A friend told me the original
account in confidentiality. It concerned something that had
happened to him when he was sixteen years old in a preventorium -
an establishment where persons (especially children) liable to
develop diseases like TB received preventive care and treatment -
in the mountains of Gata, in Cáceres, after the Civil War. Eleven
or twelve years have passed since he told me the story but from the
day I heard it, I thought it would make a great movie. I suggested
that he write the story in detail. From that story, Rafael Azcona
and I began to write the film script.
[...] As for Manolo, it is true
that his sexual awakening represents one of the script's main story
lines, but it should be borne in mind that that boy, from the very
first sequence, has already woken up and has very clear interests.
From the beginning, we realize he is at the age when not just sex
but all manner of anxieties occupy his young mind. It is that
rebellious age which I myself recall so vividly and which, in a
certain way, I wanted to recover [...] I think that because of his
education and atmosphere around him, Manolo is what might be called
a right-wing child, although I'm not sure that such a term can be
applied to a teen-age boy. For certain, all the characters in the
film, with the exception of Emilio, have traditional and
conservative morals and right-wing ways and Manolo moves in that
context. However I have tried to ensure that Manolo doesn't have a
critical awareness regarding such issues, and I haven't intended to
deal with the awakening of such a critical awareness in the
film.
He gradually transgresses, in a
visceral way, all of the established moral standards and ruling
ideas of his time although not consciously. He isn't deliberately
looking for the situations but rather the situations come his way.
Because he is weak and does not miss any opportunity, he gradually
falls prey to all of them. This is one of the aspects I was more
interested in dealing with.
FERNANDO TRUEBA.