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In the first bars of Generalissimo , the documentary about the life of Francisco Franco directed by Luis Carrizo, the careful coloring technique with which the images of the NO-DO and the archives of the National Film Library have been abruptly stopped to return momentarily to black and white. The narration announces that we are facing a movie, but not just any movie : it is La malcasada , the only film by Francisco Gómez Hidalgo in which the dictator (in that 1926 newly appointed general) interprets himself during a traditional dinner of the time.
The scene, surreal from revisionism and the horrors that have passed, is just one of the small jewels of record that the Absolute Minority producer ( Polònia , Todo es lie ) has had access to try to tell the most important facts in less than 90 minutes in the life of the man who was assigned more power in Spain during the twentieth century.
Just after premiering the documentary at the Seminci in Valladolid and before its television adaptation arrives in DMax in November, divided into two episodes, the director explains the project: «The screenwriter, Manel Lucas, is the one who screens among the relevant historical events and build the narrative from a cinematic perspective. From there, we turn to sources of reference in Hispanicism such as what Paul Preston or Santos Julià have written and look for the primary source, thanks to the NO-DO and the Filmoteca archives ».
Given the always difficult didactic task of explaining the most sensitive events to the Spanish collective memory, Carrizo details that manipulation is limited to color: «Our obsession is historical rigor. We have contacted 172 archives, between national and international ». This rigor is mandatory, by contacting private archives and interested sources such as the Francisco Franco National Foundation (FNFF): “They [the FNFF] give us access to what they believe we should have access to. Public archives are accessible, of course. When working with them, there are two elements that can contaminate your information. First, what they want to share and what they don't want to share; and, second, the agreement. The FNFF specifies that no image should be used to vex the dictator's figure. Other files limited us the coloration or to what extent we could modify the documents ».
Carrizo, who is also responsible for counting the four decades of Francoism, also in color and also in DMax, got on the project five years ago: «In 2014 we started with the Civil War in color , along with Francesc Escribano, but we were already working on the biographical miniseries. In December 2017, we were ready to embark completely and get into the Francoist cave. It has been hard, ”he confesses.
The version designed for the Generalissimo film premieres this Friday in selected cinemas with 93 minutes of footage. In numbers, the film is a titanic project composed of more than 115,000 colored from reels 16 and 35 mm guarded by the film library, they treasured 125 hours of valid frames audiovisual material. Precisely on that validity and those known as "discards", the cuts that the regime left out of the NO-DO , turns the bulk of the informative value of General: "The documentary begins with the last public appearance of which Franco was recorded, peeked out on the balcony on October 1, 1975 before about a million people. Thanks to the discards, we can show that it was not the last recorded, since there are images of him a few days later with a galloping Parkinson's and an advanced state of deterioration . Obviously they were not used for propaganda, ”explains the director.
Why embark on a project in which, as much rigor as it is applied, the passions derived from a social wound that does not close will rise in anger anyway? Carrizo is almost resigned: «Our professional ethics does not let us talk about the character, but about the person. The idea is to humanize Franco not in the sense of whitening or glorification, but in telling the relevant facts of his life as a mortal. He is neither the savior of the country that defends the extreme right nor does he house with the topic of the psychopath who signed death sentences eating churros . First, because they were only ratified or granted pardon, but also because we do not have the historical finding that can support that thesis.
Luis Carrizo does not deny that the coincidence with the exhumation of Francisco Franco with the premiere of Generalissimo benefits him, but he wants to put some distance towards the eternal war of ideas. «We want them to be didactic works, without assuming what you know and what you don't, that they try to narrate without a prioris . If you are from the extreme right, certain things will make you angry, but I don't think you change your mind. We want to add complexity to the figure and the context, to deepen the grays. To count 40 years of dictatorship and 40 years of democracy in a tweet is absurd ».
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