El desencanto (1976)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Jaime Chávarri

Writer:

Jaime Chávarri (writer)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Plot:

This film is a documentary about the poet 'Leopoldo Panero'. His widow and his sons talk about death...

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Felicidad Blanc	...	Herself
Leopoldo María Panero	...	Himself
Juan Luis Panero	...	Himself
Michi Panero	...	Himself (as Mitzi Panero)

Also Known As:

The Disenchantment (International: English title)

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Black and White | Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas S.L.

Movie Connections:

References Chinatown (1974)

Soundtrack:

Piano Sonata, O-959

The art of building the fearest movie

Between all the terror films I think that El desencanto is the most horrible example. In fact this is one documentary; the best creative documentary of the spanish cinematographic history.

This is the second Jaime Chávarri's movie (an unknown director (except, maybe, in Argentina and Spain because of the popularity of his musical movie Las cosas del querer, with Angela Molina)), but we must to consider that this is a four-hands-made film because of the active cooperation between Chávarri and Querejeta, the producer of the documentary.

In this film we can find some of the harder scenes I've ever seen. The vampiric presence of Leopoldo Panero, who was dead eight years before the production of this movie about the Panero's family, marks absolutely the life of his widow and sons and, in another level, the public one's too. Leopoldo Panero, like Frankenstein, is hidden somewhere listening to his family's declarations and he is preparing to come back to put the things in "correct way".

Ricardo Franco, a good spanish director, tries to re-birth the "desencanto"'s spirit in a second part of this movie, but his documentary (which where produced twenty years after, when the widow were dead) didn't arrive to the unconscient perfection of the original film. Anywhere, Franco hadn't the art of building the fearest movie.