The Heifer

This feature film directed by Luis García-Berlanga, with a screenplay by the director himself and Rafael Azcona, marked the eleventh script the two managed to bring to the screen, following major successes such as Plácido (1961) and El verdugo (The Executioner, 1963). Berlanga’s original concept dated back to the 1940s. Starting in 1956, the two wrote two versions under different titles—Tierra de nadie (No Man’s Land) and Los aficionados (The Amateurs)—which were published but never filmed. In 1978, a novelized version of the script was published under the title La Fiesta Nacional (The National Pastime). According to the director, his repeated attempts to produce the film were blocked either by the producers he approached or by Francoist censorship, although there is no record of an official administrative case. The production in the 1980s stood out for its high costs, by Spanish film industry standards, and for bringing together a distinguished all-male cast.

In August 1938, the Aragon front is so stable that the only thing the two sides exchange is rolling paper for tobacco. On the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, the rebels organize a celebration, complete with a bullfight, and announce the festival program over loudspeakers aimed at the Republican trenches in an attempt to demoralize them. A small, motley commando of camouflaged Republican soldiers infiltrates enemy lines to steal the heifer, ruin the enemy’s celebration, and provide a feast for their starving comrades. A series of absurd comic situations, misunderstandings, and mishaps follows, with neither side achieving its goal: the heifer will neither entertain the Nationalists nor feed the Republicans.

The film approaches the Civil War with a form of equidistant comedy. Its satire is made possible by stripping the war of all its tragic elements. With no deaths or violence, the battlefield returns to the screen in the 1980s as the setting for a farce, where the characters’ comic traits reflect carnivalesque features rooted in human materiality—set in contrast to the absurdity of the transcendent values that drive wars.

Attracting nearly two million theater goers, the film became the box office success of the year in Spanish cinema,  The public’s warm reception of this comedic take on the Civil War paved the way for a wave of films in the following years that would revisit the war and the figure of Franco with a humorous approach.

ALA