Luis García Berlanga: Plácido (1961)
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In a small Spanish town, a group of old ladies decide to celebrate Christmas Eve with a sit a poor man at your table dinner: each wealthy household of the town will have a homeless person dining with them that night. The celebrations also include a parade, and in it we find Plácido, the humble owner of a three-wheeler, whose family is forced to live in a public lavatory because of the lack of money to pay the rent, and who has to pay the second bill of his vehicle before midnight or else he will lose it.
This movie is a fresco very close to the truth, a wonder in every aspect, Plácido takes the central role, the gravitational axis, everyone is a cynic in this film, except Plácido, this trick makes everything works as Berlanga wants increasing the effect of desolation. Tragicomic in the same way as Chaplin and Rossellini.
Hypocrisy, always a favorite Berlanga target, is all over the place here, residing not only in the hearts and minds of the wealthy, but also in a middle-class full of silly verbal bromides, and in the poor, who, like all the rest, seem to have major trouble prioritizing. This ability to dole out responsibility to all who deserve it is one of the filmmaker's strengths, resulting in movies that are humane but rigorous.
Two parallel plots masterfully crafted, each one with its own logic; the story of a Christmas Eve full of hypocrisy, where nobody is innocent, neither the reach, nor the poor; on the other hand the story of Plácido who has to find the money to pay the bank draft till sunset, otherwise he looses his three-wheeler; both plots colliding all the time: each collision throwing the two stories in new directions; it's like a pool game; Berlanga is a f...king great master of the game; Christmas Eve celebrating the unity, as it should be, only it's a unity of arseholes; it's Arseholes of All Classes, Unite!
(Luis García Berlanga)
Labels: Berlanga
posted by Pierre Radulescu at
4:12 PM
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