Getting to know director Alex de la Iglesia
Anarchic Spaniard earns retrospective
Alex de la Iglesia, it's a pleasure to meet you.
I know you've been making films for a couple of decades, but for all those who haven't been introduced to your work, "Alex de la Iglesia: Films and Inspirations," a retrospective beginning Wednesday at the Harvard Film Archive, will come as a revelation. I think you may be our most underappreciated Spanish import since Serrano ham.
Though there aren't enough filmgoers in the United States who can name a single de la Iglesia work, black-humored European box-office hits such as "Ferpect Crime" and "La Comunidad" are as good as anything we've ever applauded from Pedro Almodóvar. And how many directors also have the range to pull off a semi-serious horror movie ("The Day of the Beast"), a celebration of spaghetti westerns ("800 Bullets"), and a scathing send-up of show business ("Dying of Laughter") with equal aplomb?
The de la Iglesia stamp is an inside-out, outside-in perspective that produces broadly watchable films with meaningful attention to the lessons and craft of genre filmmaking. Anarchy is the norm in these creative visions. Each work expands the perceived borders of commercial cinema and each has its cavalcade of influences.
That's why the Harvard series is such an outstanding idea: Not only do we get to meet its 41-year-old centerpiece (he's scheduled to introduce a 7:30 p.m. screening on May 5) and view six of his best efforts, we also get to see a corresponding number of inspirations handpicked by the Bilbao-born artist from a list that includes Martin Scorsese, Roger Corman, Worcester native Samuel Fuller, and another underexposed Spanish giant, Luis Garcia Berlanga.
It's hard to choose a favorite pairing, but since "La Comunidad" is my idea of a near-perfect macabre farce, its May 5 showing would be a leading recommendation even if it wasn't followed that same night by Berlanga's Oscar-nominated "Placido."
"La Comunidad" ("Common Wealth") stars Almodóvar veteran Carmen Maura as a real estate agent who enrages her new neighbors when she moves in on their plans to extract hidden riches from the apartment of a fellow tenant who's just died. As always, Maura is invincible; there's nothing she can't make entertaining. And de la Iglesia gives her so much to play with in this escalating, Hitchcockian riff on greed (co-written by frequent collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarria) that you almost believe she's capable of scaling a skyscraper without losing her grip on a suitcase full of cash.
"Placido" (1961) takes a less extreme but similarly bleak and satirical route to the conclusion that money isn't everything. It centers on a truck driver whose vehicle is about to be repossessed, which seems tragic until he meets some truly impoverished people. Berlanga's hallmark crowd shots reverberate in many ensemble movies; de la Iglesia is clearly a fan.
In "The Day of the Beast" (screening May 4), de la Iglesia borrows from Berlanga's most well-known effort, "El Verdugo" (a.k.a. "Not on Your Life," screening May 1), to make his own subversive statement about assuming personal responsibility in the battle against evil, be it supernatural or manmade. "El Verdugo" is considered one of Spain's most significant movies. Politically charged and highly controversial when it was released in 1963, it centers on the moral dilemma of a meek man who marries into the position of executioner.
Apocalyptic horror thriller "The Day of the Beast" is the story of a priest (Alex Angulo) who predicts the birth of the Antichrist, then embarks on radical mission to find and destroy it. It's a mostly convincing, eye-popping romp (de la Iglesia started as an art director) with spot-on performances -- particularly by Santiago Segura as a metal head and Armando de Razza as a TV psychic -- as well as courage, humor, and all-important soul.
If 1995's "Day of the Beast" at least brought de la Iglesia a devoted cult following in the US, 2004's genre-bending "Ferpect Crime" (a.k.a. "El Crimen Perfecto") should have made him a household word. For those who missed its short run at the Kendall Square Cinema in late 2005, the film (screening May 7 and 8) is outrageous, impressively styled, and thoroughly hilarious. Its farcical script hangs on an ambitious department store salesman (Guillermo Toledo) who is such a player that he feeds and beds co-workers in the showroom after hours. He thinks he's invincible until it all starts to unravel, the same way it did for Vincent Price's decadent Prince Prospero in Corman's 1964 interpretation of "The Masque of the Red Death" (May 7).
Both films delight in turning the tables on abusers of power. "Ferpect Crime" dethrones its protagonist with an accidental murder instead of a plague, but the fall is just as shocking. And de la Iglesia adds another layer of humiliation by letting his homeliest store clerk (Monica Cervera) steal every scene.
Cervera is a relative newcomer to de la Iglesia's regular cast rotation. His players generally operate more like a theater company, lending the same faces to numerous productions. "Perdita Durango" (screening Friday) is the rare exception, a director-for-hire work that is by most accounts a disturbing, disjointed road adventure based on a Barry Gifford novel and starring Javier Bardem and Rosie Perez. This film wasn't available for pre-screening, but I can tell you that its designated inspiration, Fuller's "Shock Corridor" from 1963 (showing Wednesday), has its own unnerving quality, perhaps increasing the giggles it will provoke with its dated depiction of a journalist faking insanity to investigate murder in an asylum.
Returning to more typical de la Iglesia fare, "800 Bullets" features enough of his regulars to populate an entire faux Wild West town, and the director takes full advantage of the sum of their talents. "800 Bullets" is the story of stuntmen who fight back when developers threaten to shut down their tired theme park. It's also a touching tale of a runaway boy in search of his patriarchal heritage, and above all it's an astute homage for fans of the spaghetti western.
De la Iglesia points to Berlanga's neo-realistic "Bienvenido Mister Marshall" as an inspiration. That 1953 film, about a struggling Spanish village that puts on an elaborate facade to attract American dollars, is especially echoed in sequences where the community mobilizes. Both rousing pictures screen on May 6, giving you good reason to miss "The Sopranos."
An even better reason, though, is next Sunday's double bill of de la Iglesia's "Dying of Laughter" and Scorsese's "The King of Comedy." The latter is a 1983 hoot that not only exhibits the handiwork of editor Thelma Schoonmaker, but also features the memorably loony breakthrough of Sandra Bernhard. Robert De Niro stars as delusional wannabe stand-up comic Rupert Pupkin, who teams with Bernhard's character to kidnap a prickly late-night TV talk-show host played by Jerry Lewis. Rupert is only after his allotted minutes of on-camera fame, and as he says, "A guy can get anything he wants as long as he pays the price."
Well, "Dying of Laughter" is all about the price.
De la Iglesia's tragicomedy references Scorsese right down to its loud menswear, but his film delves into a deeper, more disturbing brand of psychosis as it examines the violent implosion of a Martin and Lewis-style comic duo played by Segura and El Gran Wyoming.
In the end, both movies are a testament to individual will and passions that endure. Scorsese may be de la Iglesia's perfect inspiration. He knows that sometimes it takes Americans, especially ones named Oscar, a very long time to come around.
Janice Page can be reached at jpage@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog. 