The Valencian Vicente Blasco produced two films, directed one, wrote a dozen original scripts and adapted two of his novels
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s life is a cinematographic script,an action movie. The boy who was born in the plaza del Mercado (Market Square) of Valencia, son of Aragonese emigres, opens the eyes when the 1868revolution dawns and its rattle is composed of the bullets from the federal uprising in 1869, the cantonal in 1873, and the 1874 coup d’etat. He soon became interested in literature, and more than studying, he wanted to read, read everything, but especially the Romantics, Dumas, Dickens, Poe, Hugo. And soon, to write. He made progress in his studies, but always preferred the teachers of life over those of the university. Constantí Llombart and his friends, republican writers who cultivate literature in Valencian, because they want to build a popular vehicle for the mobilisation and resurrection of the “living dead” (“morta-viva”), from Valencian, they become their greatest formative influence.
The cinema arrived for him in its twilight stage. He was already everything, hehad already done everything: he had edited and directed newspapers, written pamphlets and novels, led political parties and mass movements,founded colonies, given conferences and rallies. He said that a conversation with Gabriele D’Annunzio made him enthusiastic about the Lumière brothers’ invention. A man of action as he was, passion soon summoned his talent. Cinema, on the other hand, had already visited him: in 1914, the cinematographic version of “Entre naranjos” (Between orange trees) was released and shortly after that “La Barraca” (The hut), with the title “El tonto de la huerta” (The orchard’s fool).
During the Great War, Blasco, an allied sympathiser to the hilt, and as a good admirer of the Third French Republic, conceived the idea of overturning “Los cuatro jinetes del apocalipsis” (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) to the cinema. It was made with French money and was directed by André Heuzé. The tape has been lost.
He soon teamed up with Max André and, in that year of 1916, founded a film company, whose first fruit was “Sangre y arena”/“Arènes sanglantes” (Blood and sand). Directed by Blasco himself, the tape was the first of Premetheus Films, the film transcription of the Prometeo Publishing House, that Blasco, his brother-in-law Francisco Sempere and his friend Fernando Llorca, had created in 1914.
The company went bankrupt, but not Vicente Blasco’s faith in artistic media and expression. When the American film studios saw “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,”they quickly summoned his screenwriter. At that time, he states: “Cinema is as important to me as literature”. His bet is decisive.
Hollywood wanted to adapt his works. In 1919, he signed with Metro Pictures for the adaptation of “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and in 1921 of “Los enemigos de la mujer” (The enemies of the woman). In 1922,he gives the rights of “Blood and sand” to Famous Players and then those of “La maja desnuda” (Nude Maja) to International Film.He sold his first original screenplay in 1923 to Famous Players with the title of “Andalusian Love”. That same year he signed with the Metro for the transfer of rights of “Los muertos mandan” (The dead rule); the following year he will yield the ones of “Mare Nostrum”.
Blasco is the reason why Metro-Goldwin-Mayer was incorporated, since his films produced great benefits, of which he participated, and so did his producers. The great actors and actresses, Valentino, Mae Murray, Alice Terry, Greta Garbo, embodied the roles that Blasco created.
But the biggest movie, that of his life, is still to be shot.
Text by: Francesc A. Martínez Gallego (UV) and Antoni Laguna Platero (UCLM).
HeyValencia: https://www.heyvalencia.com/vicente-blasco-ibanez-la-conquista-hollywood/?lang=en
