IMDb user comments for
Bienvenido Mister Marshall (1953)

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A film that gets better with each viewing, 25 agosto 2001

Author: Miguel Angel Diaz Gonzalez (dalton22@terra.es) de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

My appreciation of this film has been getting better and better each time I have watched it. The first time I sat to see Bienvenido Mister Marshall was many years ago. I was a child, and I remember that I liked it. But I didn't notice that it wasn't another funny film. Through repeated viewings, I have found more and more details and a solid structure that makes of this film one of the greatest ones I have ever seen. The personality of the Major is amazing. He's a complex person despite his envelope of bewildered, and -I guess- that's why he's the Major. But he's also wonderfully ingenuous, and so are the rest of the people of Villar del Río. That's why you root for the entire cast. And that's why you keep this film in your heart. It reminds you the innocence we lost and lets you by the end with deep melancholy.

Technically, this film is almost perfect. Good cast, superb performances, perfect music, and a dialogue that seems to be a 70-minute-long quote, where every single word can be remembered. To mention one of the many good moments of this "long quote", I will remember the one when the general delegate (José Franco) tells the Major (José Isbert) that he has to make a speech from the balcony to the Americans. The Major asks "And what shall I say?", and then the delegate replies that he can speak about several things including the industry. He asks again "What industry?", and the delegate replies "Well, just say anything, they don't speak Spanish so they won't understand". And, finally, the Major states: "Oh, I think I'm getting it..."

If you take a look at the best Spanish films of all time, you'll notice that 3 of the top 5 films are directed by Luis García Berlanga. That's not a coincidence. Berlanga is pure genius.

My rating is 9-10 out of 10.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Works on every level, 25 febrero 2004
Author: Hedgehog_Carnival de Guayaquil, Ecuador

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Widely regarded (at least among older generations of Spaniards) as Spain's best ever film, this is first and foremost a comedy of rural manners that still, fifty years on, succeeds in its primary objective of making the audience laugh (show this to any Spanish-speaking audience in the world and you'll get giggles throughout. Beware, though, some of the humour is untranslatable or at least unsubtitleable.) On another level, it's a clever, ironic commentary upon the predicament of fifties Spain, isolated from the rest of the world not only politically but in pretty much every other respect too.

The film kicks off with an extended voice-over introduction in which a narrator introduces us to a village and its main characters, playfully exploiting the odd camera trick (freeze-frames, emptying a scene of people) and establishing a tone of gentle, affectionate irony towards the inhabitants. This offscreen narrator returns regularly through the film and the tone of the narration crucially defines how we respond to what we see on screen. The characters include the mayor (a shrewd old man suffering from intermittent deafness), a benign local priest, an "hidalgo" (soi-disant member of the nobility, obsessed with his ancestral heritage), a young, pretty schoolmistress, and a few others; there are also two important visitors, an Andalusian songstress and her jovial, sharp-witted agent.

The action of the film consists of the following (spoiler). News reaches the village that "the Americans are coming" in order to implement the Marshall plan, which is interpreted as the handing out of gifts to all the villagers. After a public meeting in which the schoolmistress and the priest between them attempt to define America to the villagers' satisfaction, the mayor teams up with the singer' agent to ensure the village puts on a good show to impress the visiting dignitaries, mainly by dressing itself up as a kind of folksy Andalusian village complete with guitar strummers and false building facades. Villagers queue up to have their individual requests recorded in advance (one item only). Finally, the Americans do arrive, but the visit consists of a cavalcade of fast cars that simply sweep through without stopping. (The last car has the word "Goodbye", in English, prominently displayed.) The villagers realise they have to pay for all the expense incurred in what turns out to have been a wasted show, but are not too unhappy: they take the disappointment stoically as "just one of those things".

As already mentioned, what carries the story is a combination of the gentle, affectionate tone of the narration, together with almost unstoppable wry humour, both verbal and visual, and sometimes quite subtle (the narrator asserts that the schoolmistress' arithmetic is beyond reproach: later, we notice some wrong adding up on the blackboard). The acting is first rate, the camera work slick, and all in all, if this isn't still Spain's best film it certainly deserves a place in the top three.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
witty while full of commentary, 7 octubre 2004
Author: roygibib de Indiana, USA

This film is an excellent and witty portrayal of Franco's post-war Spain. There are many hidden agendas and underlying stereotypes of both the American and Spanish people. The more you watch the movie, the more one-liners you catch. The order in which the camera bounces from person to person always has a meaning. This style of exposition is unique and refreshing. The dream sequence contains many of the stereotypes held by the Spanish towards the American people. The people of the village change their town into what they think the Americans want to see, even though they have the wrong idea about them. The best part is all this content is delivered in a comedic fashion, which lets you enjoy the underlying commentary.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Spanish classic movie, 8 marzo 2007

Author: José Manuel Mirás Avalos de A Coruna, Spain

This movie is well considered all over the world and it is not difficult to see why. It was made in 1952 but it still remains as one of the truly classic movies of Spanish cinema.

Of course its cinematographic values are impressive. From the very beginning the techniques used in this film are different from those used in American cinema of the same time, a narrator introduces the small town and the characters to the audience, he seems to know everything about them, he is capable of stop the movement and take out the people of the screen. An audacious resource from one of the main directors in Spanish cinema history, Luis García Berlanga. This beginning is modern for the time and it can be linked to the European cinema of the era.

On one hand, we are about to see a description of Spanish traditions and characters depicted with lots of humor and irony. On the other hand, we see a critic of some of these statements and mentalities of Spanish people and institutions. This critics is plenty of melancholy in some cases and plenty of humor in other cases. Just about the end of the film, there are several dream scenes that satirizes some of the American cinema of the era and some American traditions and characters (as those of the Western movies).

The script is superb, the actors are very well chosen for their roles, the cinematography is excellent and so is the photography, direction is extraordinary taking into account that this is one of the first movies by Berlanga.

Finally, I have to say that this is a Spanish classic movie and one of my must sees.

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5 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Eternal, 8 diciembre 1998

Author: Carls-2 de Madrid, Spain

Probably, the best Spanish film ever made. A loyal portrait of Spaniards' personality and way of thinking with the particular sense of humour added by the writer Miguel Mihura. Essential: the Pepe Isbert's balcony scene, be ready to laugh .

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
The best Spanish movie ever?, 16 enero 2006

Author: andalucia17 de Spain

Definitely among the top ten best Spanish movies of all time. Unknown in many parts of the world (it is not in the IMDb 250 best film group, which by the way gives us hope, among other things, as to the fact that there will always be cinematographic jewels to discover), it is not only a well structured comedy but a refined criticism to American Imperialism (many people from Latin America, for example, will feel identified with the characters and story of the small Spanish village. I once saw it with a Colombian girlfriend of mine and I noticed that that was the feeling). Someone said that had Spain not been a dictatorship, under the rule of Franco (an isolated ruler who in 1953 happily publicized a treaty with the U.S. as a sign of the new times in the history of Spanish foreign relations: something that would seemingly have a splendid beneficial effect on the life of the population of a country out of pace with western European history), the movie would have won the Oscar for the Best Foreign film back in the mid fifties.

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2 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A milestone in Spanish cinema, 24 octubre 2000
Author: fourva de Longueuil, Canada

I have seen this film in its original version and in a French translation, and I must admit that, as far as all cinematic qualities are concerned, it reminds me very much of those glorious British Ealing Studios comedies of the 50s.

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