When the authoritarian Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, he unleashed a great wave of artistic and literary creation in Spain, a wave which continues to this day. Nowhere was this more evident than in movies, and none among the movie directors has presented such a strong fund of creative work than has Carlos Saura. Born into an artistic and musical family in 1932, Saura was only four years old when Franco seized power at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

He created his first film in 1957, Cuenca, at the age of twenty-five, and a new graduate of the Madrid Institute of Film Research and Studies. Eight years later he presented La Caza, which won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Since then he has continued a career of almost phenomenal productivity, releasing forty one films in fifty one years. His films have won a string of international awards, including prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, a nomination for an Oscar and the prestigious Goya Award. In 2008 he was honored with the Global Lifetime Award at the Mumbai International Film Festival.

For flamenco aficionados, he is certainly best known for his several works related to flamenco. The first of these was Bodas de Sangre, (Blood Wedding) based upon the play of the same name by Federico Garcia Lorca, which was released in 1981. This was followed by Carmen in 1983, and by El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician) in 1986. These were all made with the collaboration of Christina Hoyos and Antonio Gadés, who were at that time, Principal Dancer and Artistic Director of the Ballet National de España, respectively. These three productions are often referred to as the Flamenco Trilogy.

Bodas de Sangre and Carmen are dramatic pieces structured around the frame that Antonio Gadés and his company of dancers are rehearsing a flamenco style ballet which tells the story of first the Lorca play and second the Bizet Opera. In the latter case the story sometimes goes back to the source material for the opera; the novella of Prosper Merimée. In both cases the ‘reality’ which is presented slips back and forth, from the source material of the rehearsal, to the experiences of the protagonists. When each story ends with an act of violence, one is uncertain whether the violence was committed on the character in the story, or the character in the rehearsal studio.

El Amor Brujo is based on an extension of the much shorter ballet composition by Manuel de Falla, who spent much of his working life in Paris and was an associate of Stravinsky and Boulez. Although he chose to work as a classical composer, he remained deeply rooted in the flamenco culture of his native Cadiz. In the case of the film, there is only one level of theatricality, and we know that the act of violence is solely an act of theatre.

These acts of violence, in each case a homicide by knife, are in fact troubling. They were a cliché at the time, both in literature and theatre concerning gitanos. It is the central drama of the celebrated film Los Tarantos, with Carmen Amaya (and also the young Antonio Gadés) in which both the protagonists are murdered. It occurs in the standard English language work on flamenco; Don Pohren’s The Art of Flamenco, and it occurs in several twentieth century accounts of life among gitanos. If the accounts represented a general truth, the gitanos would have become extinct by now. The gitano I have known best did indeed carry a small folding knife, which he used to take cuttings of one of my fuschias, which he then planted. They grew well and many are still growing in my yard.

The three movies of the Flamenco Trilogy – probably did more to increase the awareness of flamenco around the world than anything else had done in the preceding years, although many who were already aficionados pointed out the neither the dance nor the music was true flamenco; in the case of Carmen, the music was based on Bizet’s opera (although much enhanced by music director Paco de Lucia), in the case of El Amor Brujo the music was Manuel de Falla’s and in the case of Bodas de Sangre it was an original score by Emilio de Diego.

A few years after the completion of The Flamenco Trilogy Saura produced two movies which could not be challenged for a lack of authenticity: Sevillanas (1982) and Flamenco (1995). The former explores the many and variable styles of Sevillanas, from the simple social dance of the gitano communities in the Province of Sevilla, to the high styled and pretentious performance of Matilde Coral, to the lute and ballet slippers of the Escuela Bolera, and the more genuine social dance form explored by Rocio Jurado. The second film does something similar for flamenco, from the root forms of a family fiesta to the jazz-flamenco fusion of Manolo Sanlucar

Some have described these as documentaries, which they are not quite. Each performance has been staged and rehearsed especially for the movie, and the settings are entirely a creation of the director. Flamenco is staged in the former railroad station in Sevilla, which was rendered obsolete when the new station was built for the World’s Fair of 1992. The director makes sure that, in the final scene we can hear the street noises of Sevilla as we fade from performance to reality. The stage set is plain, and in the case of Flamenco, relies upon dramatic use of plain white partitions, mirrors, shadows and great orange suns, which Saura will use again.

Saura begins each of these movies with an homage to the roots of flamenco. In the case of Sevillanas, this is a performance by a gitano family-style group which includes some dancers who are old enough that walking is a challenge, let alone dancing. In the case of Flamenco this is again a (staged) performance by gitanos who are still wearing their go-to-supermarket clothes. From there he takes us to heavily theatrical performances, and in the case of Flamenco, to performances which are of the flamenco-jazz-fusion genre.

In 2005 Saura released the movie Iberia. Here, purists will argue that this is not a flamenco movie. Although many of the dancers are well known to aficionados, notably Sara Baras and Aida Gomez, and the musicians and singers include some of the best known flamenco names, the music is largely the Iberia Suite by Isaac Albéniz, and the dance style is probably best described as flamenco-influenced modern ballet.. But, then, in the piece entitled Torre Bermeja Saura suddenly goes back to flamenco roots with a striking performance by Manloco Sanlucar on guitar, and with a charming and somehow menacing performance by four rather large tias gitanas from La Familia de Antonio el Pipa, a performance which leaves its memory with us long after the images fade.. The movie ends with a group of mostly amateur dancers, varying in age from ten to seventy doing a highly choreographed Sevillanas. The piece is directed by Aida Gomez, and it ends in a pas de deux between Aida and a male dancer in a rainstorm which is certainly the sexiest Sevillanas ever.

These six movies illustrate the fact that flamenco today is no longer just the flamenco puro of the peña and the tablao, not even that of the theatrical cuadro, but it has been expanding for decades into the world of ballet, modern dance and classical music. Not always successfully to be sure, but like it or not, that’s where it’s going. We can hope that it never loses it’s roots however, and Carlos Saura has done well to keep reminding us of those.

March 2009

Sources:
Wikipedia; Carlos Saura,
http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/saura/home.htm

DVD's of Saura's Flamenco movies are available at:
http://www.flamencoexport.co in PAL format only. Netflix has the Flamenco Trilogy for rent.