Murder in the Central Committee (1982)

Interesting facts

Murder in the Central Committee is a 1982 Spanish thriller film directed by Vicente Aranda. It stars Patxi Andión and Victoria Abril. The plot follows a private detective, an ex-communist and former CIA agent, who travels from Barcelona to Madrid to discover the identity of the assassin of the leader of the Spanish Communist Party who was stabbed during a blackout while presiding over a meeting of the party's Central Committee. The film is a thriller with ironic political overtones.

Production

Murder in the Central Committee was the first film that Aranda made with the production company Lola films created in 1981. One of its owners also presided over the publishing house Planeta which was about to publish Asesinato en el comite central, a new novel written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Aranda had been approached, shortly before, about adapting another novel by Vázquez Montalbán: The South Seas, but he declined.

Aranda was not interested in the political intrigue of the book or in the character of the detective himself. He found the protagonist of the novel very unpleasant: "I detest Carvalho's morals, his cynicism, the use he makes of women.. ". Aranda also added: " He only interest me from the point of view that he drives the narration. Practically nothing happens to him throughout the film, he is watching what happened to others ".

The director's idea was to use the plot as a chronicle of the transition, the period during which Spain moved from Francisco Franco's dictatorship, after his death, until the first free election that put the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in power. Therefore, the film is framed in this very concrete period." I don't know if that makes the film dated or rather makes it an interesting reportage of its time", Aranda explained.

Much of the film's action is filtered through headlines and television reports in imitation of the way in which the Spanish public lived the transition. The televised funeral of the Communist leader is a sly montage of mourners at the funeral of Franco, while La Pasionaria (the legendary Spanish Communist leader who passed dictatorship in exile in the Soviet Union) appears as a senile old dear who sits next to the victim but does not even realize…

Aranda omitted all the part that occurred in Barcelona, starting the film with the arrival of the detective at Madrid's airport. Aranda's idea was to portrait Madrid of the transition. The communist leader killed at the opening the film, Garrido, is an alter ego of the then President of Spain's communist party, Santiago Carrillo. The crime is set on the style of the British murder mystery made famous by Agatha Christie.

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