Bardem, Juan Antonio

b. 1922, Madrid

   Filmmaker

   One of the famous three B's of the Franco period (see also Buñuel, Luis; Berlanga, Luis), Bardem was notorious for his strictures on Spanish cinema of the time as "politically ineffective, socially false, intellectually abject, aesthetically non-existent and commercially crippled", a judgement delivered at the Salamanca Conversations of 1955. The son of the actor Rafael Bardem and the actress Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, Bardem had studied along with Berlanga at IIEC and together they produced their first film, Esa pareja feliz (That Happy Couple) (1951). By focusing on the life of ordinary people and influenced by Italian neorealism it exemplified the new social concerns of serious Spanish filmmaking, concerns which were to be severely hampered by censorship. His films of the 1950s were powerful critiques of contemporary society, the self-absorption of urban society in Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist) (1955) and the stifling boredom of provincial life in Calle Mayor (Main Street) (1956) which won him an International Critics Award when it was banned as an official entry at Venice. His next film La venganza (Revenge) (1957), which was to have been entitled Los segadores (The Reapers) as the first in an intended series depicting the lives of working people, was so mauled by the censors that it failed, causing him to abandon his plans. Nunca pasa nada (Nothing Ever Happens), written in 1960 but not made until 1963, because of problems with censorship, is considered his most representative and by some his best film.

   In the 1960s and 1970s he experimented with a wide variety of genres, including his most openly communist-inspired film El puente (The Long Weekend) (1976), and in the 1980s directed television productions, in particular his longplanned series Lorca, muerte de un poeta (Lorca, Death of a Poet) (1988). He became President of the Assembly of Spanish Cinema and Audiovisual Directors in 1988, and President of the European Federation of Film Directors in 1993.

   See also: film and cinema

   Further reading

   - Higginbotham, V. (1988) Spanish Cinema under Franco, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press (one of the most comprehensive surveys of this period).

   EAMONN RODGERS