Buñuel left, Berlanga left, Bardem left. And we were left with Saura, the greatest of the last filmmakers of our time who contributed to forging the essence of Spanish cinema during the most difficult stage of our recent history, during the dictatorship and the transition until reaching our present. Carlos Saura never stopped filming and creating, going from one side to the other with his camera, with which he portrayed the world around him as if it were an appendage of himself. Carlos Saura the intrepid, Carlos Saura the music lover, Carlos Saura the curious. Everything surprised him and everything drew juice. Carlos Saura, the film director.
Born in Huesca in 1932, he began his industrial engineering studies, but changed them to enter the Institute of Cinematographic Research and Experience in Madrid. In 1952, he made his first short film, La tarde del domingo, which was followed by the documentary Cuenca and in 1960 he premiered Los golfos, a seminal work that connected directly with Italian neorealism transferred to Spanish reality. But it was La caza the film that catapulted him to success just five years later. How to best represent the Spanish Civil War without talking about it only through an allegorical point of view?
The hunt continues to be one of the cornerstones of the history of our cinema. But Carlos Saura was not the author of a single work, that was only the beginning to develop a varied and radical trajectory, brave and full of symbols that did nothing more than challenge the reality of the moment.
The relationship with the producer Elías Querejeta was fundamental for his career. Both shaped the modernity of Spanish cinema and managed to take it abroad at a particularly difficult time. La caza won the Silver Bear in Berlin and Peppermint Frappé won the award for best director, which would be completed with the Golden Bear in 1981 for Deprisa, with which he radically changed his style and approached in quinqui cinema from a perspective as realistic as poetic. For many years, he was also the only Spanish director to enter the Cannes festival, where he won the Jury Prize for La prima Angélica and Cría cuervos.
Saura used the metaphor to talk about Franco’s repression, about historical memory, about the emptiness that his generation suffered and took it upon himself to x-ray all the ills of our society through a symbolic style, but at the same time raw and repulsive, combative
In 1981, a new stage would begin that would lead him to investigate a large part of musical genres with Latin roots, with a trilogy dedicated to Antonio Gades (Blood Weddings, El amor brujo) or other pieces such as Iberia or Tango.
With Ay Carmela!, starring Carmen Maura and Andrés Pajares, he was recognized by the Spanish Film Academy, receiving 13 Goyas. Precisely this Saturday the director had to collect the honorary award for his entire career.