Despite his youth, Daniel Tormo (Manuel San Francisco) is unhappy with his life and bad luck. He works in an auto repair shop and his job does not offer him any prospects of progress. He decides to marry his attractive girlfiend (Maria José Alfonso) , but things go wrong when he's fired. Then influenced by the large number of workers who are leaving Spain for Germany, he makes the decision to emigrate as well.
This is an acceptable film dealing with the unfortunate life of a young man , he is fired from a car workshop, he gets married but he can't find a job , he tries to go abroad to work but all are difficulties and objections to get a job abroad , for what he has no choice but to carry out robbery resulting in disastrous consequences. There are several important issues raised by the film , the main one being unemployment, the difficulty of finding work, both in Spain and abroad. The problems of emigration and the bureaucratic complexes of leaving the country to another to work and the ordinary immigration with the social complexities it emerges.
From the beginning , we could fear that the film will fall into the typical boring tale with few dialogues supported only by the image, which many people confuse with personal style when it is nothing more than a lack of ingenuity, on the other hand that does not happen . The sequences that take place, apparently inconsequential but nonetheless logical, are treated with a pleasant and interesting naturalness within the context at the time. The same can be said of the performances that amaze for the conviction achieved as a whole , which tells us about the professional work of the direction in spite of being a film debut .
I found it to be a very realistic , deep film, marked by the anguishing rebellion of the individual who does not accept his condition . At the same time, we can focus on a subtle but interesting role , which is that due to his proud and non-conformist nature , Daniel is rejecting other alternatives that are offered to him , such as a good job but of low status for him or as an accountant who does not consider it . A film from the period , but unfortunately also timeless , which contrasts the sad reality with the dreams to come true , in fact the problems treated in the movie today continue in similar way and equally unresolted .
The motion picture was well directed by the notorious writer Jesús Fernández Santos at his only film feature . At the end of the 1940s, Fernández Santos attended the Official Film School. He coincided with Carlos Saura, Julio Diamante, Eugenio Martín, José Luis Borau, Mario Camus, among others. He obtained the title of director and cinema became his second profession, dedicating himself to documentaries, which he combined with his literary career. Without abandoning his work as a novelist, from 1964 he began a close collaboration with Radio Televisión Española, where he directed chapters in series on culture and contemporary literary authors, museums and painters, such as La vispera de nuestro tiempo, Los españoles, Los libros, Conozca España, Aprenda a ver and Cuentos y leyendas. During a novelistic career of more than thirty years and with more than twenty books published, Fernández Santos won practically all the literary prizes on the Spanish scene, from the National Literature Prize with Extramuros, in 1978, to the Planeta Prize, in 1982 with Jaque to the lady, going through the Nadal Prize, in 1970 with the Book of Memories of Thing, and Los Bravos , among others. And he wrote and adapted a lot of scripts , such as : Los Jinetes del Alba , Extramuros , Los Libros , Quevedo, La España de Goya , Zurbarán , Velázquez , Soria de Murillo , Ribera el Españoleto, Moratin , Murillo, Garcilaso de la Vega .
