It's the Emperor!!!
Holy crap almost like 2 hours in the guy in the black robe and hood(sorry I missed the beginning don't know who he is) looks just like Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars movies. George Lucas had to have seen this.
shareOkay, no lie, I thought he looked identical too! I wouldn't be surprised if Lucas "borrowed" it for his movies since he liberally has taken from others in past.
shareGeorge Lucas is known to be a Powell & Pressburger fan and he almost certainly has seen this film. But a better candidate for the Emperor is the old nun, Mother Dorothea, in Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus. She even says "Our plans for Mopu are almost complete." You can just imagine her preparing to take over the rest of the universe
Steve
LOL!!! Good one. and I agree!
shareI'm pretty sure that Luis Garcia Berlanga deliberately references the Giulietta sequence in "El Verdugo" in the scene where the hapless young "executioner" (who is appalled at the prospect of actually plying his "trade") is summoned onto a police launch (by a Civil Guard whose tricorn resembles Robert Helpmann's cocked hat) in a Majorcan grotto-like cave where he and his wife are enjoying a spectacle to the accompaniment of Offenbach's Barcarolle. (The irony is that everyone initially supposes the arrival of the police launch to be part of the entertainment.)
shareInteresting, thanks for that.
But the difficulty is, were they really referencing the film, or a stage production of the opera that they'd seen? The music, and even the costumes, could well have been similar in a stage production of the opera.
Steve
The highly original and individualistic visual approaches in their whole body of work makes me doubt that.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
I'm pretty sure that Luis Garcia Berlanga deliberately references the Giulietta sequence in "El Verdugo" in the scene where the hapless young "executioner" (who is appalled at the prospect of actually plying his "trade") is summoned onto a police launch (by a Civil Guard whose tricorn resembles Robert Helpmann's cocked hat) in a Majorcan grotto-like cave where he and his wife are enjoying a spectacle to the accompaniment of Offenbach's Barcarolle. (The irony is that everyone initially supposes the arrival of the police launch to be part of the entertainment.)
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3s8zcBCVw4
I don't see much to connect it to this film. They're just using a very famous piece of music (the most famous from this opera) in the entertainment
I've asked a few friends if they can see enough of a connection to call it a reference to this film
Steve
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