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| Pablo Berger: 'A movie's like a paella, you put all of your obsessions in there' | Pablo Berger: 'A movie's like a paella, you put all of your obsessions in there' |
| (3 months later) | |
| In May 2011 the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger was busily prepping his second film, Blancanieves. After an eight-year struggle to raise funding, he was finally about to start shooting a film whose uniqueness he was convinced would surprise and delight audiences the world over. After all, this was the sort of mainstream entertainment that hadn't been seen in decades — a black and white, silent movie, complete with lush orchestration. | In May 2011 the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger was busily prepping his second film, Blancanieves. After an eight-year struggle to raise funding, he was finally about to start shooting a film whose uniqueness he was convinced would surprise and delight audiences the world over. After all, this was the sort of mainstream entertainment that hadn't been seen in decades — a black and white, silent movie, complete with lush orchestration. |
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| But then came the Cannes film festival, and The Artist. | But then came the Cannes film festival, and The Artist. |
| "Nobody knew about The Artist until it appeared in Cannes," he recalls, with a reflex ruefulness. "It was completely out of the blue. I was in my office in Madrid, doing the storyboards for my film, when a producer friend sent me a text message from the festival saying, 'I've just seen The Artist, it's black and white and silent and it's going to be huge.' I almost threw my phone against the wall. The high concept was gone." | "Nobody knew about The Artist until it appeared in Cannes," he recalls, with a reflex ruefulness. "It was completely out of the blue. I was in my office in Madrid, doing the storyboards for my film, when a producer friend sent me a text message from the festival saying, 'I've just seen The Artist, it's black and white and silent and it's going to be huge.' I almost threw my phone against the wall. The high concept was gone." |
| Thankfully, his friend's more positive view, that the likely success of Michel Hazanavicius's film would create an audience for another silent film, proved accurate. And Berger's imaginatively conceived and gorgeously realised riff on Snow White has been wooing audiences and winning awards in its own right — earlier this year scooping 10 Goyas, the Spanish Oscars, including best film and screenplay. | Thankfully, his friend's more positive view, that the likely success of Michel Hazanavicius's film would create an audience for another silent film, proved accurate. And Berger's imaginatively conceived and gorgeously realised riff on Snow White has been wooing audiences and winning awards in its own right — earlier this year scooping 10 Goyas, the Spanish Oscars, including best film and screenplay. |
| Yet his initial despair on the news of the French film was understandable, given the ordeal he'd gone through with his cherished project. | Yet his initial despair on the news of the French film was understandable, given the ordeal he'd gone through with his cherished project. |
| Back in 2004, Berger's debut, Torremolinos 73, a terrific, oddball sex comedy about husband and wife amateur pornographers during the Franco regime (their first home movies are for the cheekily disingenuous World Audiovisual Encyclopaedia of Reproduction) was a critical and commercial hit. "I was hot," he says, with a charming matter-of-factness, "and lots of producers were asking me about my next project. I had already written Blancanieves. I knew it wasn't going to be easy to get a silent film made. But what better time, I thought, than after a success? | Back in 2004, Berger's debut, Torremolinos 73, a terrific, oddball sex comedy about husband and wife amateur pornographers during the Franco regime (their first home movies are for the cheekily disingenuous World Audiovisual Encyclopaedia of Reproduction) was a critical and commercial hit. "I was hot," he says, with a charming matter-of-factness, "and lots of producers were asking me about my next project. I had already written Blancanieves. I knew it wasn't going to be easy to get a silent film made. But what better time, I thought, than after a success? |
| "But when I showed them the script, I saw their faces changing. Most of them thought I was joking. And the ones who were more courageous, who were curious, still saw it as an extremely complex, extremely expensive, basically experimental film — with bullfighting dwarves. No-one thought it was viable. So suddenly the phones stopped ringing, I became a has-been, a one-hit wonder." | "But when I showed them the script, I saw their faces changing. Most of them thought I was joking. And the ones who were more courageous, who were curious, still saw it as an extremely complex, extremely expensive, basically experimental film — with bullfighting dwarves. No-one thought it was viable. So suddenly the phones stopped ringing, I became a has-been, a one-hit wonder." |
| Yet still he stuck to his guns, fuelled by a passion that began when he was a teenage film buff from Bilbao, in the 1980s, regularly travelling down the coast to the San Sebastian film festival. "One day I was in the Teatro Victoria Eugenia, a big, lovely old theatre, and saw Eric Von Stroheim's Greed, with Carl Davis directing a symphony orchestra. It was the first time I saw a silent film, and it blew my mind. From that moment silent cinema became an obsession. And when I became a director, it was always my intention to make one myself." | Yet still he stuck to his guns, fuelled by a passion that began when he was a teenage film buff from Bilbao, in the 1980s, regularly travelling down the coast to the San Sebastian film festival. "One day I was in the Teatro Victoria Eugenia, a big, lovely old theatre, and saw Eric Von Stroheim's Greed, with Carl Davis directing a symphony orchestra. It was the first time I saw a silent film, and it blew my mind. From that moment silent cinema became an obsession. And when I became a director, it was always my intention to make one myself." |
| The tide turned when a friend started a new production company, and pledged to get Blancanieves made. After another four years the €5m budget was in place — some from France (confirming the Gallic nous in this regard), none of it from Spain. | The tide turned when a friend started a new production company, and pledged to get Blancanieves made. After another four years the €5m budget was in place — some from France (confirming the Gallic nous in this regard), none of it from Spain. |
| The result is every bit the spectacle that Berger had always imagined. Transposing the Brothers Grimm to 1920s Spain, he doffs his montera not only to European silent cinema of the period, but to bullfighting and flamenco, with an atmospheric Gothic melodrama that has lashings of humour – mostly provided by Maribel Verdú as the social-climbing evil stepmother with a penchant for S&M – bags of invention, and an expressive, flamenco-inflected score by Alfonso de Vilallonga. | The result is every bit the spectacle that Berger had always imagined. Transposing the Brothers Grimm to 1920s Spain, he doffs his montera not only to European silent cinema of the period, but to bullfighting and flamenco, with an atmospheric Gothic melodrama that has lashings of humour – mostly provided by Maribel Verdú as the social-climbing evil stepmother with a penchant for S&M – bags of invention, and an expressive, flamenco-inflected score by Alfonso de Vilallonga. |
| "I think a movie's like a paella," he laughs, "you put all of your obsessions in there. But the first idea came with a photo, of bullfighting dwarves, which I saw in this amazing book, España Oculta. Christina Garcia Rodero spent 15 years travelling around villages in Spain, photographing fiestas. These dwarves were looking at me, because they were looking straight at the camera, and somehow I imagined placing a young woman amongst them, a teenager dressed as a bullfighter, and she's like Snow White. That was it. Then I started pulling the strings." | "I think a movie's like a paella," he laughs, "you put all of your obsessions in there. But the first idea came with a photo, of bullfighting dwarves, which I saw in this amazing book, España Oculta. Christina Garcia Rodero spent 15 years travelling around villages in Spain, photographing fiestas. These dwarves were looking at me, because they were looking straight at the camera, and somehow I imagined placing a young woman amongst them, a teenager dressed as a bullfighter, and she's like Snow White. That was it. Then I started pulling the strings." |
| While this passionate, silver-haired 49-year-old has been remarkably open to speaking about The Artist, he rightly points out that "you never compare two colour, sound films" for simply sharing those fundamental characteristics, adding that the principle thing that he and Hazanavicius shared – unlike, say, Guy Maddin, who's been making wonderful silent films for years – was the desire to seduce a mainstream audience. | While this passionate, silver-haired 49-year-old has been remarkably open to speaking about The Artist, he rightly points out that "you never compare two colour, sound films" for simply sharing those fundamental characteristics, adding that the principle thing that he and Hazanavicius shared – unlike, say, Guy Maddin, who's been making wonderful silent films for years – was the desire to seduce a mainstream audience. |
| Moreover, the differences between the two are far more interesting. "The Artist is a love letter to Hollywood silent films," he says, "while my film is a love letter to European silent cinema, and especially French. Abel Gance for me is God. Movies like Napoleon, J'Accuse!, La Roue are extraordinary. Before the Russians did montage there was Abel Gance, rapid editing, one frame, two frames; he used handheld camera in crazy ways – no-one has bettered his chase scenes. In Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent the camera is moving on a dolly throughout the entire movie. In 1928. Yet many people think of the dolly as something modern. | Moreover, the differences between the two are far more interesting. "The Artist is a love letter to Hollywood silent films," he says, "while my film is a love letter to European silent cinema, and especially French. Abel Gance for me is God. Movies like Napoleon, J'Accuse!, La Roue are extraordinary. Before the Russians did montage there was Abel Gance, rapid editing, one frame, two frames; he used handheld camera in crazy ways – no-one has bettered his chase scenes. In Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent the camera is moving on a dolly throughout the entire movie. In 1928. Yet many people think of the dolly as something modern. |
| "The 1920s avant-garde in Europe were really exploring the medium, not just with the image, but also the acting. The Scandinavians, like Victor Sjöström and [Carl Theodor] Dreyer, used performances that are very controlled and naturalistic. What Maria Falconetti does in The Passion of Joan of Arc is spectacular. That movie was also a big influence for Blancanieves. It's the only silent film that I asked Macarena [García, who plays the older Snow White] to watch. " | "The 1920s avant-garde in Europe were really exploring the medium, not just with the image, but also the acting. The Scandinavians, like Victor Sjöström and [Carl Theodor] Dreyer, used performances that are very controlled and naturalistic. What Maria Falconetti does in The Passion of Joan of Arc is spectacular. That movie was also a big influence for Blancanieves. It's the only silent film that I asked Macarena [García, who plays the older Snow White] to watch. " |
| Both of Berger's features demonstrate a keen eye for period detail (the 1970s of Torremolinos 73 is as well-evoked as the 20s of Blancanieves) and both speak volumes about different eras of Spanish history. At the same time, each has a comic touch more accessible than that of most Spanish films, a fact that might have something to do with Berger's experience away from his country. After making an award-winning short film, Mama, in 1988, he received a scholarship from the Basque government to study film at New York University. He remained in the US for nine years, teaching film courses, and marrying there, before eventually returning home to make Torremolinos 73. | Both of Berger's features demonstrate a keen eye for period detail (the 1970s of Torremolinos 73 is as well-evoked as the 20s of Blancanieves) and both speak volumes about different eras of Spanish history. At the same time, each has a comic touch more accessible than that of most Spanish films, a fact that might have something to do with Berger's experience away from his country. After making an award-winning short film, Mama, in 1988, he received a scholarship from the Basque government to study film at New York University. He remained in the US for nine years, teaching film courses, and marrying there, before eventually returning home to make Torremolinos 73. |
| Berger has been on the festival trail with Blancanieves since it premiered in Toronto last September. I met him in Panama, where he and Geraldine Chaplin, who presented her father's The Kid, spoke about the re-emergence of silent cinema as a popular medium. | Berger has been on the festival trail with Blancanieves since it premiered in Toronto last September. I met him in Panama, where he and Geraldine Chaplin, who presented her father's The Kid, spoke about the re-emergence of silent cinema as a popular medium. |
| "I think there will be more," the director asserts. "Nobody believed in The Artist, nobody believed in Blancanieves, both of them have been commercially successful. Now a director can take a script for a silent film to a producer and, if its good, they may say 'Why not?'," Berger says. | "I think there will be more," the director asserts. "Nobody believed in The Artist, nobody believed in Blancanieves, both of them have been commercially successful. Now a director can take a script for a silent film to a producer and, if its good, they may say 'Why not?'," Berger says. |
| "But for me Blancanieves is valid if it only serves as a terrorist act, to remind directors what makes cinema an art form – visual storytelling, editing, music, those elements that were dominant before 'moving images' became 'talking pictures'. Talking pictures – what a horrible term that is." | "But for me Blancanieves is valid if it only serves as a terrorist act, to remind directors what makes cinema an art form – visual storytelling, editing, music, those elements that were dominant before 'moving images' became 'talking pictures'. Talking pictures – what a horrible term that is." |
| • Blancanieves is out now | • Blancanieves is out now |
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