Brilliant directorial debut by the great Fernando Fernán Gómez in collaboration with Luis María Delgado through this crazy black comedy in which, along with some deaths, there are plenty of insane crazy people.
Almost unknown until recently, when the Spanish Film Library restored it and recovered it on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Fernando, the film anticipates many of the constants of what will later be his best cinema in acid major dramas such as "El Mundo Sigue" (1963) or "El Extraño Viaje" (1964). Although without ever abandoning that tone of comedy so typical of the time in Spain and which is also very present in his filmography, drawing heavily on comedians such as Tono, Mihura, Jardiel or Ramón Gómez de la Serna himself.
The script, half signed by Fernando and Francisco Tomás Comes, adapts with great skill four short stories by Edgar Allan Poe ("The method of Doctor Brea and Professor Pluma", the main one, and the framework for the other three, starring Fernando), Ramón Gómez de la Serna ("La Mona de Imitation"), and the Russian writers Kuprin ("A mistake") and Andréiev ("The crazy doctor"). Without revealing details of the plot, we will say that all of them, in addition to having in common the theme of relationships, touch on the issue of mental health and highlight how thin the line is that separates normality from madness. So often things are not as they seem.
Surprisingly modern and bold for a time when historical dramas or so-called 'white phone comedies' abounded in Spanish cinema, the film is a more than recommendable delight in which black humor invades everything through out these four perfectly intertwined and interrelated stories. Until everything reaches its peak in the delirious sequence of a dinner (in which we will be able to see, among others, a hilarious and very young Camllo José Cela, an acclaimed spanish writer who, decades later, received the Nobel Prize), and which will be followed by a no less crazy epilogue.
Among the actors, Fernando is accompanied by performers as effective as Elvira Quintillá, Antonio Vico, Susana Canales, José María Ladó, Vicente Parra, Margarita Lozano and a very young María Asquerino, among many others such as the journalist and writer Alfredo Marquerie (who plays the man who believes himself to be an olive) or the aforementioned Cela, without anyone from the cast ever being out of tune.
As for the staging, which does not creak at any time and which includes very varied locations in Madrid, it is noteworthy that Fernando breaks the so-called 'fourth wall' on two occasions when talking to the audience. Likewise, the film displays a certain expressionist tone throughout the final part after dinner at the asylum thanks to the use of the sets from the film "Aeropuertp" (1953), a modest drama of crossed stories that Delgado was also filming at the time.
We will never be able to know if the movie had a certain allegorical intention related to the Franco regime, although it seems that Fernando always denied that extreme.
Anyway, it turns out that Fernando's 'first feature' had been this little movie to discover, and that it barely had distribution in its day, and hardly anyone had heard about it.
And it is very grateful that the Film Library has carried out its recovery.
