Ageing, masculinity and national stardom: Sancho Gracia and the old cowboys in 800 balas

In the study of ageing and gender in contemporary European cinema that the research project AGE-C is undertaking, one of the key lines of questioning is constituted by stardom and ageing stars. Stardom is understood in the way first proposed by Richard Dyer, with the star being the receptacle of a series of meanings that go beyond the mere craft of performing a role to achieve social significance and relevance. The star as text becomes a “structured polysemy”, in Dyer’s words, which prompts one of the main questions of this project: What happens when the actor that attained stardom as a young performer continues to hold that status as an older person? How does that complex network of meanings change when it is sustained over time, and when it is deployed on the surface of an ageing body?

Studies of stardom in Anglophone scholarly literature often focus either on English-speaking stars or on non-English speaking actors who have transnational relevance, while other national-oriented studies may highlight the work of stars within a national scope. Indeed, the meanings surrounding the transnational ageing stardom of actors such as Sophia Loren, Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Michael Caine, Carmen Maura, Bruno Ganz or Jane Fonda are one of the prime sources of focus for AGE-C. However, it may be especially fruitful to undertake a transnational European-wide discussion of actors who are relevant within a specific nation.

As a short-hand example for this post, it may be useful to think about the stardom of Spanish actor Sancho Gracia. Sancho Gracia was one of the key male stars in Spain during the 1970s, especially due to his work in popular television shows that were being broadcast by the national television channel. Gracia headlined shows such as Los camioneros, La máscara negra and, especially, Curro Jiménez. In Curro Jiménez, Gracia played for three seasons between 1976 and 1980 a fictional Andalousian bandit in the early nineteenth century who first fights the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and then revolts against the absolute King Fernando VII. Throughout its forty episodes, Sancho Gracia embodies a traditional form of masculinity that is deployed through a variety of genres, mostly articulated through the Western but also including comedy, film noir, melodrama, heist and even boxing. Curro Jiménez is ingrained in larger transnational trends, mostly through the Uruguayan origin of its writer Antonio Larreta, but also through the residual presence of the spaghetti Westerns that had been shot throughout the previous decade in Spain, in which some of the series’ directors such as Mario Camus and Joaquín Romero-Marchent had actively participated. What matters, however, for the purposes of AGE-C is that the then forty-something Gracia, through a combination of stardom and genre, embodied the new values of the Spanish transition to the democracy through an outspoken rejection of authoritarianism in the wake of General Franco’s death.

As he aged, however, Gracia’s career started to veer towards secondary roles in cinema in the 1990s and the 2000s, until his passing in 2012. However, genre-oriented filmmakers made some strategic uses of Gracia’s stardom appealing to the cinephilic memory of his past roles in Los camioneros and Curro Jiménez. Among these are Enrique Urbizu, who used Gracia as a pimp villain in Cachito and, especially, Álex de la Iglesia in 800 balas. The film portrays a group of former stuntmen from the spaghetti Western heyday who survive by playing Western shows for scant groups of tourists in a film set in Almería. Their leader is Julián, played by Gracia, a washed-up stuntman whose son died in an accident while filming and who gets to know his grandson Carlos. However, Carlos’ mother Laura (played by Carmen Maura) wants to have revenge on Julián by turning his Western town into a real state development project. Julián and the stuntmen will react by buying the 800 bullets of the title to resist the police’s attempts to evict them in what becomes a remediated Western siege.

Some twenty-five years after Curro Jiménez, Sancho Gracia as Julián is not the same star as he was when he played the Andalousian bandit. His hair does not conserve the dense quiff, he has put on weight and his face is unshaven and full of wrinkles. The character also differs from the manly and virtuous bandolero: he is a drunk, a loser and a swindler who lives by remembering some glory days that may have never existed by imitating run-of-the-mill situations of Westerns for uncomprehending tourists. As with Curro Jiménez, stardom and genre are deployed to convey meaning. While Curro Jiménez was hopeful about the possibilities that the new democracy (and the subsequent inclusion of the country in the capitalist economy) would bring, 800 balas uses the same tropes to express distrust and disenchantment towards the characteristics that the modern economy has brought to the country, based on the twin pillars of real state development and mass tourism.

What is significant about this twenty-five-year shift expressed partly through Sancho Gracia’s stardom is that the actor’s style has not changed. Gracia based his acting persona on the strategic deployment of a limited range of resources, mainly his stiff manner of walking, with both arms swinging simultaneously; the upright and elegant riding style that he mastered; an intense gaze that was combined with wild outbursts of laughter; and the modulation of his slighty broken voice, especially with lower tones for the more emotional moments. Combined with a more intangible charisma, Gracia was able to successfully navigate Curro Jiménez and become an icon, but he still retains these techniques to build the character of Julián in 800 balas. However, his changed body and the passing of time in history and in cinephilic memory determine new meanings for his stardom. The relevant question for AGE-C becomes then how to establish transnational connections among a national stardom such as Sancho Gracia’s with equivalent stars in Europe and discuss potential larger trends that determine such shifts.

Written by: Dr. Luis Freijo

Image credit: 800 balas/800 bullets (Álex de la Iglesia, 2002). Spain: Warner Sogefilms A.I.E.

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