This forgotten Spanish production was seen very little, but it doesn't deserve that void.
Efficiently directed by Francesc Betriu, also unfairly forgotten for me, it adapts the homonymous novel by Juan Marsé, about the return home in 1959, after spending ten years in prison, of the ex-boxer and anarchist guerrilla fighter Jan (Nacho Martínez), who would have ended up mutating into a bank robber in Barcelona in the early post-war years.
During Jan's absence, his brother's widow (Charo López) has become a prostitute to earn a living, while his nephew (Achero Mañas) has grown up longing for his return. His former anarchist companions have taken different paths, some persisting in their ideas and others joining the regime to suck on the boat, while in the Gracia and Guinardó neighborhoods where he spent his youth many things have changed, although everything remains the same. And although for the neighborhood it is a myth. He just wants to be left alone and starts working as a bodyguard for an obscure and wealthy military judge (Eusebio Poncela) who distinguished himself for his ferocity during the years of repression but who, after suffering a car accident, has serious problems with amnesia and mental health.
A plot and setting very much of Marsé's, already present in other of his novels made into movies such as "If they tell you I fell" (Vicente Aranda, 1989) or "El Embrujo de Shanghai" (Fernando Trueba, 2002) but here it moves in the time at the threshold of the 60s and that has more possibilities thanks to the greater length and extension of the six chapters of a miniseries. And the result is very good thanks to the artistic direction of Gil Parrondo, the great work of Betriu reflecting the world of the writer, and a cast in which they are all at a high level.
There is also a juvenile subplot, perfectly integrated into the plot, of whoever carries out the narration. And in which there is an explicit homage to Alan Ladd and "Shane" (George Stevens, 1953) and to the world of the American western, also present on the soundtrack.
A soundtrack, which also includes, among others, songs by Nat King Cole or Paul Anka ("Ansiedad", "Perfidia", "Diana"), the sound that since the country's relative openness to the outside world and the installation of American bases, began to arrive from the other side of the Atlantic.
The recreation of environments by Gil Parrondo -squalid, opulent, more shabby- is prodigious and the truth is that the series is seen non-stop, one chapter after another, with an immense Charo López, a Nacho Martínez whose apparent inexpressiveness He fits the enigma of his character like a glove and a Eusebio Poncela who always more than meets the eye when it comes to bringing forward tortured and somewhat degenerate types, so drunk and returned from everything as prisoners of the greatest anxieties of the soul.
In addition, Assumpta Serna (better than in many of his other films), the great Carlos Lucena, or Juanjo Puigcorbé (this cheeky and cynical man always does well!!) along with others who are not so well known to me are also there. Or as saints of my devotion as Lluis Homar, Ramón Madaula, Ulises Dumont, Martxelo Rubio..., but, I insist, all magnificent. Which is surely also due to the wonderful work of Betriu in directing actors and how careful the entire series must have been from the pre-production phase, as was the case on spanish television at the time.
