(no subject)
Mar. 11th, 2025 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI am extremely fortunate that several of my friends are a.) huge Dracula aficionados and b.) up on Spanish-language media, because otherwise I am unlikely to have heard of Y llegaron de noche [They Came At Night] and I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Y llegaron de noche [They Came At Night]. We binge-watched the first five episodes of seven last Saturday, convened an emergency hangout on Monday so that we could finish the rest, and all left swearing to buy the DVDs if/when they ever came available.
Y llegaron de noche is a sitcom set in 1930, shortly after the advent of the talkies had destroyed the easy option for internationally marketing Hollywood pictures. One of the ways that Hollywood decided to fix this was by shooting Spanish versions of English-language movies: in the case of Dracula, at least, literally on the same set, at night, after the English cast was done for the day, with the male actors trading off costumes. (The Spanish female actors got different costumes, because there was no Hayes Code in Latin America, so all their dresses could be a little sexier.)
Here's the trailer:
Which is great but also quite misleading, in that it makes it look like Carlos Villarias, Shakespearian actor of great talent and enormous ego, is the main character. He is not. The thing about this show is that it's really, deeply, an ensemble piece, a huge celebration of the collective art of moviemaking.
But also if there is a main character it's not Carlos, but Cecilia -- the highly competent middle-aged translator who gets hauled off her serious political gig to interpret between the extremely stressed producer who's been assigned this project (he speaks six languages! Spanish is not among them!) and the rest of the cast, and increasingly finds herself taking artistic ownership of the film. Almost everyone else in the show gets a romance; the show is four romances in a trenchcoat, but Cecelia's romance is with The Movies, which is exactly the sort of arc I love the most. I told this togenarti, and she said, 'yes, that's good, but what I love about Cecelia is THE BEST PROFESSIONAL REPRESENTATION FOR THE FIELD OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION I'VE SEEN IN A LONG TIME,' and it is true that is also a wonderful thing about Cecelia. I was happy every time she was on screen and fortunately this was quite a lot of the time, as most of the plots and half the romances can't move forward without her interpreting for them.
This is not to malign the four romances in a trenchcoat. They are also good and I did care about them! The most traditionally romantic is between anxious producer Kohner and his earnest and talented leading lady Lupita and it is a mark of how charming the cast is that I did not mind spending the time on this when the other romances are:
- aging star Carlos, despite constantly making passes at younger actresses, gradually starts to realize that his costar's grandmother is smoking hot
- Dr. Seward [English] and Dr. Seward [Spanish] pass romantical notes to each other through their shared suit jacket [note that in the 1930 film Dr. Seward is Mina's elderly father, so this is another real win for old man yaoi]
- vaudevillian and recovering alcoholic Pablo [playing Renfield] pines for Carmen [playing Lucia], who cannot reciprocate because she's never played a character who survived past page ten and she's determined to seduce SOMEBODY into letting doomed Lucia live until at LEAST page 15 ... which is also a plot that has strong potential to be boring on paper, but Pablo and Carmen are so unbelievably charming and the camera takes them seriously as real people with talent and ambitions. This is a great example of setting up sympathetic characters with opposing goals tbh. I also wanted Cecilia to have a plot for her movie that made sense, and I also wanted Carmen to get her fifteen more pages!
Other subplots include the lighting designer's constant attempts to make a film worthy of his German Expressionist inspirations; the director's constant attempts to flee from his creditors in the mob; the incredibly hard-working props manager's constant attempts to get enough bats, mice, and edible roaches to see them through filming; the whole cast's constant attempt to get their Argentinian romantic lead to stop paying attention to the football long enough to learn how to act; and, of course, Carlos' constant rivalry with his nemesis Bela Lugosi. Also there is a curse on the production and the costume manager is going to break it.
There are a couple things I didn't enjoy -- Carlos' attempts to seduce Lupita verge on harassment in the early episodes (though he knocks it off pretty soon) and we all sat there and grimaced through a deportation joke in the last episode -- but overall this may be my favorite show of the year. The first episode is available for free on YouTube if you feel inclined to check it out; if you do you should come back and talk to me about it!
Y llegaron de noche is a sitcom set in 1930, shortly after the advent of the talkies had destroyed the easy option for internationally marketing Hollywood pictures. One of the ways that Hollywood decided to fix this was by shooting Spanish versions of English-language movies: in the case of Dracula, at least, literally on the same set, at night, after the English cast was done for the day, with the male actors trading off costumes. (The Spanish female actors got different costumes, because there was no Hayes Code in Latin America, so all their dresses could be a little sexier.)
Here's the trailer:
Which is great but also quite misleading, in that it makes it look like Carlos Villarias, Shakespearian actor of great talent and enormous ego, is the main character. He is not. The thing about this show is that it's really, deeply, an ensemble piece, a huge celebration of the collective art of moviemaking.
But also if there is a main character it's not Carlos, but Cecilia -- the highly competent middle-aged translator who gets hauled off her serious political gig to interpret between the extremely stressed producer who's been assigned this project (he speaks six languages! Spanish is not among them!) and the rest of the cast, and increasingly finds herself taking artistic ownership of the film. Almost everyone else in the show gets a romance; the show is four romances in a trenchcoat, but Cecelia's romance is with The Movies, which is exactly the sort of arc I love the most. I told this to
genarti, and she said, 'yes, that's good, but what I love about Cecelia is THE BEST PROFESSIONAL REPRESENTATION FOR THE FIELD OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION I'VE SEEN IN A LONG TIME,' and it is true that is also a wonderful thing about Cecelia. I was happy every time she was on screen and fortunately this was quite a lot of the time, as most of the plots and half the romances can't move forward without her interpreting for them. This is not to malign the four romances in a trenchcoat. They are also good and I did care about them! The most traditionally romantic is between anxious producer Kohner and his earnest and talented leading lady Lupita and it is a mark of how charming the cast is that I did not mind spending the time on this when the other romances are:
- aging star Carlos, despite constantly making passes at younger actresses, gradually starts to realize that his costar's grandmother is smoking hot
- Dr. Seward [English] and Dr. Seward [Spanish] pass romantical notes to each other through their shared suit jacket [note that in the 1930 film Dr. Seward is Mina's elderly father, so this is another real win for old man yaoi]
- vaudevillian and recovering alcoholic Pablo [playing Renfield] pines for Carmen [playing Lucia], who cannot reciprocate because she's never played a character who survived past page ten and she's determined to seduce SOMEBODY into letting doomed Lucia live until at LEAST page 15 ... which is also a plot that has strong potential to be boring on paper, but Pablo and Carmen are so unbelievably charming and the camera takes them seriously as real people with talent and ambitions. This is a great example of setting up sympathetic characters with opposing goals tbh. I also wanted Cecilia to have a plot for her movie that made sense, and I also wanted Carmen to get her fifteen more pages!
Other subplots include the lighting designer's constant attempts to make a film worthy of his German Expressionist inspirations; the director's constant attempts to flee from his creditors in the mob; the incredibly hard-working props manager's constant attempts to get enough bats, mice, and edible roaches to see them through filming; the whole cast's constant attempt to get their Argentinian romantic lead to stop paying attention to the football long enough to learn how to act; and, of course, Carlos' constant rivalry with his nemesis Bela Lugosi. Also there is a curse on the production and the costume manager is going to break it.
There are a couple things I didn't enjoy -- Carlos' attempts to seduce Lupita verge on harassment in the early episodes (though he knocks it off pretty soon) and we all sat there and grimaced through a deportation joke in the last episode -- but overall this may be my favorite show of the year. The first episode is available for free on YouTube if you feel inclined to check it out; if you do you should come back and talk to me about it!
