The Filmoteca de Catalunya has launched a plan to digitize and restore its collections of Catalan cinema, with the collaboration of Escac. In the first phase they have worked with eight feature films and eight shorts, and the first feature to benefit has been A Clean Shot, by Francisco Pérez Dolz (1963), presented in February. An eminent sample of the Barcelona school of film noir, it revolves around a group of robbers vaguely inspired by the Sabaté and Facerías maquis, although ironing out their political background. After the screening at Filmoteca, it can be seen until April 10 on the institution’s Vimeo channel.
The second restored feature film is Los feliz 60, by Jaime Camino (also from 1963, although in color), which was screened on Tuesday. This is a curious production, which, according to what the director of the Filmoteca Esteve Riambau recalls, presents elements of the Italian cinema of solitary confinement, of the French nouvelle vague, and introduces pioneering elements of the other film school in Barcelona, ??the one close to the gauche divine de Aranda, Jordà, Nunes, Suárez, etc., but without fully agreeing with their approaches.
Camino (1936-2015) was one of the most outstanding Catalan filmmakers, consecrated with works such as Tomorrow will be another day, The long holidays of 36, The old memory or Dragon rapide. This his first film has been out of the loop for a long time. The title played with the echo of the “happy 20s”, at the beginning of a decade that it is not clear that it distributed happiness, but it did turn out to be transformative worldwide.
The Happy 60s tells the story of adultery, brief and unsatisfactory, of Mónica –a well-to-do thirty-year-old married with children who settles down to spend the summer in Cadaqués while her unpleasant husband remains in Barcelona working– with Víctor, an old doctor friend who has made a career in the US
She is played by Yelena Samarina, a Russian actress who made a career in Spain; Slender and enigmatic, she spends half a tape wearing brief shorts. He is the French filmmaker Jacques Doniol-Valcraze, who interprets without great expressiveness a character that in itself is no longer the height of passion.
Beyond this languidly dragging plot, The Happy 60s constitutes an attractive anthropological document of the Spain of the tourism boom, with traffic jams on the highway -where the silhouette of the yoke and arrows is occasionally glimpsed-, Flemish souvenir shops and bullfighting, crowded nightclubs and the usual contrast between natives of the area and young girls in bikinis, with a stopover at the always elegant La Gavina hostel.
Monica’s husband drives a Citroen Tiburon, she a Gordini. Along with the main couple there is a notable presence such as that of David Martín, one of the protagonists of Los tarantos, who here incorporates Pep, regent of the Marítim de Cadaqués, a kind of oracle who maintains a strong unresolved erotic tension with Mónica, while advertising slogans for Starlux broth and Profidén toothpaste sound on the local radio.
The then very popular comedian Joan Capri incorporates a plot seller, with dialogues specially written by his usual screenwriter Muntañola; According to Riambau, this episode separates the film from the beautician and exquisite school of the gauche divine, which would never have integrated anything like it (something so easy?).
Another actress with a comical eye, Lali Soldevila, is the leadiest member of the group of vacationers who lives the high life, between picnics in the coves with food prepared by the maids and snacks in front of the sea. Antonio de Senillosa, a future politician and co-producer of the film, appears discussing with Mónica’s husband whether it takes 2 hours 30 or 2 hours 40 to reach the coastal town from the center of Barcelona.
There are devastatingly obvious visual metaphors, like the foam of the raging sea after Mónica and Víctor’s first intimate encounter. And if the solid interiors of the houses in Cadaqués are reminiscent of the six decades that have elapsed since the filming, the informal wardrobe of the characters is so current that they could reappear at any chic party this summer without arousing suspicion.
The “happy”, modern and colorful 60s, so close and so far.
