Looking at Madrid: Areta and the Urban Landscape in José Luis Garci’s El crack trilogy

• Autores: Martínez Illán, Antonio, Muñoz-Garnica, Miguel
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2023
• Institución: Universidad de Piura
• Repositorio: Revista de Comunicación
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:revistas.udep.edu.pe:article/3180
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistadecomunicacion.com/article/view/3180
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Análisis textual; Cine español; Cine negro; El crack; José Luis Garci; Madrid y el cine; Transición española; Textual Analysis; Spanish cinema; Madrid in cinema; Film noir; Spanish Transition

El crack (1981), El crack dos (1983) and El crack cero (2019) by José Luis Garci make up a trilogy that adapts the genre of American film noir to Madrid's reality during the Transition, spanning from the months before the death of Francisco Franco until 1982. This article analyzes what we consider to be the main expressive key of the three titles: the visual continuity and complementarity between Germán Areta, the leading detective, and Madrid's views. We detected two aesthetic patterns sustained throughout the trilogy: the urban landscape shots presented in an internal dialogue with Areta's gaze and the non-narrative successions of pictures of the city, where there's no depiction of the protagonist. Both resources allow us to deploy a textual analysis of the films to illustrate how that city-character progression is built, typical of classic film noir but much more radical in the hands of Garci.