Welcome Mr. Marshall! (original title: ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall!) is a classic Spanish comedy film directed by Luis García Berlanga, and written by Berlanga himself, Juan Antonio Bardem (uncle of that Bardem) and Miguel Mihura. The film won the international prize for best comedy at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. In 1996, the Spanish Film Academy named it the fifth best Spanish film of all time.
The film is set "once upon a time" in "a Spanish village, any little village," named Villar del Campo... or del Río. One day, while entertaining the visiting Andalusian Copla
star Carmen Vargas (Lolita Sevilla) and her agent Manolo (Manolo Morán), the slightly deaf and possibly senile Mayor Don Pablo (José Isbert) is visited by the local Government Representative (José Franco), who tells him that the Americans in charge of distributing Marshall Plan funds are going to pass through the village and that they should tidy it up a little for them. Incited by Manolo, who claims to know what Americans like best because he did a gig in Boston once, the village invests a money it doesn't have in an attempt to give them the best welcome they could imagine. They believe that the longest the Americans stay in the village, the more money they will leave there and then the villagers will buy all the things they'd ever wanted. Though the village is in Castile, they buy Andalusian holiday clothes for everyone (because that's what Americans want to see in Spain, according to Manolo) and entirely fake Andalusian-looking streets and façades, flowers, confetti and much more. They also rehearse an elaborate welcome ceremony complete with parade, orchestra, singing and dancing. When the big day comes, however, the Americans simply drive through without stopping. Rather than being showered with gifts as expected, the villagers must contribute some of their already meager posessions to pay for the expenses incurred during the futile celebration - and all of them, humbled by the experience, give their part willingly.
Released mere months before the reestablishmment of Hispano-American relations with the Pact of Madrid, the film is an acid, but necessarily subtle satire of life in post-civil war Spain, the then futile attempts of The Franco Regime to get support from the Western Block of the Cold War, and of Spain's hopes for and exclusion from the Marshall Plan, in particular. So subtle, in fact, that the producers of the film, who had lived in Nazi Germany for the duration of World War II, believed that it was an Anti-American film and agreed to finance and promote it, even after Berlanga and pals threw most of their planned cliched 1940s musical away and massively retooled the script into the parodic film every modern Spaniard knows. Neither did the film suffer much from the irontight Francoist censorship, which just demanded that the village priest should be depicted as an incorruptible Christian (and ended as a bigot and a death row inmate - even if just during a dream) and cutting a scene where the spinster schoolteacher dreams of being tackled by an American Football team because its sexual connotations (Berlanga would write and direct a short 50 years later, titled The Teacher's Dream, but it was unrelated despite its title and recycled shots with the original teacher in her bed). Welcome Mr. Marshall! is so surprisingly clever and political for its time, that most Spaniards today are surprised to learn that it was made in the early 1950s and that it was not limited in its circulation in any way, despite Berlanga's later claims to the contrary.
References to the Marshall Plan notwithstanding, the movie is considered as relevant and meme inducing today as it was when first released. If a Spaniard wants to criticize a conational for being naive about foreign institutions or too willing to shill the benefits of foreign investment (be it the European Union, the overreliance on tourism as an economic motor, Eurovegas or Madrid's at one time perennial Olympic bids, to name some recent examples), there is a sure chance that they will name Welcome Mr. Marshall! or sing its song.
Tropes:
- Advertised Extra: Lolita Sevilla received top-billing, the largest paycheck (200,000 pesetas versus Morán's 70,000 and Isbert's 50,000) and a prominent place in the poster and advertising. Her role is actually very small, limited to singing, dancing and serving as an excuse to introduce Manolo to the village.
- All for Nothing: The Americans drive past the village, rendering all the efforts to welcome them moot.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The English spoken in the dreams of Don Cosme and Don Pablo is gibberish. Justified, because neither character knows English. Pepito's prepared speech, on the other hand, is in the real language.
- Black Comedy: Most of "The Teacher's Dream" involves Miss Eloísa teaching the children about different execution devices and showing how they work on the children themselves.
- Cannibal Cauldron: Don Luis has a nightmare about being cooked in one.
- Cannibal Tribe: Two of Don Luis's ancestors were eaten by Indians in the New World. In his Nightmare Sequence, he is himself a conquistador eaten by cannibals.
- Closest Thing We Got: The villagers can't fix the church's clock so they put a man to move the clock's hands manually. They also use a (living) cow to fake a stuffed fighting bull's head at the tavern.
- Commander Contrarian: Don Luis, the Hidalgo (a petty, impoverished nobleman) wants nothing to do with the Americans and is always voicing his criticism to the rest of the village. It is implied that he is always like that, regardless of the subject.
- Deconstructor Fleet: Of the Andalusian post-war Copla musical comedy. So much that the final film isn't even set in Andalusia, and the musical numbers are as minor as the part involving the Copla star, Lolita Sevilla. It's been said that Welcome Mr. Marshall! is to the Andalusian musical comedy what Don Quixote was to the chivalry novels. Both helped kill their respective "non-genre" and are now fresher and more famous than any straight example of either.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The scene with Don Pablo addressing the crowd from the Town Hall's balcony to give "an explanation" and just repeating the same meaningless words is seen by many as a parody of Franco's speeches from Madrid's Royal Palace. However Berlanga denied this and claimed that he told Isbert to channel Benito Mussolini.
- Dream Sequence:
- Don Cosme dreams that he is part of a Holy Week procession, whose penitents turn out to be klansmen and they arrest him. After a Kangaroo Court, he is sentenced to hang.
- Don Luis dreams that he is an embarking conquistador; he is received warmly by the Natives before they seize him and put him in a Cannibal Cauldron.
- Don Pablo dreams that he is The Sheriff in a Wild West town and visits the saloon, where he has a gunfight with an outlaw and loses.
- Juan dreams that he is plowing his field with his wife and children when The Three Wise Men, piloting a bomber and dressed in pilot uniforms, airdrop a tractor on to his plot.
- In the deleted scene, Miss Eloísa dreams of being pilled over by a team of American Football players.
- Eagleland: All the dreams are versions of this to some extent (except Don Luis's, which takes place in Injun Country), but Don Cosme's takes the cake. He's arrested by the Ku Klux Klan at the sound of When The Saints Go Marching In and taken to a McCarthy-esque Kangaroo Court where he is sentenced to hang.
- Fauxtastic Voyage: What the villagers intend to do to the Americans, making the village look like a Toros y Flamenco cliché.
- Genre Roulette: Referenced in old timey advertising:"No, it's not a Western! In no way is it a period film! Of course it's not a neorrealist film! No, it's not a folkloric movie either! What is it?"
- Insistent Terminology: Don Luis insists in calling the Americans "Indians".
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Don Luis is revealed as one when he donates a sword to help pay the pointless welcome, despite being against it for the whole movie.
- Last of His Kind: Don Luis comes from a centuries-long line of aristocratic military men and seems to not have any living family. According to The Narrator: "He's always waiting for a letter that never arrives. His ancestors must have forgot to write him."
- Moral Guardians: Don Cosme, as the village's priest, fulfills this role.
- The Narrator: The omniscient, sarcastic variety capable of altering the contents in the screen, bordering on Lemony Narrator. Played by Fernando Rey (Alain Charnier in The French Connection). Doubles as The Omniscient.
- Not So Above It All: For all his brains, Don Emiliano buys Manolo's mermaid song as much as everyone.
- Old Maid: Miss Eloísa is identified as one from the beginning, even though the actress was just 24 at the time.
- The Sheriff: Don Pablo, a fan of Wild West movies, dreams that he is one.
- The Three Wise Men: Appear in Juan's dream to deliver a tractor. From an American bomber, while wearing pilot uniforms.
- Sleepyhead: Gerónimo, the Mayor's secretary, always falls asleep on the job.
- Showdown at High Noon: Between Sheriff!Don Pablo and Outlaw!Manolo in Don Pablo's dream. It couldn't be left out of a Wild West parody.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Manolo is a more sympathetic version of the trope, because he actually believes in what he says when he is roping the villagers into doing the elaborate welcome and he also pays for the subsequent debt, donating a gold ring that he was given in Boston. He conveniently forgets his promise of staying in the village working for free if the scheme to seduce the Americans fails, though.
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Spiritual Successor: Berlanga's own The National Shotgun series, which satirize post-dictatorship Spain. - Stern Teacher: Miss Eloísa again, even without considering "The Teacher's Dream" where it is taken up to eleven.The Narrator: This child punished with his arms stretched for not knowing who killed Sigeric, and these other children with their tongue out, are the disciples of Miss Eloísa, the teacher.
- Surreal Humor: Loads in the scene of Juan's dream, which casts The Three Wisemen as American bomber pilots parachuting tractors on land plots, already fueled and ready to use.
- Teacher's Pet: Pepito. "This disgusting child with his tongue inside", in the words of The Narrator, along with "The first of the class, the Monster of Natural History."
- Toros y Flamenco: The Andalusian makeover of the village, following the advice of Manolo.
- The Western: Don Pablo is a fan of westerns and has a dream filled with Western tropes.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Villar del Río is "any Spanish village". It's implied to be somewhere in Castile, but that only cuts it down to somewhere in half of Spain.
- The Wild West: The setting of Don Pablo's dream.
- Visual Pun: When Manolo calls the Americans "noble but childish" before the crowd, the camera pans to a local kid picking his nose.
- Younger Than They Look: Lolita Sevilla was only seventeen when she acted in this movie.
