3 Review(s)

Thrust into the international spotlight in 1966 when The Hunt, his critique of the Franco regime, won the Silver Bear at Berlin, Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura (b. 1932) has remained an abiding presence and frequent victor at worldwide cinema competitions ever since. Best known in the United States for his Flamenco trilogy--Blood Wedding, Carmen, and A Love Bewitched--he also received Oscar nominations for Mama Turns a Hundred, Carmen, and Tango. Saura's movies are frequently ambiguous, sometimes controversial, and always narratively complex. In many of his films, such as Cria and Goya in Bordeaux, he creates sophisticated expressions of time and space by fusing reality with fantasy, past with present, and memory with hallucination. Carlos Saura: Interviews collects interviews the filmmaker has given in Spain, France, Germany, and Canada. All of the conversations appear here in English for the first time, and, as such, they represent a treasure trove of comments by Saura on his own work. Covering the entire spectrum of his career, including his latest film Bunuel and King Solomon's Table, the interviews discuss his early contributions to the New Spanish Cinema, his documentaries and documentary-like urban films, his cinematic essays on historical figures, his dance films, his adaptations of literary and theatrical works, and the films rooted in his personal reminiscences of the Spanish Civil War. In addition, the collection touches upon Saura's efforts as a photographer, opera director, and novelist and explores his friendship with filmmaker Luis Bunuel. These interviews disclose Saura's amazingly consistent approach to his cinema, his role as an auteur, and the principles on which his creativity and intuition continue to build in innovative ways. Linda M. Willem is professor of Spanish at Butler University. She is the author of Galdos's Segunda Manera: Rhetorical Strategies and Affective Response and editor of A Sesquicentennial Tribute to Galdos. Her work has been published in Literature/Film Quarterly, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Latin American Literary Review, Letras Peninsulares, and Critica Hispanica.