Jose Luis Dibildos
Producer
Dibildos was a unusual figure for Spain's pre-democracy cinema. He was educated (a law graduate from Granada U.), a political moderate and a gentleman. And he had an agenda: to produce "popular cinema with critical bite," as he once put it. This, he hoped, would open up Spain's progressive -- hence internationally presentable -- filmmakers to mainstream audiences at home, with further attention abroad.
Dibildos' limited success at this serves eloquent testimony to Franco's censorship. It also underscores the gulf between an inevitably inward-looking Spain under Franco and the rest of western Europe. But at least Dibildos tried, scripting a syrupy family comedy "Merry Christmas" (1954) for young communist Juan Antonio Bardem. He later produced Carlos Saura's irregular Spanish Western, "Death of a Bandit" (1964) and co-produced Alain Delon starrer "The Black Tulip" (1966).
In 1956, Dibildos created production company Agata Film, just as Spain was reeling from an industrial revolution that morphed a rural backwater into a modernish European democracy in just two decades.
This punishing process was Dibildos' grand theme, explored in late '50s comedies and revisited with young liberals such as Roberto Bodegas in "Espanolas en Paris" (1970) and "Vida conyugal sana" (1973).
At their best, Bodegas' so-called Third Way films showed an easy empathy with ordinary, browbeaten Spaniards, though Dibildos, ever the gent, pulled his punches, and sank into ready sentimentality.
Having scripted-produced Mario Camus' admired "La Colmena" (1982), Dibildos received a honorary lifetime Goya in 2001.
He is survived by his wife and daughter, both TV hosts.
