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THE DOG IN THE MANGER. Pilar Miró (El Mundo).

EL PERRO DEL HORTELANO 1

SIGNS OF ENVY. The film "El perro del hortelano" (The Dog in the Manger", is in the theaters thanks to the efforts of those few who believed in the project, but this isn't the right time to make any comments other than noting that, thanks to the film's success, a furious and profound feeling of victory ensues.

... I let "I dare not" wait upon "I would";" don't love, but feel a jealousy intense; know, since I would be loved, that love I should, yet neither yield, nor offer a defence.
Thus what I mean I show, but do not show.

Let he who can, say what I mean; I know.

It all started with the superb version, which Renato Castellani filmed about "Romeo and Juliet," winner of the Gold Lion award of the Venice Festival in 1954. Of course it wasn't the first film ever made based on a William Shakespeare play, but it was the first one I saw, and I saw it many more times thereafter.

After the fascination it produced in me that first time, every Saturday I went to the 4:00 performance at the Coliseum Theater on Gran Via Street in Madrid, almost clandestinely, like the most unmentionable passions are developed.

Castellani's medieval version, starring Lawrence Harvey and Susan Shentall, is for me the most suggestive of all that have been made about this drama of Shakespeare. At the time, it also meant the discovery of the story that contains all love stories, my first conscious journey into the past, a break from the world we inhabit, towards the voices of those who inhabited it before us, a journey more moving and magical than we could possibly make through the best of satellites.

Watching that film repeatedly would awaken in me a pure and generous feeling of admiration towards its director which was repeated years later when I watched Orson Welles' screen adaptations of Shakespeare.

GOOD FEELINGS. But the feeling was no longer as pure and generous as before; those good feelings gradually mixed, like in many other cases, with unquestionable signs of envy. Perhaps the sort of envy that drives us to investigate, to invent and, why not admit it, to emulate.

In 1989 the freshman Kenneth Branagh dared to take on (as director and scriptwriter) a version of Henry V, without being afraid to play the role Laurence Olivier played in 1944, and unflinchingly using certain references from "Chimes at Midnight", or shortly after, here in Spain, delighted a young public with his not exactly universal movie "Much Ado Nothing." This is when the bold question arises: So why shouldn't we do it too? What is more, why shouldn't I give it a try?

Probably, the vitality which theater enjoys in England has given rise to the best spectators in the world. The speech made by Henry V that precedes the last battle, "Today is St Crispin's day", is recited by heart by English schoolchildren.
Here in Spain things are different. Our schoolchildren might just about grudgingly be familiar with Calderon de la Barca's play "The Mayor of Zalamea", and have vague doubts about his "Life is a Dream." But, why not give it a try anyway?

EL PERRO DEL HORTELANO 3
THE GOLDEN AGE. It is neither easy nor comfortable to get down to reading the works from our Golden Age and I don't think that all of them could be successfully adapted to the screen. But I must admit that I considered some of them before choosing to make a film from "The Dog in the Manger, by famous playwright Lope de Vega.

Lope de Vega's verses can't be clearer or more beautiful. They manage to have the appearance of that which is natural, of those things that anyone can say but in a way that only a poet like Lope can create.
However, the piece contains many sonnets and soliloquies, that is to say, it has interior music. Hence, at first it might seem to be anti-cinematographic, but on the other hand nobody turns his nose up at the rhetoric in some of William Shakespeare's passages. People don't choke on it or complain about it either, nor at the endless verses we find in Edmond Rostand's play: Cyrano de Bergerac.

The story about the Countess of Belflor is most unusual. A woman, lady and master of people's wills in the 17th century who uses her wit and position to obtain whatever she wants, by whatever means she sees fit. A comedic palace intrigue, caustic, malicious, intelligent and amusing.

My love, though, springs from jealousy; distressed, although I know I'm handsomer, I see with envy that another seems more blessed in having won a love that's lost to me.

PILAR MIRÓ.