Preferred settings
By a curious coincidence, the first film ever shot in the Canaries was dedicated to the Chinyero volcano, the third largest in the world, which had erupted for the last time just a year earlier in 1909. The eruption of foreign productions, however, was slow to materialize. Until the 1960s, the majority of films made in the Canaries were German, a sign that the archipelago had long been a favorite of German tourists. Detlef Sierck, better known as Douglas Sirk, filmed La Habanera (1937), in which Gran Canaria played the role of Puerto Rico. This was to become a constant, as if the archipelago's appearance as a theme park, with its varied atmospheres, deprived it of an identity of its own, forcing it to constantly don different disguises. The wild landscapes of this volcanic archipelago make it an ideal setting for depicting the confrontation between man and a nature that surpasses him. For example, John Huston anchored in the bay of El Confital in Las Palmas to shoot the final scenes of his famous Moby Dick (1956). The same inhospitable nature, inhabited by monsters, is featured in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Never mind that dinosaurs andhomo sapiens didn't exist at the time, or that Raquel Welch's brushing is anything but prehistoric, this kitsch adventure film achieves curiosity status thanks to its handcrafted special effects and, above all, the landscapes of the Canary Islands where it ventures as a pioneer: those of Tenerife's Teide National Park, but also Timanfaya and Lago Verde. The Canary Islands were to be the setting for a series of films with evocative titles(When Dinosaurs Ruled the World, Val Guest, 1970, filmed in Fuerteventura, or The Sixth Continent, Kevin Connor, 1975, set in La Palma). The Canaries then seemed to become a haven for "bis" or exploitation cinema: the ultra-prolific Jesús Franco would come here to shoot some of his films, cocktails of horror and eroticism. The rocambolical shooting, a habit with Werner Herzog, of Les Nains ont commencé petits (1970), takes place on Lanzarote. The film, which recounts the revolt of dwarfs locked up in an asylum, is unclassifiable. The same year, George Lautner signed La Route de Salina, a film that stands apart from his other works, in which the desert regions near the Janubio saltworks are meant to resemble the Californian coast. When La Chevauchée terrible was filmed in the Canary Islands in 1975 (Antonio Margheriti), the spaghetti western was on the wane, but in a curious extension, the small, purpose-built Wild West town in San Agustin's Cañon del Aguila was transformed into Sioux City, an amusement park that still exists today.
The fashion of space opera
In the 1980s, space opera was all the rage. The Canaries, whose geology resembled that of Mars in places, provided the backdrops for Krull (Peter Yates, 1983) andEnemy (Wolfgang Petersen, 1985). Nothing to be ashamed of. A very popular Swedish equivalent of Les Bronzés, by Lasse Åberg, follows the Canary Islands adventure of a handful of tourists. A few episodes of the British series Doctor Who are set in the Canaries. Otherwise, the island sees a steady stream of second- and third-rate productions, with a few exceptions, before Juan Carlos Fresnadillo breaks this routine with Intacto, a racy thriller that finally gives a Spanish overview. This is to be expected from a director born in Santa Cruz.
The years 2000-2020
And production continues to grow. A classic at last: Étreintes Brisées (2009), a beautiful melodrama by Pedro Almodóvar, who fell under the spell of Lanzarote, the town of Arucas and the beach of Famara. Aware that they were treading on a goldmine, the local authorities increased tax incentives, and Hollywood blockbusters poured into the archipelago in droves, like a luxurious version of the cinema bis that once predominated. Peplums(Louis Leterrier'sClash of the Titans in 2010 and its sequel), an episode of Fast & Furious (Justin Lin's 6th in 2013), one of Star Wars(Solo in 2018 by Ron Howard, who returns three years after filming a new Melville-inspired story, In the Heart of the Ocean) and a whole host of series(The Witcher, to name but one). Wild Oats (Andy Tennant, 2016) is an unabashedly frivolous tourist film, but at least it has the merit of celebrating the archipelago for what it is. In 2011, Maggie Peren's The Color of the Ocean did this in a more serious way, contrasting the lives of tourists with those of migrants stranded on the island. Iberian cinema has shown some encouraging signs of late, with Le Chant des oiseaux(2008) by Albert Serra, the current pope of Spanish auteur cinema, a horror film in 2009 by Gabe Ibáñez and a crime series in 2019 sharing the name of the archipelago's most remote island, Hierro, while a - long - grand spectacle historical fresco, Palm Trees in the Snow (Fernando González Molina, 2015) testifies to an ever-varied inspiration. Finally, in 2019, Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu directs Les Siffleurs, in which a corrupt Bucharest inspector is shipped to the Canaries to learn the silbo.
