking up to a table of dignitaries and shaking everyone’s hands very politely, but as quickly as possible, as if he were infected with some strange virus. Clutching his diploma, he made his way back to the bleachers without any trouble.
Azcona did not attend the ceremony for the five Goya Awards, which he jointly won for screenplay.
There are very few photos of him. Variety has obtained a snapshot taken by his wife, Susan Yudelman, on their terrace while attending a screening of “Belle Époque” in New York.
Moreover, in private, Ascona was a different man. Of course, not going out at night gave me more time to recover from lunch and write better in the morning. For this writer, two of the best hours of his life were spent drinking dry martinis with Rafael Azcona.
He burst into laughter and delivered deep lines with insistent self-deprecating humor. The playwright, who is perhaps the most Spanish, had the impression of a southern European English gentleman for whom the social obligations of the dinner table and drinks were something of great value in a very English sense: great fun.
“What saves us from the bitterness of life and the waiting state of death is the possibility of having a little laugh at ourselves and our problems,” Azcona once said in a limited number of interviews.
While having lunch with Fernando Trueba and José Luis García Sánchez, Rafael said, “We laugh so much that people pay attention to us. Why don’t we pretend we’re working and write a script for fun? Do you have any ideas?”
Variety spoke with Goya Award-winning writer/director and novelist David Trueba (“Life Is Easy With Your Eyes Closed”), who has come to know Azcona well.
I first learned about Ascona when I was young.
I met him when he made his first film, “El año de las luces” (1986), with his brother Fernando. It was a coincidence. I was probably 15 years old and Rafael was already a legend. His face: He did not give interviews or appear in the press. But to movie fans and those of us trying to make movies, he was a legend. So one day, when I went to see my brother, I found Rafael Azcona in Fernando’s study. “David, this is Rafael Azcona,” Fernando said. And I just said: “Wow!!!”
How did Raphael react?
I remember it perfectly. Raphael said, “I hear you want to be a writer.” And I said, “Yes, screenplays and novels.” And he said, “You don’t just have to write the screenplay. You have to direct, too. Or you become a novelist. Otherwise, you’re a total failure. I’m a total failure.” And I said, “I’m a total failure.” “You may be annoyed, but you’re the maestro to all of us.” And he said, “You may be annoyed, but you’re the maestro to all of us.” “I’m not so sure.”
You became his biggest fan…
yes. When “The Year of Enlightenment” was released, one of the most critical reviews, although generally very good, was against Azcona’s script. It seems a little ridiculous now, but at the time, Raphael had his detractors. So I decided, you know how I was then, that I was going to give my body and soul to get Ascona back. Because for me he was one of the fundamental elements of Spanish cinema in the second half of the century. And I remember when I started writing the movie, I would mention his name in every interview and say, “I may write good or bad, but (always) worse than Azcona.” But the phrase “worse than Azcona” became very popular.
And Raphael’s reaction?
He laughed out loud at my compliment. But then he always had a good laugh. He laughed a lot. Although he could play things on the harp, he would often burst into laughter and make others burst into laughter. He was also a very attractive person. And I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch with him every week, and it was like going to college.
You staged a conversation with him in 2007’s “Rafael Azcona: Oficio de Guionista,” in which he typically claimed that the respect he earned was due to his longevity. Have you ever wanted to do something bigger?
This was a 30-minute news report commissioned by Spain’s Canal+. (Journalist) Luis Alegre and I once suggested to Rafael that he make a feature-length documentary along the lines of La Silla de Fernando, a portrait of the great Spanish actor and director Fernando Fernán Gómez. He loved the movie, but said that he was very shy and shy, and that as an actor Fernan Gomez did a great job, but he didn’t.
And what did Rafael bring to the script? He said he was just a collaborator…
That’s exactly Raphael. He was well aware that his work was a collaborative effort carried out in cooperation with the director. He understood it clearly. What interested him was the director’s imagination. But his own personality still shined through. He had an overwhelming personality, richness, and a wealth of anecdotes that spread throughout the film. It is enough to compare Berlanga’s first film with the one he wrote with Ascona. It’s almost immersed in Kavkian darkness, and far less of the gory humor of Berlanga’s first film. More Franz Kafka than Frank Capra.
However, “Belle Époque” is in many ways a bright film, the scenes are illuminated by the spirit of Jean Renoir…
His older brother Fernando also has a big personality and had a very good relationship with Rafael, giving him the possibility to work on more hopeful and brighter films. The other directors he wrote with in the later years of his career, José Luis Cuerda and José Luis García Sánchez, were also younger than him, and they also endowed him with a certain kind of warmth and brightness.
And how was Belle Époque written?
This work was written by Fernando, Rafael and José Luis García Sánchez during a lunch at Casa Benigna and Pedro Muguruza El Fronton. Rafael contained many things, but Fernando also limited many other things. Although they sometimes disagreed and Fernando guided him, they worked together very well. However, in terms of credits, since Rafael wrote the scenes and the final version, it was decided that José Luis and Fernando would take story credit and only Rafael would be credited as screenwriter.
And what kind of person was Raphael?
He looked at life with a kind of bitterness. The ideal ending of Rafael’s scripts is the protagonist’s suicide, and he achieved this in quite a few of his films. In this sense, he shared something with Kafka and with Jewish-Central European humor, which had a certain tragic quality.
But with his friends?
Among his friends, he was a very good conversationalist. At lunchtime or just after. He loved eating, drinking, friendship, and listening to people’s stories. I remember he would always show me his bus pass that he got when he was 65 and say, “You know what? “This is great. You’ll hear the best lines on the bus.”
