"Perfume", "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" or "Biutiful" were filmed in the city
BARCELONA FILM SET, STAGE OF INTERNATIONA CINEMA
BARCELONA, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PARIS
ALLEN'S TOURISTIC GUIDE
THE DARKEST BARCELONA
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JANIRE ZURBANO ARRESE
Barcelona is all over the Big Screen. Walking down Les Rambles with Woody Allen, visiting the Labyrinth of Horta accompanied by Tom Tykwer, going to Tibidabo amusement park hand in hand with Javier Bardem or taking photos of Gaudí’s Güell Park with Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johanson. People all around the world know about these emblematic places in Barcelona, together with the Sagrada Familia, the Gothic Quarter and Barceloneta beach, among others. Most of them have not been here, but they have seen the city in the movies. They have travelled with internationally renowned actors, actresses and film directors all over the Catalan capital through cinema. We will take a look at this “Film Set” city and you can also check the interview with Júlia Goytisolo, the director of the Barcelona-Catalunya Film Commission, organism that gives out permits for filming in the city, so you will have a more complete overview. Let’s take a cinematographic walk!
From Woody Allen to Alejandro González Iñárritu. Barcelona has provided the setting for a large number of international films. The Italian movie The Passenger, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, was the first foreign movie to be filmed in Barcelona in 1975. But the German movie Perfume: the story of a murderer, based on the German writer Patric Süskind’s novel, was the turning point of “Barcelona Film Set”. Until then, eleven movies had been filmed in the capital of Catalonia. However, since 2005, when Perfume was filmed, Barcelona has experienced significant growth as a film set. Throughout this decade, more than 200 international productions have been interested in Barcelona in order to set their films’ stories. .
Many international movies have filmed streets, parks and famous buildings in Catalonia´s capital, but three of them have clearly shown worldwide the charm of Barcelona through the big screen. First of all, there is Perfume: the story of a murderer. Although the plot takes place in Paris, some scenes were shot in Barcelona in August and September of 2005. German director Tom Tykwer explained that "as eighteenth century Paris was destroyed, we chose Barcelona. It is a city well suited to the film." The locations chosen to recreate eighteenth century Paris were the Gothic Quarter with its dark and narrow streets; the Labyrinth of Horta and its gardens, full of sculptures and fountains; and finally, Poble Espanyol, located in Montjuic mountain, where the final scene of the movie was filmed.
Perfume used the city to show eighteenth century Paris, not the current Barcelona. Woody Allen took this role as himself during the summer of 2007 the well-known production Vicky Cristina Barcelona¸ was expected to be the New Yorkers’ next masterpiece. Barcelona Town Hall contributed one million euros to the movie. The movie opted for a Spanish cast and crew; besides actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, Javier Aguirre Arrobes, one of the most recognized photograph directors of our country, also took part. The Olympic Port, Les Rambles, Antoní Gaudí’s La Pedrera house, the Güell Park and the Sagrada Familia, or the Tibidabo amusement park became stages of a film that would promote the city all over the world..
A year later, Alejandro González Iñárritu, at the top of his career after being nominated for seven Oscar awards for his film Babel, announced his intention to shoot in Barcelona. The protagonist would be Javier Bardem, who had just won the Oscar. Iñárritu confessed that "28 years ago, working on a ship, I landed for the first time in Barcelona. Eight years ago I met Javier Bardem. And over the last three years I’ve been writing a story thinking of him." That movie was Biutiful. The shooting lasted five months (from October 2008 to March 2009) and the city and its inhabitants supported the project as much as possible; many local people participated in the film. Iñárritu took the most symbolic stages of the city to the big screen such as Catalunya Square, Via Laietana or Les Rambles, but also the cemetery at Sants or Barceloneta beach were "protagonists" of Biutiful. Iñárritu highlighted that “walking through Santa Coloma, Badalona and the Raval neighbourhood, I met incredibly diverse people communities from Africa, the Arab world, Russia, China... It's fascinating." Biutiful relocated Barcelona in the global film scene.
Many other productions have also taken place in Barcelona. Most of them are from Catalonia, Spain and European countries. The city has hosted the French L'Auberge espagnole (The Spanish inn), directed by Cédric Klapisch, the Catalan production Pa negre (Black bread) by Agusti Villaronga, the Oscar-winning Mar adentro (The sea inside) filmed by Spaniard Alejandro Amenábar or Pedro Almodóvar's La mala educación (Bad education), among others.
IF YOU WANT TO VISIT THE MOST CINEMATOGRAPHIC BARCELONA...
To conclude, just a piece of advice for those who love cinema and are going to visit the Catalan capital: let’s take the touristic walk ¡Barcelona, de cine! (Barcelona Movie Walking Tour). This route shows you the locations where many movie scenes were shot. It costs 14 euros and you can take it either in Spanish or in English.