Film director Jaime de Armiñán dies at 97

2024-04-10 08:30:31

Jaime de Armiñán, director of fundamental works in the history of Spanish cinema such as My dear lady (1972), died this Tuesday at the age of 97, as confirmed elDiario.es. The funeral chapel will take place tomorrow, Thursday, April 11, from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Manuel de Falla Room of the Madrid headquarters of the SGAE. The filmmaker was nominated for an Oscar for what is his best-known work, written with José Luis Borau and which represented a revolution by dealing, even before Franco’s death, with a topic such as transsexuality thanks to a memorable character played. by José Luis López Vázquez. The film has remained an icon for the group and the fundamental title of a key moment for Spanish cinematography, which was beginning to challenge the regime and look to the future thanks to the work of directors such as Armiñán, Borau or Saura.

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The importance of My dear lady It is still felt today, and in fact, a few months ago, Netflix announced a new version produced by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, whose cast and director are still unknown. The Javis described it as a “wonderful” work and explained their intention to “fill in the gaps” left by that work that was ahead of its time and that thanks to social advances they will be able to explain.

Although My dear lady is his best-known work, Armiñán is much more than a filmmaker stuck to a single title. In his filmography other important films stand out such as Captain Brando’s love (1974), At the service of Spanish women (1978) o The nest (1980), starring Héctor Alterio and Ana Torrent and which was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. His first defeat at the Hollywood Film Academy Awards was against another Spaniard, Luis Buñuel, who would take the statuette to France thanks to The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie. In his second attempt, and despite facing Truffaut and Kuroswawa, it was the Soviet film Moscow does not believe in tears, by Vladimir Menshov, who took the award.

Armiñán, who competed three times for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, only achieved one Goya in his entire career, and it was the honorary one he received in 2014. Until then, only one nomination for the script adapted from The lame pigeon. When he received the statuette he left some moving words about how he understood his profession and his vocation. “A filmmaker never retires. Those who are like me cannot retire because we only do so when we go to the sad grave,” he said then.

Although he was known, above all, for his work as a filmmaker, he also wrote plays, novels, scripts for other filmmakers and for television (up to 650 works according to the Film Academy, including The day I was born, one of the few films starring Isabel Pantoja), as well as articles in various newspapers. Descended from a family of intellectuals, where there were journalists and writers, it seemed clear that Jaime de Armiñán would end up dedicating himself to writing. In fact, in an interview for the Academy, he remembered his teacher, and one of the founders of the Colegio Estudio, Carmen García del Diestro, as one of the fundamental figures in his education and in his future, who taught him “how to really write.” .

Since 1956 he was married to Elena Santonja, the actress, painter and known by all for being the host of a program that also made history on television, Caught red handed. They were together their entire lives until Santonja’s death in 2016, and they had three children, who also dedicated themselves to film and television. On the small screen he also worked writing an episode of First function or in series like Can?, one of his last works in 2004 and with Lina Morgan as a professional. It was on television where she left another of his most well-known and important works, the series Juncal (1988), starring his friend Paco Rabal.

However, Armiñán stood out among his favorite scripts for television, in addition to Juncal, those of Stories of frivolity, written with Narciso Ibáñez Serrador and with which they won the Montreux Grand Prix in 1968; and A national glorybased on his own grandmother’s story.