Alfredo Landa
gigatos | February 17, 2022
Summary
Alfredo Landa Areta (Pamplona, Navarra, March 3, 1933-Madrid, May 9, 2013) was a Spanish actor who personified the film phenomenon known as Landismo in the early 1970s. His varied acting range made him one of the most versatile and popular actors in Spanish cinema, awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and winner of two Goya awards. He retired in 2007 and received the Goya of Honor for his career as a whole.
He was born on March 3, 1933 at 3 o”clock in the afternoon in Pamplona, Navarra. The son of a captain in the Civil Guard, he spent his early childhood in the town of Arive. At the age of six his family moved to Figueras, where he was a student at the Ramón Muntaner Institute. At the age of twelve he moved to San Sebastian, where years later he would begin studying Law; and it was precisely at the University where he had his first theatrical experience, performing more than forty plays in the Fundación del Teatro Español Universitario.
He married Maite Imaz Aramendi (1934 – 2016); they had three children: Idoia (1964), Alfredo (1966) and Ainhoa (1969).
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Beginnings
He moved to Madrid in 1958 and began working in theater: El cenador (El alma se serena (1968), by Juan José Alonso Millán…
His first relationship with cinema was as a dubbing actor. In 1962 he made his professional debut in the movies, with José María Forqué, in the successful film Atraco a las tres. Alfredo Landa himself has explained on occasion that Forqué summoned him to the Casa de Campo in Madrid and told him: “sit down and look scared and then go home”. After this disastrous experience, the actor no longer wanted to make films.
For the scholar Santos Zunzunegui, a little later in El verdugo by Luis G. Berlanga (1963). Berlanga”s El verdugo (1963), Alfredo Landa playing the sacristan who gives the altar boys a spanking and watches over them so that they don”t eat up all his inner strength, will show “all the impulse that already constituted, since his first forays into cinema, the uniqueness of an actor who in those days -he had just debuted a year earlier by the hand of José María Forqué in Atraco a las tres- was struggling with an industry that, like the film industry -and, needless to say, much more in the Hispanic case- does not offer any ease to newcomers. Alfredo Landa, then, that is the name of the imperious monago, left inscribed in El verdugo berlanguiano a premonition of a career that has now reached thirty uninterrupted years of giving body to various subjects”.
In forty-five years of profession he has made 133 films. His career can be divided into three main stages. In the first stage he alternated comic roles with theatrical works. During this period he participated in more than forty films, among which stand out Nobleza baturra, by Juan de Orduña, and Ninette y un señor de Murcia, by Fernando Fernán Gómez.
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Landism
The second stage comprises thirty-five films of what has come to be known as Landismo, which began in 1970 with Ramón “Tito” Fernández”s No desearás al vecino del quinto, in which he plays the character known as macho ibérico: an archetypal Spanish type, a sexual braggart. These films were mostly directed by directors such as Mariano Ozores, Pedro Lazaga, Tito Fernández and Luis María Delgado.
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Recognition
The third stage began in 1977 with Juan Antonio Bardem”s El puente, and is undoubtedly the most recognized in the artistic field. He collaborated with the main Spanish directors: Luis García Berlanga (La vaquilla), Mario Camus (Los santos inocentes), Basilio Martín Patino (Los paraísos perdidos), José Luis Garci (Las verdes praderas, El crack, El crack II), José Luis Borau (Tata mía), José Luis Cuerda (El bosque animado, La Marrana), Antonio Mercero (La próxima estación) and Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón (El rey del río).
In 1984 he shares with Francisco Rabal the award for male interpretation at the Cannes Film Festival for their respective roles in Los santos inocentes. Nominated seven times for the Goya Award, he was awarded in 1987 -El Bosque Animado- and in 1992 -La Marrana-. In 2003 he received a tribute at the Mostra de València. In March 2007, at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival, he announced his professional retirement at the age of 74. In the 2010 World Cup, the slogan “Watch out Holland, Alfredo Landa is coming!” testifies to the strong Spanish character that reflects the character of the average Spaniard, well represented in Landismo.
He also reaped important successes on the small screen thanks to his participation in series such as Confidencias (1963-1965), Tiempo y hora (1966-1967) – both by Jaime de Armiñán -, Ninette y un señor de Murcia (1984), by Gustavo Pérez Puig, Tristeza de amor (1986), El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1991), by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Lleno, por favor (1993), by Vicente Escrivá, Por fin solos (1995), En plena forma (1997) and also in the Telecinco series Los Serrano as the brother of Antonio Resines and Jesús Bonilla (2004).
In 2008 he received the Actors Union Award from his peers, and the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him the Goya of Honor, his third statuette, for his entire career, which he received with emotion, forcing his wife and children to take the stage. The veteran actor, with decades of experience and dozens of awards behind him, could not help but get emotional when he was honored by his colleagues in his profession. “I have so much inside… I owe this Honorary Goya to my profession, which has been the best thing in my life, what I appreciate the most,” said the actor.
In 2008 he was awarded the Prince of Viana Prize, the main cultural award given in Navarra, for his career as a whole. He also published a book of memoirs, Alfredo el Grande. Vida de un cómico, in collaboration with the writer Marcos Ordóñez. In them he recalls events of his personal life and explains the details of his professional career, although he does not leave very well some of his colleagues with whom he shared experiences such as José Luis Dibildos or Imperio Argentina.
In 2011 the artist received a Star on the Paseo de la Fama in Madrid.
The popular actor died on May 9, 2013 in Madrid, after suffering from Alzheimer”s disease in the last years of his life, and was cremated at the Nuestra Señora de los Remedios Funeral Home, in the Madrid town of Colmenar Viejo.
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Dos de Mayo, May 2, 2007.
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