In his six decades of career, he X-rayed our complex idiosyncrasies in fifty films
With the death of Carlos Saura, Spanish cinema loses its patriarch. Died this Friday at the age of 91 in her house in the Madrid mountains due to respiratory failure, he leaves the profession that she so loved and elevated as an orphan. Her health was broken since she suffered a stroke and a fall last summer. She died hours before receiving in Seville the great tribute for the Goya of honor that her house was delivered to her days ago. Aragonés like Buñuel, Saura was the filmmaker who best x-rayed our complex idiosyncrasies with the alert and lucid critical eye that this Friday was closed forever. With Berlanga and Almodóvar he made up the trio of aces of our cinema.
His career spanning more than six decades is punctuated with crucial titles such as ‘La caza’, ‘Peppermint Frappé’, ‘Quick, quick’ or ‘Oh, Carmela!’. She leaves a legacy of almost fifty films made in an intense life, with seven children from four women. In love with the photo since childhood, Saura has died with his boots on. He continued taking photos and chaining projects, artistic, cinematographic and theatrical, at a frenetic pace.
The Film Academy deeply regrets to announce the death of Carlos Saura, Goya de Honor 2023. Saura, one of the fundamental filmmakers in the history of Spanish cinema, died today at his home at the age of 91, surrounded by his loved ones. pic.twitter.com/VJMJZYnzm7
— Film Academy (@Academiadecine) February 10, 2023
«My only legacy is my children, they have to have some of my DNA… Everything else is taken away by the wind. I don’t like to watch my films, I make them and I never see them again”, said a tireless and curious filmmaker whose relentless gaze explored our past and present like no one else, whether he talked about the conquest, the Civil War, the rottenness of the roots of the bourgeoisie and Francoism, of juvenile delinquency, of the essence of flamenco, of Goya, of the soul of the mystics or of deep Spain. His mastery shone in drama, comedy, documentary, set design, and theater direction.
early photographer
Carlos Saura Atarés was born in Huesca on January 4, 1932. At the age of seven, he stole his father’s camera to photograph the youngster he was in love with. After high school, he enrolled in the Technical School of Civil Engineers, which he dropped out to dedicate himself to photography. His expertise led him to exhibit at the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid and to work as a photographer at festivals in Granada and Santander.
Carlos Saura and his partner Geraldine Chaplin in 1974.
In 1952 he entered the Official School of Cinematography (EOC) and the School of Journalism, which he left to dedicate himself fully to cinema. Graduated in directing in 1957 with the short film ‘Tarde de domingo’, he also made the pieces ‘El tío vivo’ and ‘Pax’ at the school where he was a teacher and which he left in 1965 after failing to obtain a position. He was co-director and screenwriter of the shorts ‘La Chunga’, ‘Cuenca’, ‘Carta de Sanabria’, ‘Puertollano’ and collaborated on the script for the Mario Camus film ‘Muere una mujer’.
With ‘Los golfos’ (1959), a crude drama about the reality of the suburbs, he debuted as a feature director and continued with ‘Crying for a bandit’ (1963), again in collaboration with Camus. In 1965 he billed his first masterpiece, ‘La caza’, a film that changed Spanish cinema and won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival in 1966. With Elías Querejeta as producer, he signed an implacable x-ray of the sociological basis of Francoism, following three national ex-combatants accompanied by the young nephew of one of them on a hunting day in the desolate Castilian landscape.
Saura continued to be linked to Querejeta in titles such as ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, ‘Ana and the Wolves’, ‘Cousin Angélica’, ‘Cría cuervos’, ‘Elisa, my life’ and ‘Mama turns one hundred years’, acid and devastating portraits of the bourgeoisie anchored in an oppressive universe with which he explained the miseries of the Transition.
In the 80s, associated with the dancer Antonio Gades and the producer Emiliano Piedra, he explored his passion for music and flamenco with ‘Bodas de sangre’, ‘El amor brujo’ and ‘Carmen’, special jury prize at Cannes and nominated to the oscars They are sophisticated exercises in style that, with the magical photography of Vittorio Storaro, catapulted his international prestige. With uneven results he would do the same with tango, fados and jotas.
‘Hurry, hurry’ would give him the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1981 and ‘Sweet Hours’ (1981) and ‘Antoinette’ (1982) would return him to the top. ‘El Dorado’ (1988), with a budget of 1,000 million pesetas -the most expensive film in Spanish cinema at the time- was a fiasco. With ‘Ay Carmela’ (1990), based on the homonymous play by José Sanchís Sinesterra and performed by Carmen Maura and Andrés Pajares, he established himself in tragicomedy. It also competed for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and won 13 of the 21 Goyas, including directing and screenplay. ‘Shoot’, ‘Taxi’, ‘Pajarico’, ‘Goya in Bordeaux’, ‘Buñuel and King Solomon’s Table’ and ‘The Seventh Day’ complete his rich, uneven and miscellaneous filmography.
Carlos Saura and his daughter Anna at the 2021 San Sebastian Festival. /
Saura had two children with his first wife, Adela Medrano. Three children were born from his second marriage to Mercedes Pérez. He was linked to actress Geraldine Chaplin, with whom he had a son. His last partner was the also actress Eulalia Ramón, with whom he had his daughter Anna, to whom he dedicated ‘Pajarico’.
A three-time Oscar nominee, with a Golden Bear and two Silver Bears at the Berlinale, he twice won the jury prize at Cannes, where he competed eight times. He also received the Golden Shell of honor from San Sebastián. Honorary Award of the European Film Academy, he had the National Cinematography, the Gold Medal of the Academy and the Merit in Fine Arts. In March he received the Biznaga de Oro in Malaga from Carla Simón, bringing together the last two Spanish winners of the Berlinale.
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