There are no longer rooms as large as Fernán Gómez’s | Television

David Trueba says in the prologue to the reissue of yellow timewhich has just come out, which has yet to be recovered by the television Fernando Fernán Gómez. Trueba maintains that in Spain those who excel in various areas are punished. If you are an actor, you cannot also be a director, or a playwright, much less a writer. Fernán Gómez triumphed as an actor, and that meant that his films as a filmmaker were received with suspicion and condescension, despite the fact that he only The strange journey, Ninette and a man from Murcia either The journey to nowhere He is already credited as one of the most important directors of Spanish cinema. Nor was he celebrated as a playwright, although Bicycles are for summer It is one of the most relevant works of Spanish theater; nor as a writer, although yellow time It is a literary monument on a par with the best autobiographical works of the 20th century. All of this has grown after his death, until he turned the tables: today, perhaps the Fernán Gómez that interests us the least is the actor, who seemed the important one, the one who gave him identity.

In that great television museum that is the RTVE archive, open to anyone who wants to dive into it, there are all the episodes of Gathering withthe 1981 program in which Fernando Fernán Gómez received a few friends in the living room of his house to chat without forced feet, without a script and without much order. This was not abstemious television, nor did the guests usually measure what they said. The result was an hour of beauty in the form of free and hypnotic conversation.

After watching a couple of programs, you understand that this man’s genius was living. Cinema, theater, literature, television and conversation were only modulations of the same art in which he was a master: life. Enjoy those gatherings or get enthralled with the prose of yellow time It is a good antidote to the hysterical and deranged poisons of today’s hyperactive derangement. It is a pleasure to see life exposed as chance, without destiny, without revenge, with an irony that never lets its guard down and does not miss an opportunity to laugh at oneself. It would be nice if someone made a program like that today, but they no longer make guys like Fernán Gómez, and those who might be similar don’t have such a big room.