Edgar Neville

Edgar Neville Romrée (Madrid, December 28, 1899 - ibid., April 23, 1967), iv Count of Berlanga de Duero, was a Spanish diplomat and artist, writer, playwright, film director and painter.

Early Years

He was born on Trujillos street. His father was Edward Neville Riddlesdale, an English engineer who was in charge of the business of his father's motor company in Spain, based in Liverpool, Julius G. Neville & amp; Co (later called Sociedad Anglo-Española de Motores); His mother was María Romrée y Palacios, daughter of the Count of Romrée and the Countess of Berlanga de Duero, a title that he would inherit.

He spends his childhood in the palatial house that his Romrée grandparents owned in the Valencian town of Alfafar, a place that he would always remember as one of the happiest spaces of his childhood. He also lived in La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia) and studied at the Colegio del Pilar, where he related to those who would constitute part of the future Spanish intelligentsia. From an early age he showed a love for letters.

He was always attracted to carnival, a hobby that would eventually lead to his movies. In 1917 he premiered La Vía Láctea with the company of La Chelito, a vaudeville-style comedy in half an act. At that time he meets the humorist and cartoonist Tono, who would become one of his best friends.

He studied law without much enthusiasm, as he soon showed a love for the theater. After the disappointment in love with a young actress of the time, he enlisted with the hussars who were destined for the war in Morocco. He did not last long in the Protectorate, because due to an illness he was returned to Spain. Recovered, he participated in the gathering at Café Pombo, where he met José López Rubio. He went to Granada, where he managed to finish his law studies. In the city of the Alhambra, he became friends with the poet Federico García Lorca and with the musician from Cádiz Manuel de Falla, with whom he shared his passion for flamenco and literature.

He married Ángeles Rubio-Argüelles y Alessandri from Malaga. The spouses went to live on Alfonso XII street, in a house decorated for them by his friend, the architect Carlos Arniches Moltó, who should not be confused with Carlos Arniches Barreda, his father and his famous comediographer. At this time he frequently traveled to Malaga, where the publishing house Imprenta Sur published his first books. At that time he established new relationships with the painter Salvador Dalí and the poets Manuel Altolaguirre, Emilio Prados or José María Hinojosa, all of them belonging to the generation of '27.

With the aim of seeing the world, he entered the diplomatic career in 1922. After various posts abroad, he was assigned as Embassy Secretary at the Embassy in Washington. He also traveled to Los Angeles, a place that attracted him because of the possibilities it offered him to enter the world of cinema. He managed to establish a friendship with Charles Chaplin, who hired him as a supporting actor in his film City Lights , where he played the role of a guard. Chaplin opens paths for him and Metro Goldwyn Mayer hired him as a dialogue writer and scriptwriter, since at that time Spanish versions were being shot for the Hispanic world. Once established as a resident of Hollywood, he began to attract many of his friends to the movie mecca: José López Rubio, Eduardo Ugarte, Tono, Luis Buñuel and Enrique Jardiel Poncela, among others. In the 1930s he separated from his wife and became romantically involved with Conchita Montes, a well-connected intellectual aristocrat and artist.

Civil War

Out of conviction or convenience, he joined the Republican Left and enjoyed the confidence of the Minister of State, Julio Álvarez del Vayo. After the outbreak of the Civil War, this relationship helped him avoid reprisals for protecting people from right-wing ideas and to get assigned to the Embassy in London. Once there, he acted as a spy for the rebel side, passing on information on the acquisition of weapons and the hiring of aviation pilots. He got Conchita Montes transferred to London as well and at the end of 1936 he fled to France because —according to his own account— he had been discovered. From there he went to the Franco zone with the intention of joining his diplomatic service. However, he was accused due to his former Republican militancy, for having been hostile to the CEDA —which he considered a group of pious— and the Falange Española de las JONS —for him, a group of thugs—, and for having sympathized with communists like Rafael Alberti. Neville then joined FET y de las JONS, the single party, and enlisted in the Army, performing propaganda services. In 1938 he was admitted to the diplomatic service.

He was present at the Madrid front, the battle of Brunete and the taking of Bilbao, where he was able to film terrifying scenes of the conflict that had a profound impact on him. He also wrote scripts for propaganda films, such as Youth of Spain (1938), La Ciudad Universitaria (1938) or Long live free men (1939) and Madrid Front (1939). After the war, he began his cinematographic and theatrical activity, praised by all the critics of the time, and published his work Frente de Madrid, a work seen from the trenches that surrounded the city.

Artistic career

After the war, and guided by his friend Ricardo Soriano Scholtz Von Hermensdorff, Marquis of Ivanrey, he acquired a residence in Marbella which, out of nostalgia for his days in California, he called "Malibu". There he settled with his partner Conchita Montes. His aforementioned fondness for gastronomy was what endangered his health, going through various treatments and weight loss clinics.

An exquisite man, with multiple talents and hobbies, he took advantage of everything his time could offer him. Due to his affiliation with the rebel side and the fact that his activity was carried out in the entertainment industry, cultivating above all humor, he was not generally included among the list of intellectuals of the generation of '27, as would also happen to his friends. writers from the coup side, such as Miguel Mihura, Tono, Enrique Jardiel Poncela, Álvaro de Laiglesia...^{[citation required]} Both Edgar and they opted for humor that was not politically committed, which he cultivated in all genres: theater, poetry, novels, cinema, painting... From their privileged positions they criticized without harshness the customs of the same bourgeoisie of that time, such as kitschness and the absurd. Along with Tono, Antonio Mingote and Mihura, he writes for the humor magazine La Codorniz , successor to the weekly La Ametralladora , which Mihura published in San Sebastián.

He stood out above all as a film director. La vida en un hilo was a great success with the public. It was first conceived as a film and was later turned into a musical comedy by his son Santiago. It is a smiling reflection on the mechanisms of chance, as well as an allegation against the bourgeoisie understood as a disease of the soul, against corniness and narrow-mindedness disguised as common sense. The play El baile, which ran for seven years, was also a great success. It is about a loving trio that triumphs over time and generations. Taken to the cinema, it was distinguished by its agile and brilliant dialogues, where tenderness and nonsense alternate. In addition to El baile, he premiered other comedies on the stage, such as Margarita and the men (1934), Veinte añitos (1954), Kidnapping (1955), Adelita (1955), Forbidden in Autumn (1957), High Fidelity (1957) or The strange wedding night (1961), as well as the stage adaptation of La vida en un hilo in 1959.

He also cultivated other film genres, such as Spanish detective films, with works such as The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1944) or El crimen de la calle de Bordadores (1946). As for the musical, he left a valuable documentary film on the state of flamenco at the height of 1952 entitled Duende y misterio del flamenco .

Awards

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

Filmography as a director

• Prison (1930)
• I want them to take me to Hollywood. (1931)
• Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si or The private life of a tenor (1934)
• The evil Carabel (1935)
• The Miss of Trévelez (1936)
• Youth in Spain (1938)
• The University City (1938) - documentary on the Battle of the University City
• Long live free men (1939)
• Santa Rogelia (1939)
• Front of Madrid (1939)
• Verbena (1941)
• Sancta Maria (1942)
• The parrala (1942)
• Mail of Indias (1942)
• Café de Paris (1943)
• The tower of the seven humpbacks (1944)
• Carnival Sunday (1945)
• Life in a thread (1945)
• The Crime of Bordadores Street (1946)
• The Lights Suit (1946)
• Nothing. (1947)
• The Marquis of Salamanca (1948)
• Mr. Esteve (1948)
• The last horse (1950)
• Fairytale (1951)
• The Devil's Lock (1951)
• Duende and mystery of flamenco (1952)
• The irony of money (1955)
• The dance (1959)
• My street (1960)

Literary works

• Front of Madrid, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1941
• Marramiau, Madrid, Escelicer, 1958
• Life in a thread, Madrid, Escelicer, 1959
• High fidelity, Madrid, Escelicer, 1960
• Edgar Neville Theatre, Madrid, New Library, 1963
• Hollow love, Madrid, Taurus, 1965
• The longest day of Monsieur Marcel, Madrid, Afrodisio Aguado, 1965
• The Little Family, Madrid, Afrodisio Aguado, 1967
• Prohibited in autumn, Madrid, Escelicer, 1968
• Select Theatre of Edgar Neville, Madrid, Escelicer, 1968
• Margarita and men, Madrid, Escelicer, 1969
• Judith and Holofernes, Madrid, Editions El Observatorio, 1986
• His last landscape, and other poems. City of Malaga, 1991
• The dance. Short stories and stories, Madrid, Castalia, 1996
• Don Clorato de Potasa, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1998
• Eve and Adam, Zaragoza, Books of the Unnamed, 2000
• Flamenco and singing jondo, Madrid, Rey Lear, 2006
• Productions García, S.A., Madrid, Castalia, 2007
• The angular piedrecita, Madrid, Clan, 2011
• My particular Spain: arbitrary guide to the tourist and gastronomic paths of Spain, Madrid, Kingdom of Cordelia, 2011
• The good humor of Edgar Neville (Nearly forgotten), La Coruña, Arenas, 2020

Used bibliography

• DíezEmeterio (1998). «The Francoist repression in the professional field of cinema». Archives of the Film Library (Valencia: Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana) (30): 54-90. ISSN 0214-6606.

For more information

• Burguera Nadal, María Luisa: Edgar Neville: between humor and poetry, Málaga, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Diputación de Málaga, Biblioteca Popular Malagueña, 1994, ISBN 84-7785-110-7.
• Burguera Nadal, María Luisa: Edgar Neville. Between humor and nostalgia. Institució Alfons el Magnànim, Valencia, 1999, ISBN 84-7822-284-7.
• Franco Torre, Christian: "Edgar Neville: Duende and Mystery of a Spanish Filmmaker" SHANGRILA Association, 2015, ISBN 9788494254581.
• Ríos Carratalá, Juan A. (coord.): Neville Universe. City of Malaga. Málaga, 2007, ISBN 9788496055827.
• Sánchez Castro, Marta: The humor in the authors of the "other generation of 27": linguistic-contrastive analysis - Jardiel Poncela, Mihura, López Rubio and Neville. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007. ISBN 978-3-631-56395-3.
• Torrijos, José María: Edgar Neville (1899-1967): the light in the look, Ministry of Education and Culture, Madrid, 1999, ISBN 9788487583278.