A group of workers under the command of the sympathetic foreman Fulgencio (Jose Marco Davo) arrives to demolish the old building where the humble nursing practitioner Evaristo (Fernando Fernán Gómez) and his wife Marta (Maria Rosa Salgado) live along with their four children. The other residents have left, but they cannot find any other housing and the workers help them move to the main floor, while they destroy the rest of the building, to give them more time to find other accommodation. And even Evaristo is forced to get extra money by dressing up as Don Tancredo and participating in a bullfight.
Decent dramedy (drama and comedy) that mingles black comedy, urban conventionality, Francoist social habits , criticism and ¨Esperpento¨. This is a piece of social manners, absurdity and nonsense , full of comical situations, family tragedy and desconcerting happenings. The film describes with a tone of tragicomic farce the various efforts made by the unfortunate marriage to find another apartment and how with the help of the workers they end up installed between screens in the middle of the street. Nevertheless, this ending did not please the censors, which is why another ending had to be filmed in which the family finally found a place to live casually in the "La Esperanza (Hope) neighborhood." The same year that General Franco created the Ministry of Housing (Vivienda) to try to solve a problem with an increasingly greater social scope, two films were made that deal with it: This ¨El inquilino¨(1958) and ¨El pisito¨ (1958) directed by Marco Ferreri and written by Rafael Azcona.
This ¨El Inquilino (The tenant)¨ is a solid short-budget production directed by the prestigious José Antonio Nieves Conde and with a script in which the Catholic writer José Maria Pérez Lózano collaborated. The film premiers normally in Valencia, but for a few weeks it is prohibited by the newly created Ministry of Housing and only is released again 6 years later after being cut and the director being forced to make a new ending with the family happy and content. This ¨El Inquilino¨(58) by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde along with ¨Historias De Madrid¨ (1956) by Ramón Comas , ¨and ¨La Vida Alrededor¨ (1959) by Fernando Fernán Gómez were heavily censored. However, strangely, "El Pisito¨(1958) did not suffer from censorship.
Faced with the neorealist, almost documentary style, of many scenes, for example those related to the demolition of the building, it clashes with some unreal situations, perhaps due to a first intervention of Franco's censorship or due to the traditional self-censorship at the time. This is not the typical comedy by that time, here there is a brief social denounce about shortages, housing problems, dealing with the need to live comfortably , fight for life, the inefficiency of political promises , social egoism and the complication of official procedures. This picture surprises us for the boldness of the social criticism on the situation of the housing and poorness of the the 50s .
Along with the general approach, the demolition scenes and those concerning the fight to get an apartment that has been left empty due to a dead person without a family stand out. Restored in 1995 by the Spanish Film Library team, the definitive version is much more attractive to critics, but some defects are also appreciated, in addition to the evident professionalism in the direction of craftsman José Antonio Nieves Conde.
This is an acceptable film with adequate settings by Enrique Alarcón, atmospheric cinematography by Francisco Sempere, evocative musical score by Miguel Asins Arbó and well directed by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde , a director of great quality who won several nominations and awards. José Antonio Nieves Conde was an expert on thought-provoking and brooding social dramas (Surcos , El Inquilino) , religious cinema (Balarrasa, Cotolay) , passionate story (Casa Manchada , Mas Alla del deseo , Marta , Historia una Traicion) , Comedy (Don Lucio and Hermano Pio) and even Terror (Sounds of horror) . Rating : 7/10 , above average Spanish film , well worth watching , because it is plenty of attractiveness, social denounce thorny issues and top-notch performances .
