Historias de la radio

A nostalgic look at radio's golden age focusing on presenters , hosts , guests , radio listeners , public and the various performers in the medium , dealing with three amusing stories . First story deals with several contestants have to go to a radio station studio : Radio Madrid dressed as Eskimo and with dog , one of them is José Isbert who wishes urgently money , three thousand pesetas , for an invention . The second concerning a thief (Angél de Andrés López) answering a call in the house which he's robbing and subsequently his landlord (José María Lado) to be aware about it . And a third one regarding a school teacher (Alberto Romea) who participates in a radio Quiz show called ¨Doble o nada¨ to get money to cure a kid of his village . The stories are linked by a pair of fatty men (Juán Calvo) doing gym hearing radio , the love story of a presenter (Francisco Rabal) and his girlfriend (Margarita Audrey) and appearance by famous speaker Bobby Deglané and through interviews of actual celebrities at the time.

Entertaining and engaging film with social habits , religious sentiment , fraternity and good feeling . The common denominator in all the stories and in the overarching plot is the presence of the radio - it brought music, news, stories , escape and comfort, made stars of everyday people and was often the glue in families and relationships . A series of vignettes involving radio personalities is intertwined with the lives of various attractive characters . Being three different stories very influenced by ¨Luis Garcia Berlanga's Bienvenido Mister Marshall¨ (1952) as well as the Comedian Italian in episodes from the Fifities created by writer/producer Sergio Amadei . In Historias de la radio (1955) stands out a great main and support cast with plenty of familiar faces of the Fifties , giving all of them nice interpretations .

This sentimental motion picture was competently directed by Jose Luis Saenz De Heredia who went on making a sequel : Historias de la Television (1965) with Concha Velasco , José Luis López Vázquez and Alfredo Landa . Heredia was a controversial figure in Spain because of his strong and unabashed support of dictator Francisco Franco . At the beginning his career he was hired by Luis Buñuel , as executive producer , to direct ¨La Hija De Juan Simon¨ (1935) and ¨Quien Me Quiere a Mi¨ . During the Spanish Civil War , Jose Luis Heredia is detained but freed thanks to Luis Buñuel and Santiago Ontañon . Heredia directed various ¨Propaganda films¨ . It is well known the main title ¨Raza¨ written by General Francisco Franco under pseudonym : ¨Jaime Andrade¨ . As Jose Luis became the official filmmaker of the dictatorship , as he writes ¨Escuadrilla¨ (1941) . Posteriorly ,in the 40s , he directs several successful dramas : ¨El Escandalo¨ (43) based on Pedro Alarcón novel , ¨Mariona Rebull¨(1947) based on Ignacio Agusti book , ¨La Aguas Bajan Negras¨ based on Armanado Palacio Valdes , ¨El Destino Se Disculpa¨ based on Wenceslao Fernández Florez , ¨Don Juan¨ based on Don Juan Tenorio by Zorrilla , ¨Bambu¨ about the Cuba War and ¨¨Mies Es Mucha¨. In addition , a very good drama about Carlistas wars : ¨Diez Fusiles Esperan¨ . Heredia subsequently makes inferior comedies as ¨Grano De Mostaza¨, ¨Derechos De La Mujer¨ and ¨La Decente¨ . And various Manolo Escobar/Concha Velasco vehicles such as ¨Pero En Que País Vivimos¨, ¨Juicio De Faldas¨, Relaciones Casi Publicas ¨and ¨Me Debes Un Muerto¨. And other films for Paco Martínez Soria: ¨Se Armo El Belen¨, ¨Don Erre Que Erre¨. His greatest hits were ¨Historia De La Radio¨(1955) and ¨La Verbena De La Paloma¨ or ¨The fair of the dove¨.

By the time he made this, Sáenz de Heredia (who also filmed the Generalísimo's pungent attempt at a movie script, "Raza") was as efficient a facilitator of respectable, high-gloss, low-calorie regime-friendly entertainments as they come. Where this one deserves most credit is in the storyline, which contrives to hang several short tales onto a single narrative thread. The device works, and this in combination with a suavely persuasive offscreen narrator gives a sense that "the radio" is not merely a plotting pretext, but the object of a genuinely felt tribute. Of course we're talking not about the radio as instrument of government propaganda, nor as purveyor of mindless muzak, but as something that gets fat middle-aged men out of bed in the morning (to do slimming exercises), gives humble inventors the chance to win money for their prototypes (by dressing up as eskimos), persuades thieves to reach agreement with their intended victims in donating money to the Church, and allows old schoolmasters to win money in a quiz game called "Double or Nothing", in order (natch) to send a sick child to Stockholm for treatment.

When Heredia tries his hand at straightforward slapstick, as with the José Isbert number of the eskimo-inventor with the dangerous dog early in the film, it's quite nicely done, and the laughs come easily. When he laces the comedy with sentimentality, and deliberately racks up the sentiment in a steady crescendo throughout, it would take a very undemanding (or old-fashioned) audience nowadays not to get restless. That a dispute (for example) between would-be burglar and intended victim is resolved by a Parish priest is perhaps sociologically admissible; that this priest should be portrayed as a paragon of wisdom and Christian virtues is perhaps understandable given ths strictures of censorship and so on; but the sentimental excesses of this movie go well beyond that, and include a penitent bread-thief in a church, a dying boy whose every other script sentence contains a Noble Gesture; and a schoolmaster who is so well aided by the praying boy and the intercession of Saints, that he develops a previously unsuspected footballing career. If this kind of thing doesn't stand up so well nowadays (not to mention statues of saints that come alive) it's perhaps just a question of fashion. All the same, you end up thanking your nearest St Antony for the genius of a Berlanga, who could make a film funny without playing any of the cheap sentiment cards that this movie has recourse to. Watchable but terminally dated.

Easy, easy... Señor Alberto Mallofres-Pantoja de España, the very first commentator of this movie. Actually no need to feel furious. Europeans or Americans may not have enough taste to appreciate Spanish goody movies but Hong Kong Chinese do. This movie was once on show in our city in mid-90s and it did sell well. Good movies do attract quality viewers, no worry, no worry. Big thank you the our local film professionals.

My very first Spanish movie was Almodovar's "Tacones lejanos", hunky Miguel Bosé plays a weird guy, just fantastico. And so I started to see more of the Spanish films. The release date of "Historias de la radio" surprised me because it was produced during Franco's reign, a time where freedom of press or expression was repressed.

It's a warm comedy of how radio connected people when TV was not yet largely introduced in Spain. Three stories about two inventors, a theif and people from a village. I especially remember the quiz-show with live audience. When the presenter asks the audience who knows the name of the footballer who made a goal in a certain match some 20 years ago, an old man raises his hand and gives a very detail answer. The presenter feels strange and asks how come he knows that, the old man replies that he was that footballer.

I don't want to compare this one with Woody Allen's because this one was produced far too many years advance, a pioneer of the genre. The pretty face of Carmen (by Margarita Andrey) is very impressive. What a pity that she had a very short acting life. Her father was a Swiss official who job was related to film industry. After she got married in 1955, (the release date of this movie), she retired from the camera. In 1953, her movie "Aeropuerto" was awarded National Syndicate of Spectacle, Spain (Premio del SNE).

A definite for viewing of the entire family. DVD is available now, check the websites in Spanish, yet no idea whether subtitles of other languages are available. Caveat emptor.

There are many masterpieces in the Spanish movie comedy of the 40s, 50s, 60s and early 70s, but "Historias De La Radio" should undoubtedly have a place in the Top Ten. Director Sáenz De Heredia began to write a former version of the script while having a lunch break from the shooting of Terence Young´s "That Lady", in which he was working as a technical advisor. It almost seems a miracle (in spite of his enormous talent) that he could come up with such a bunch of good ideas for a comedy film in such a short spell of time. In the early 50s, before the arrival of television, the radio was the social communication medium par excellence and its influence in Spanish society was, for better or for worse, enormous. The picture shows how a radio programme could completely change the life of a person. It is divided in three short stories linked by a common bond which is also a sort of fourth story: the broadcasting of radio programmes in front of a live audience (something that seems to have disappeared now). In the first story we see how a poor inventor (the top-notch, rasping-voiced character actor José Isbert) must play the fool disguising himself as an eskimo and getting to the radio station before than anyone else in order to get some money to promote a piston that he and his "business partner" have invented. In the second story, a man who is stealing some money from the house of his landlord receives a random phone call from the studio and is given the possibility of earning a certain amount of money. (Doesn´t it sound familiar to you? Isn´t that a short gag from Woody Allen´s celebrated "Radio Days"?). In the third story, the schoolteacher of a small country village agrees reluctantly to participate in a quiz radio contest to achieve the money that it takes to operate one of his pupils, a loving child who is seriously ill and must be transferred to Sweden to be cured. Will he do it?... Well, I don´t want to spoil the party. The film is full of verbal and visual gags that could serve as a useful lesson to many so-called Spanish movie directors of nowadays and of faces of a big bunch of familiar lead and character actors that the Spanish viewers knew very well even if they couldn´t always put a name on them. And I wonder: WHY ON EARTH CAN´T A FILM LIKE THIS BE KNOWN OUTSIDE SPAIN? WHY CAN´T WE SHOW THIS FILM AND MANY OTHERS FROM THE PERIOD 1940-1975 TO THE REST OF EUROPE AND TO THE UNITED STATES SO THAT THEY CAN SEE THERE WAS A LOT OF GOOD SPANISH CINEMA IN THOSE YEARS? WHY, WHY, WHY...? Calling the film distributors, for God´s sake!

Spain, about 1950, the radio is the main way of communication in most all the homes of Spain. Regarding this, the film tells us five stories that have, as a main point, the radio. Two men that follow the early morning Gym program; two Spanihs Edisons that need money for a patent, and take part in a show that will prize the first that arrives to the Radio dressed as a Eskimo; a thief that answers the phone when he is robbing in a house and wins a prize; a little town's teacher that has to take part in a quiz show to win the money needed to pay the travel to Sweden of an ill boy of the town; and the one that mixes everything: the relation between two of the radio speakers. The movie shows perfectly how was the radio vital for most of the people at that time, and how could their lives change only for being "on the air". With a very good acting and a surprisingly fresh script, the film is able the give you a pleasant half and hour of good cinema. It is the prove that it is not necessary to see modern films to enjoy a movie. Probably, one of the best Spanish films of all times, and of course, the best of the 50's.