Entre Quevedo y Freud. La función de los sueños en ¡Bienvenido, Míster Marshall!

Abstract

One of the great satisfactions of good books and films is that they open our eyes, even in inquisitorial times, to alternative truths, different from the official versions that want to impose on us those who have the upper hand. In ¡Bienvenido, Míster Marshall! Berlanga (together with Bardem and Mihura) constructs on the one hand an ironic but inoffensive main story about the appearance of ‘the Americans’ in the modest and resigned life of a village called Villar del Río. A story that even received the approval of the ‘Caudillo’ himself. On the other side, however, it hides, like a good smuggler who wants to evade the vigilance of the censors, a lot of sarcasm and heterodox provocations in an intercalated episode which, at first sight, seems to be something additional that has little to do with the main action. I refer to the dreams of the priest, the nobleman, the mayor and the farmer, which seem, moreover, to be of no importance. It is to these dreams, whose function can be compared with that of the intercalated episodes in Don Quijote, Quevedo's Sueños and Freud's In­terpretation of Dreams, that the following article is devoted.