If you liked ‘The Dinner’, here you can stream other comedies set in the Civil War

The civil war was not funny at all. Therefore, you have to make an effort to see the comic side, as José Luis Alonso de los Santos did when writing the play. The generals’ dinner. Years later, Manuel Gómez Pereira turned it into a film with Dinnerin the theaters of Spain since October 17.

The sinister, macabre and gloomy nature of the civil war makes a joke a dangerous weapon: the scriptwriter can be shot in the feet if he fails to make a perfect target. But when the bullet hits the target, it becomes an absolute triumph. That’s why, We recommend five comedies about the Spanish Civil War with which you will laugh during a good part of the footage. Until, suddenly, you stop doing it.

‘The heifer’

We begin with a classic, the work of two masters capable of making a skeleton laugh. Berlanga y Azcona In democracy they wrote a script that they had dreamed of since Franco’s time: a platoon of Republican soldiers goes into enemy lines to boycott the coup army through a strategic coup, killing the heifer with which the nationalists intend to celebrate a party.

The heifer He gave us emblematic moments of our cinema, while reflecting on issues that, from the drama, could not have been drawn better. For example, the political convictions of the majority of the military lower class during the civil war have hardly been more expertly portrayed than during that scene in which two soldiers, from opposite fronts, try to change their lives because one of their girlfriends lives in an enemy zone.

The heifer It is available on FlixOlé and Movistar Plus+.

‘Oh, Carmela’

Great comedies set in the civil war tend to share a sudden change of tone in their last act, in which the laughter suddenly freezes. Berlanga did not like too much how he had gone from comedy to drama with the final scene of The heifer. Much more accomplished, or at least more timely, is the turn of Oh, Carmelaone of the masterpieces of our cinema, in which a group of republican comedians are captured in the national zone and put to the test: if they put on a really good show, their lives will be spared.

Oh, Carmela It is available on Movistar Plus+, FlixOlé and Tivify.

‘Paper birds’

This is not the last film that we will recommend today about artists in the middle of the civil war. Directed by Emilio Aragonprofessional clown who filmed his first and penultimate feature film here (the next, a western starring Robert Duvall), paper bird stars Imanol Arias, Lluís Homar and Carmen Machi, lost souls who find their most likely means of survival in vaudeville in a country ravaged by war.

paper birds It is available on SkyShowtime and Movistar Plus+.

‘Malnazidos’

Genre cinema, since the Miró law, has been a living dead in our country. Therefore, nothing better than Malnazidos to vindicate a lineage that our country has seemed ashamed of on several occasions, depriving us, in doing so, of so many good moments in front of a big screen. This film combines zombies with civil war, in a similar way to how other countries have done with their respective historical traumas, without anyone raising a modest eyebrow.

Malnazidos is available on Netflix.

‘The mule’

Juan Eslava Galán wrote a novel that Michael Radford (The postman and Pablo Neruda) took to the movies with the fashionable couple on the big screen in our country: Mario Casas y Maria Valverdewhich just three years earlier had starred Three meters above the sky. The mule It takes place in the aftermath of the civil war, at which time a peasant from Jaen finds a mule with hundreds of pesetas in its saddlebags that, he imagines, must be his passport to the heart of a beautiful girl about whom he hardly knows anything.

The mule It is available for free on RTVE Play.

Bonus: ‘The apple of your eye’

Although it does not take place in the Spanish Civil War, it does take place during this period, since, while the fascist front advanced through our country, a team of actors, directors and producers moved to Nazi Germany to film a folklore musical in the UFA studios. This carpetovetonic tour into the heart of darkness led by Penelope Cruz is made by Fernando Trueba so that his personal god, Billy Wilder, would have been delighted to watch, and even write and direct.

The apple of your eye It is not available in streaming.