With Empty Hands (1951)

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Movie
German title With empty hands
Original title Balarrasa
Country of production Spain
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1951
length 90 minutes
Rod
Director José Antonio Nieves Conde
script Vicente Escrivá
production Aspa Films
music Jesús García Leoz
camera Manuel Berenguer
José F. Aguayo (b / w)
cut Juan Serra
occupation

With empty hands (original title: Balarrasa ) is a Spanish black and white film from 1951 with Fernando Fernán Gómez in the lead role. Directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde . The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951 .

action

The Spanish missionary Javier Mendoza (his original nickname was “Balarrasa”, which means something like “ Hallodri ” or “ Luftikus ”) is surprised by a heavy snow storm in Alaska . In the face of death, he recapitulates his life again. He was an officer in the Spanish Civil War , where he is indirectly guilty of the death of a comrade whom he defeats while playing cards and who therefore has to take on a guard duty, during which he is killed. This experience made Mendoza radically change its life. He enters the seminary in Salamanca .

Towards the end of his time at the seminary, he lets himself be persuaded to return to his old life for a few days and visits his family. Just like himself, all family members let themselves go after his mother's death: his father plays cards for money that he doesn't have, his brother Fernando works with the foreign currency smuggler Mario Santos, who is also his sister Lina's lover, and the younger sister Mayte left her boyfriend Octavio for a tennis player.

Mendoza tries to convince his family of the necessity of a positive lifestyle and is successful with it, except for Lina, who dies in a car accident while on the run with her lover. Eventually Mendoza returns to the seminary and is ordained a priest.

Empty-handed is a typical example of the “mix between military and religious propaganda cinema” in Francoist Spain in the 1950s.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/4065/year/1951.html
  2. ↑ Elke Rudolph: On behalf of Franco: "Films of International Interest". On the political instrumentalization of Spanish film in the 1960s. Hamburg: Lit 1999. p. 79. (online)