卡拉布依

汉密尔顿教授是一位天真的核科学家，他曾经认为炸弹对人类有益，但他意识到自己的错误并逃避了他的发明。他躲在美丽的海滨小镇卡拉布奇，那里的人们仍然相信幽默和友谊。

An archetype of Arcadian fairytale starring veteran English action Edmund Gwenn in his final screen role, who plays the USA rocket scientist Dr. George Hamilton, who goes incommunicado in a fictional Spanish village along the Mediterranean coast called Calabuch (shot in Peñiscola, renowned for its fortress-like beauty spots).

A Spanish and Italy coproduction, THE ROCK FROM CALABUCH is Spanish celluloid maven Luis García Berlanga’s fourth feature, and instantaneously flaunts his strenuous feat of location shooting, wide-angle, panoptic shots faithfully captures the village’s allure to invite tourists, and in the meantime, limns the denizen’s small-town rapport with unsophisticated alacrity and unpretentious rowdiness, a modus operandi he would wield more vigorously in his latter entries, PLACIDO (1961) in particular.

The film doesn’t dwell on a concrete reason behind Jorge’s (George’s Spanish moniker) whim to abandon his scientific project and lay low, he may simply get tired of the high-tech enterprise, and needs to experience and embrace some human warmth which he finds profusely in Calabuch. Gladly bedding himself down in the prison cell (it is gratuitous), Jorge first builds a bond with fellow inmate, a local smuggler Langosta (Fabrizi), who also moonlights as the village’s repairman, movie projector, among others.

But what elevates Jorge to the toast of the town, aside from his amicability,is his rocket scientist backbone, appreciatively refines the local pyrotechnics to stunning effect, yet the film prosaically pares down the technicalities - there is a yawning disparity between painting the name “Calabuch” on the surface of a barebones rocket-shaped firework and exhibiting the same name in the nightly firmament through a salvo of feu d’artifice, yet the film seems to try toconvince us they are on the same technical level.

A tubby Gwenn, physically ponderous but zippy in brio and oratory, culminates his lengthy screen career with his usual wise-old-man persona that befits his legacy. Among the Spanish inhabitants, most of which cleave to one-note stereotypes, save Valentina Cortese’s schoolmarm Eloisa, who invokes a beauteous whiff of poignancy-tinted dignity as a mature, intellectual woman has suffered from long-standing loneliness but still holds dear an anticipation of romantic tingle no matter what, only Berlanga leaves her fate untapped, which, on second thought, might just as well ends that way, to dissipate a cornball aftertaste.

In the event, wonderfully heightens a communal spirit even its démodé naivety precariously borders on inanity and insularity, Berlanga’s THE ROCKET FROM CALABUCH retains its feel-good humbleness and remains an exponent of seeing through humanity with rose-colored glasses.

referential entries: Berlanga’s PLACIDO (1961, 6.7/10); THE EXECUTIONER (1963, 7.6/10).