Barcelona has served as a backdrop for numerous films that have used its streets, squares, and monuments to set their scenes
Week by week, we have been discovering in this blog how the city of Barcelona has served as a source of inspiration for artistic disciplines such as photography or literature. Indeed, it was the fusion of words and images that gave birth to cinema, which has not hesitated to take advantage of our city's architectural diversity to use it simply as a backdrop or as a fundamental part of its stories. There are dramatic, war-related, historical, apocalyptic, and of course, romantic films. Some integrate the urban landscape into the film's diegesis, while others simulate medieval France or a postmodern California. But all have used the streets, squares, and monuments of our city to set their films. And it's true, Barcelona can also be seen in the cinema!
Of all the movies set in our city, perhaps the main reference is Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona, directed by Woody Allen and starring Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Scarlett Johansson. Criticized at the time for presenting a picture-perfect Barcelona, the film tells the story of two American young women in Barcelona, whose tranquil lives are turned upside down when they meet a bohemian painter (Javier Bardem) and his wild ex-wife (Penélope Cruz). In dealing with the Barcelona experience of two tourists, the filming could not overlook locations such as La Pedrera, the Sagrada Familia, the Modernista site of Sant Pau, or Park Güell. Tibidabo, La Rambla, Plaza Sant Felip Neri, the streets of Raval, Ciutadella, Paseo de Gracia, the MNAC, and the MACBA complete the tourist guide that the New York filmmaker created to make our city a fashionable destination among his compatriots.
Also starring Javier Bardem, Biutiful presents us with a much darker, marginal Barcelona, where Bardem's character begins a race against time to ensure the well-being of his children as his death approaches. This struggle leads him to descend into the city's underworld through illegal workshops where workers are exploited, or the street vending as seen from the perspective of a vendor. To convey this invisible Barcelona to the eyes of the tourist, Alejandro G. Iñarritu chose grey and cold atmospheres, such as those of the Sants Cemetery, the Royal Square, the Barcelona metro and buses, or the beaches of Barceloneta and San Sebastián.
Although for the real underworld, the one depicted in the apocalyptic movie The Last Days, starring Quim Gutiérrez and José Coronado, where Barcelona serves as a paradigm of the devastation that the epidemic known as “the panic” causes in major cities around the world. A feeling of agoraphobia confines the survivors to the network of subway tunnels and sewers of our city. Muntaner Street filled with abandoned cars, or the zoo animals roaming freely around the Arc de Triomf are some of the most striking scenes of the film.
Other films in which the city is recognizable include: All About My Mother, Street Dogs, Salvador, Libertarias, Los Tarantos, Manual of Love, or Anacleto: Secret Agent. In all these films, locations such as the Plaza Real, Via Layetana, the Palau de la Música, or the now-gone shantytown neighborhoods of El Somorrostro or Campo de la Bota appear. All these films are not only shot in Barcelona, but they are also set in the city. That is, the stories of the characters take place in Barcelona and this is conveyed through the dialogues and the interaction of the characters with their environment.
