προγραφές

'Franco was intuitive, by will and by nature. Yet, to describe him as such is not to imply that he was merely groping in the dark. Intuition is the mind racing ahead, faster than words of theory, and if Franco committed technical ‘crimes’ in his haste he did so willfully, daringly, wickedly, in full awareness of his transgression. Even as the films grew more and more delirious, he knew what he was doing; he allowed that delirium to occur. Thus, these wild and ramshackle films expand the range of cinema. A voracious cinéaste, an aesthete, a passionate lover of the arts, Jess Franco knew and understood more about how cinema works than 99% of his critics. With little or no money he pursued a boundless love of the medium, on his own recalcitrant terms, to the very end. Franco lived his life as much as humanly possible through the lens, enmeshed in his own fantastical creations, a world of fear and desire. Making movies was all that mattered - with the exception of his beloved Lina Romay and a handful of his close friends, I doubt that he really gave a flying fuck about anything else. The Goya Award in 2009 was a well-intentioned gesture on the part of the selection committee, but Franco had already awarded himself the sweetest possible prize - a wild ride on the helter-skelter of his sixty year career. His lifetime award? To film until he dropped.'

Stephen Thrower, Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco, Volume I: 1959-1974, publisher: Strange Attractor