José Luis García Muñoz (born 20 January 1944), known professionally as José Luis Garci, is a Spanish film director, producer, critic, TV presenter, screenwriter and author. One of the most influential film personalities in the history of film in Spain, he earned worldwide acclaim and his country's first Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for Begin the Beguine (1982).[1] Four of his films, including also Sesión continua (1984), Asignatura aprobada (1987) and El abuelo (1998), have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, more than any other Spanish director.[2] His films are characterized for his classical style and the underlying sentimentality of their plots.[3]
Early life and work
Born in 1944 in a humble family from Asturias. After completing a pre-university course, Garci began working as an administrative assistant in a bank.[4] His love for cinema from an early age led him to pursue filmmaking as a career. At age twenty he began writing reviews for a number of film magazines such as Signos and Cinestudio, winning an award in 1968 from the Circulo de Escritores Cinematograficos for his work as film critic.
In 1969 he became involved in scriptwriting, receiving his first screen credits for Antonio Giménez RicoEl Cronicón (The Chronicle, 1970). Between 1972 and 1977 he scripted five more films: León Klimovsky's La casa de las chivas (The House of the goats); Pedro Olea's No es bueno que el hombre esté solo (A Man Shouldn't be Alone, 1973); Eloy de la Iglesia's Una gota de sangre para morir amando, (A drop of blood to die loving, 1973); Antonio Drove's Mi mujer es muy decente dentro de lo que cabe (1974) or Roberto Bodegas' Vida conyugal sana (Healthy Married Life, 1973) and Los nuevos españoles (New Spaniards, 1974). During this same period, Garci also wrote the made for T.V film La Cabina (The Telephone Box, 1972) directed by Antonio Mercero. He then directed his first short films: !Al Futbol! (!To Football!) Mi Marilyn (My Marilyn), both in 1975, and Tiempo de gente acobardada (People Cowed Time, 1976).[5]
At the same time, he wrote his first literary works, science fiction stories like: Bibidibabibidibú (1970), Adam Blake (1972), and La Gioconda está triste y otras extrañas historias (1976). He also published the essay: Ray Bradbury humanista del futuro (1971).[6] In 1981 he obtained the Puerta de Oro Prize for his story Los mejores años de nuestra vida.[7]
Feature films
In 1977, José Luis Garci directed his first feature film Asignatura pendiente (Unfinished Business) from a script by Gonzalez Sinde, a love story between an old pair of lovers which runs parallel to the social and political changes lived in Spain after the fall of Francisco Franco's regime. The film was well received by critics and audiences, becoming the most successful representative of the Spanish film of the generation of the Transition from dictatorship to democracy who saw themselves in a social and political limbo. A simple story of an amorous seduction by the film's hero is set around a series of topical references to a generation of Spaniards born in the immediate post-civil war period whose frustrations and nostalgia are embodied in the film's protagonist. Garci took his narrative cues from the visual patterns followed in the traditional Hollywood narrative.[8][9]
Garci second film Solos en la madrugada (Alone in the Dark, 1978)[10] became skilled tackling progressive social themes intended for an audience interested neither in elite art cinema nor in the popular style of most Spanish comedies. He used this same pattern in his third film, Las verdes praderas (The Green Meadows, 1979),[11] in which heavy sentimentality, a constant in his films, became more apparent.
After founding the production company Nickel Odeon with José Esteban Alenda in 1980,[12] the director changed gears with El Crack (1981),[13][14] in which he used the figure of the hard boiled detective in a story inspired by the novels of Dashiell Hammett, to whom the film is dedicated, and employing elements of the American film noirs of the 1930s and 40s giving it a Spanish flavor. For this film Garci won the CEC Award for Best Screenplay from the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos.[15] The formula worked so well that two years later he made a sequel, El crack II [es] (1983).
Between this two films, Garci made his most emblematic work Volver a empezar, (Begin to Beguine, 1982), a sentimental story of an aging writer who returns to Spain after many years in exiled following the civil war. The film was the first Spanish motion picture to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[16]
Garci does not have a computer, but writes all his scripts by hand or on an Olympia brand typewriter. When writing a collaborative script, Garci can base it on his own idea or that of the other scriptwriter, providing mutual feedback with ideas, characters and scenes until reaching the final result.[25] In his films his preference for the shot and sequence stands out[26] and are usually divided into two stages, one that goes from Asignatura pendiente (1977) to Asignatura aprobada (1987), another that begins with Canción de cuna (1994) and extends until El crack cero (2019). In its first stage, Garci places the action in the present or in the immediate past, showing throughout the film the social and political changes that occur at that moment,[27] while in the second stage it focuses on showing the past in an attempt to understand the present.
In 2024 he received the EGEDA Gold Medal at the 30th edition of the Forqué Awards, recognizing his career as a director, producer and screenwriter in Spanish cinema and his role as a disseminator.[32]
Sources
Moret, Andrés, Una vida de repuesto. El cine de José Luis Garci, Hatari Books, Sociedad Limitada, 2022; ISBN978-84-94788-55-0
Emotion pictures. El cine de José Luis Garci, foreword by José Luis Garci, Notorious Ediciones, Madrid, 2018; ISBN978-84-15606-62-8
Benavent, Francisco María, Cine Español de los Noventa, ediciones Mensajero, 2000; ISBN84-271-2326-4
D'Lugo, Marvin: Guide to the Cinema of Spain, Greenwood Press, 1997; ISBN0-313-29474-7
