Like "Bienvenido Mr Marshall", this film earns its keep first of all by being wickedly funny, an achievement that once again depends partly on the director's gift for distilling his somewhat baleful observation of Spanish society into a series of deft, economical verbal and visual gags and tableaux, and partly on the talents of the unforgettable Jose Isbert, who plays, with variations, his inherited role as an apparently humourless old man to whom hilarious situations just casually adhere as he muddles through life. In "Mr Marshall" a sly rascal with a curiously intermittent hearing problem, here he acquires a touch of the wry reflectiveness of the old man whose profession condemns him to virtual social ostracism, who can invite his future son-in-law to "here, put your fingers into this light socket" with all the casual gentility of someone offering a top-up to a glass of sherry.
Next to him, and reaching over from comedy towards understated tragedy, Nino Manfredi turns in a flawless performance as the young man who dreams of going to Germany to learn the trade of mechanic, but gets prodded and browbeaten into a hasty marriage, then into accepting the title and benefits of a job he hopes never to have to perform, and then... The way this progression is conveyed is masterly: while he's clearly (and fatally) manipulable (esp. by his wife), we are never for a moment allowed to dismiss, or laugh at, his character as a simpleton, even though we may laugh with uneasy recognition at his clumsy attempts at courtship (distilled in an EXT scene where he first cleans the dog-dirt from his shoe, then invites his beloved to dance, then gets shouted at for "using up someone else's music" and ends up having to provide the music himself by whistling). He is, we decide, a decent human being who mostly tries to stay out of trouble and do the right thing for himself, his wife and future offspring - the true guilt lies elsewhere. The obscure tragedy we see happening is of a man being gradually and remorselessly deprived of his values and self-respect before he's even had time to become fully aware of them or decide how important they are to him. The implied social criticism leading on from that (throttled back, as always, to get past the censors) is fairly obvious.
Which leads us to those astonishing final scenes: the fairylit grotto in Palma de Mallorca where a largely tourist audience wait expectantly for some watery spectacle to occur, only to see a surreal tricorned Civil Guard drifting through in a boat and calling out to Manfredi's "Jose Luis Rodriguez" in a stentorian, megaphone-amplified "whisper"; then the scene in which we are offered a crane shot of an unfurnished prison yard with a door in the far corner, towards which we watch Jose Luis being hustled or dragged, weakly protesting, by a mixed contingent of priest and guards, very much as if he himself were the condemned prisoner. There's something so allusively haunting about that shot - whether it's the poignant detail of the dropped hat, whether the stuffing of a fat group of black-clothed people through a narrow door inspires Biblical reminiscences or suggests a birth in reverse - that it alone propels this film into some pretty select company in terms of artistic greatness. But, again like Mr Marshall, this film is so packed with visual and verbal gems that it would take a book, and several dozen viewings, to come anywhere near doing it justice.
Next to him, and reaching over from comedy towards understated tragedy, Nino Manfredi turns in a flawless performance as the young man who dreams of going to Germany to learn the trade of mechanic, but gets prodded and browbeaten into a hasty marriage, then into accepting the title and benefits of a job he hopes never to have to perform, and then... The way this progression is conveyed is masterly: while he's clearly (and fatally) manipulable (esp. by his wife), we are never for a moment allowed to dismiss, or laugh at, his character as a simpleton, even though we may laugh with uneasy recognition at his clumsy attempts at courtship (distilled in an EXT scene where he first cleans the dog-dirt from his shoe, then invites his beloved to dance, then gets shouted at for "using up someone else's music" and ends up having to provide the music himself by whistling). He is, we decide, a decent human being who mostly tries to stay out of trouble and do the right thing for himself, his wife and future offspring - the true guilt lies elsewhere. The obscure tragedy we see happening is of a man being gradually and remorselessly deprived of his values and self-respect before he's even had time to become fully aware of them or decide how important they are to him. The implied social criticism leading on from that (throttled back, as always, to get past the censors) is fairly obvious.
Which leads us to those astonishing final scenes: the fairylit grotto in Palma de Mallorca where a largely tourist audience wait expectantly for some watery spectacle to occur, only to see a surreal tricorned Civil Guard drifting through in a boat and calling out to Manfredi's "Jose Luis Rodriguez" in a stentorian, megaphone-amplified "whisper"; then the scene in which we are offered a crane shot of an unfurnished prison yard with a door in the far corner, towards which we watch Jose Luis being hustled or dragged, weakly protesting, by a mixed contingent of priest and guards, very much as if he himself were the condemned prisoner. There's something so allusively haunting about that shot - whether it's the poignant detail of the dropped hat, whether the stuffing of a fat group of black-clothed people through a narrow door inspires Biblical reminiscences or suggests a birth in reverse - that it alone propels this film into some pretty select company in terms of artistic greatness. But, again like Mr Marshall, this film is so packed with visual and verbal gems that it would take a book, and several dozen viewings, to come anywhere near doing it justice.