Jesús Franco(1930-2013)
- Autor
- Director
- Actor
He was only six years old when he started composing music under the
protection of his brother Enrique. After the Spanish Civil War he was
able to continue his studies at the Real Conservatorio de Madrid, where
he finished piano and harmony. Being a Bachelor of Law and an easy-read
novel writer (under the pseudonym David Khume), he signed on to enter
the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográicas (IIEC),
where he stayed for only two years, while he worked simultaneously as a
director and theater actor. Later he went to Paris to study directing
techniques at the I.D.H.E.C. (University of Sorbonne), where he used to
go into seclusion for hours to watch films at the film archive. Back in
Spain he began rted his huge cinematographic work as a composer, with
Cómicos (1954) and
El hombre que viajaba despacito (1957),
and later worked as an assistant director to
Juan Antonio Bardem,
León Klimovsky,
Luis Saslavsky,
Julio Bracho,
Fernando Soler and
Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent,
among others. He also worked at Ágata Films S.A. as production manager
and writer. His first works as a director were industrial and cultural
short films. However, he soon applied all his knowledge and experience
to his feature directorial debut,
Tenemos 18 años (1959). From that
moment on all his work was supported by co-production. His
Succubus (1968)
was nominated for the Festival of Berlin, and this event gave him an
international reputation. His career got more and more consolidated in
the following years, and his endless creativity enabled him to tackle
films in all genres, from "B" horror films to pure hardcore sex films.
His productions have always been low-budget, but he nevertheless
managed to work extraordinarily quickly, often releasing several titles
at the same time, using the same shots in more than one film. Some of
his actors relate how they they were hired for one film and later saw
their name in two or more different ones. As the Spanish cinema
evolved, Jesús managed to adapt to the new circumstances and always
maintained a constant activity, activity that gave a place in his films
to a whole filming crew. Apart from his own production company, Manacoa
Films, he also worked for companies like Auster Films S.L.
(Paul Auster), Cinematográfica Fénix Films
(Arturo Marcos), the French
Comptoir Français du Film
(Robert de Nesle), Eurociné
(Daniel Lesoeur and
Marius Lesoeur), Elite Films Productions
(Erwin C. Dietrich), Spain's Fervi
Films (Fernando Vidal Campos) or Golden Films Internacional S.A. He
acted in almost all of his films, playing musicians, lawyers, porters
and others, all of them sinister, manic and comic characters. Among the
aliases he used--apart from Jesús Franco, Jess Franco or Franco
Manera--were Jess Frank, Robert Zimmerman, Frank Hollman, Clifford
Brown, David Khune, Frarik Hollman, Toni Falt, James P. Johnson,
Charlie Christian, David Tough, Cady Coster, Lennie Hayden, Lulú
Laverne and Betty Carter.
Lina Romay has been almost a
constant in his films, and it's very probable that in some of them she
has been credited as the director instead of him. In many of the more
than 180 films he's directed he has also worked as composer, writer,
cinematographer and editor. His influence has been notable all over
Europe (he even contacted producer
Roger Corman in the US). From his huge body
of work we can deduce that Jesús Franco is one of the most restless
directors of Spanish cinema. Many of his films have had problems in
getting released, and others have been made directly for video. His
work is often a do-it-yourself effort. More than once his staunchest
supporters have found his "new" films to contain much footage from one
or more of his older ones. Jesús Franco is a survivor in a time when
most of his colleagues tried to please the government censors. He broke
with all that and got the independence he was seeking. He always went
upstream in an ephemeral industry that fed opportunists and curbed the
activity of many professionals. Jess Franco died in Malaga, Spain, on
April 2, 2013, of a stroke.