Luis Garcia Berlanga provided much needed satire during the Spanish dictatorship and transition to democracy. He imbued many of his films with enough surrealism and silliness to get away with it even during the censorship happy years, and he spread his wings when democracy arrived to the country.
La Escopeta Nacional is a series of events without a clear plot, simply a businessman trying to sell his goods in a chaotic setting, among all sorts of unlikely characters, caricatures inhabiting the nest of corruption that Berlanga didn't have to think too hard to imagine in Spain.
The comedy was funny then and it is funny now. But now the satire has aged like a good wine, with undertones of still being sadly relevant.
La Escopeta Nacional is a series of events without a clear plot, simply a businessman trying to sell his goods in a chaotic setting, among all sorts of unlikely characters, caricatures inhabiting the nest of corruption that Berlanga didn't have to think too hard to imagine in Spain.
The comedy was funny then and it is funny now. But now the satire has aged like a good wine, with undertones of still being sadly relevant.