Every time a Spanish politician lies, or a bureaucrat oversteps, someone mutters: “¿Y dónde está el policía?”
Paulino, playing a bumbling civilian, pretends to commit a crime. He looks around nervously. He asks Carmela: “¿Y dónde está el policía? ¿Dónde está la autoridad?” (“And where is the policeman? Where is the authority?”) Carmela, deadpan, scans the empty stage: “No hay. No hay policía.” (There is none. There is no policeman.)
When the performance ends, Carmela is taken away and executed. She dies not for a political slogan, but for a punchline. Why did this film explode in 1988? Because Spain was living its own version of the sketch. 1988-Y donde esta el policia
The genius of the scene is that the actors on screen suddenly realize they aren't acting anymore. By asking where the authority is, they have summoned it. The real violence—the real policeman—waits in the wings.
Then came Carlos Saura’s black comedy, ¡Ay, Carmela! And in the middle of a tragic war story, two starving performers asked a simple, devastating question: The Setup: Comedy in Hell For those who haven’t seen it, the film follows Carmela (Carmen Maura) and Paulino (Andrés Pajares), a pair of second-rate vaudeville performers trapped behind Nationalist lines during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Forced to put on a propaganda show for a fascist commander, they decide to improvise. Every time a Spanish politician lies, or a
Just seven years earlier, a group of fascist soldiers had stormed the Spanish Congress (the 23-F coup attempt). The “policeman”—the military—had almost returned. Meanwhile, the democratic government was fragile, and ETA terrorism was at its peak.
Then comes the bit.
They start a parody of a Parisian nightclub. But instead of singing about love, they begin mocking the absurdity of their captors.