RIP Maria Silva

 

Obituary of María Silva

La Abadia de Berzano

Berto Naldo

April 4, 2023

 

A few days ago the death of the Spanish actress María Silva was made official, which occurred on March 17. A familiar face within popular cinema in the sixties and seventies, she disappeared from the big screen with the arrival of the Transition to resurface through television with great impetus for two decades before voluntarily deciding to retire from acting.

Born in Palencia in 1941, María Jesús Marín Rodríguez spent her childhood in the care of an uncle of hers a director of the Central Bank and responsible for the opening of branches throughout the Spanish territory, with the consequent feeling of uprooting of little María having to constantly change schools following family displacements. She turned into an attractive young woman, who decides to embark on a precocious career as a model for Pedro Rodríguez to the great chagrin of her family. Soon the cinema knocks on her door propitiating hier debut in Luis César Amadori's film Una gran señora (1959) under the pseudonym of Mara Silva. Thanks to her particular photogenic, from this moment onwards, a long series of small roles in films of all kinds follow one another that strengthen her incipient interpretive technique and provide her with a certain notoriety in the cinematographic environment, pigeonholing her at first as naïve in secondary roles without much relief. From this period her most notable works are perhaps the classic of Hispanic horror Gritos en la noche (1962) by Jess Franco and the diptych on Zorro formed by La venganza del Zorro and Cabalgando hacia la muerte, both directed in 1962 by Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent and where she appears definitively with the name of María Silva.

Her first relevant role as a protagonist comes at the hand of a Spanish-Italian co-production, Promesa sagrada (1964) by Mario Maffei, based on the classic of Italian literature I promessi sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, brought to the screen countless times. The null repercussion of this film in our country does little to advance her career, although it does not stop the work activity of the actress who continues to chain jobs without any problem, almost always in genre films. It is appreciated in this period a greater diversity in her tasks, alternating her already habitual roles of naivete with others that will end up becoming her trademark, those of women of light life, vampires or, simply, those in which she incorporates "the bad of turn". One of the most interesting films of her filmography comes in 1967 with Las salvajes en Puente San Gil, debut on the big screen of the Catalan director Antoni Ribas that brings together a fabulous choral cast for the film adaptation of a play by José Martín Recuerda premiered just a few years ago and in which the adventures of a company of magazine vedettes upon their arrival in a town of the deepest and most peaceful Spain to present its show. Next to Silva we will see Nuria Torray, Rosanna Yanni, Marisa Paredes, Trini Alonso, Vicky Lagos, Charo Soriano and Carmen de Lirio debating between the sweatiest testosterone and the most fanatical intransigence under the dust and dandruff of a dark town lost in the meanders of the Iberian plateau.

At the end of the decade came two of her most popular works with adaptations of some of the zarzuelas that Juan de Orduña made for the big and small screen. Specifically, they are El huésped del sevillano (1969) and Las golondrinas (1968), where she demonstrates her versatility by incorporating for the first a mysterious and sophisticated heroine and for the second one of those women capable of dragging to perdition any man who liked to portray the cinema of the time and that Silva interprets with considerable magnetism.

At the dawn of the seventies comes another leading role for an authentic incunabula, the feature film Presagio (1970) by Miguel Iglesias, where our actress plays Berta, a woman with paranormal powers who tries to elucidate a murder thanks to the help of a psychiatrist. The failure of this film drags Silva back to secondary roles in spaghetti westerns and horror films, among which we can highlight the first film with the Knights Templar of Amando de Ossorio, The Night of Blind Terror (1972) and a couple of works with Paul Naschy: The Return of Walpurgis (1973) and The Revenge of the Mummy (1975), both directed by Carlos Aured. Without leaving the fantaterror, we also find her starring in the dark, sinister and controversial La perversa caricia de Satán (1976) by Jordi Gigó, where she leaves the malevolence and spells to her colleague Silvia Solar to incorporate the suffering heroine in a twisted satanic and supposedly supernatural plot.

With the arrival of the Transition comes the unveiling to the Spanish screens and the bulk of our actresses have to resign themselves, grit their teeth and take off their panties and bra to the delight of the Iberian male. Few are those that resist the (opportunistic) liberation hurricane that, curiously, only concerns women on the screens of our peninsula. Authentic figures of the cinematographic panorama such as Concha Velasco, Carmen Sevilla, Aurora Bautista or Rocío Dúrcal have to deal with the prevailing mess in our seventh art, although some actresses flatly refuse to take that step to become cannon fodder. María Silva is one of them and the result is not long in coming: a dry stop of her activity for the big screen that fortunately will not mean her definitive disappearance from the interpretive panorama. Television, for which she had already done some work, comes to her rescue and quickly turns her into a regular presence within the dramatic spaces so common of the time, and that under the titles "Novel", "Estudio 1", or "El teatro" proposed multiple adaptations of classics of literature and universal theater. There are countless works of the actress in this medium where she gradually acquires a prestige, elocution and dramatic solidity really considerable, making her a favorite and a safe bet for any director in search of a charismatic, intelligent and solvent protagonist. Among all her television roles, her interpretation as Ana Karenina in the adaptation of the immortal classic by Tolstoy directed by Fernando Delgado in 1975 has probably remained for the annals.

It is in this cathodic period when her new image is outlined and to which she will be definitively associated: that of a sophisticated, sensual but elegant woman, and who will lavish, not only on television, but also in the theater, where she begins to be very requested thanks to the interpretative maturity acquired during her cathodic works, soon chaining numerous functions in works of considerable relevance such as Los peces rojos by Jean Anhouil, La venganza de don Mendo by Pedro Muñoz Seca, Un espíritu burlón by Noel Coward, Tartuffe by Molière, Trampa mortal by Ira Levin, Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega, La Orestiada by Esquilo or Los japoneses no espera by Ricardo Talesnik.

She maintains a constant presence on television in the seventies and eighties where, apart from the aforementioned dramatic spaces, she intervenes in numerous series such as Curro Jiménez (1978), Juan y Manuela (1974), Segunda enseñanza (1986), El baile (1985), Esa clase de gente (1990) or Veraneantes (1985). During the screening of the latter on TVE surprises locals and strangers with a photographic service for Playboy, where she is partially naked and in all her splendor, although, yes, maintaining her characteristic elegance and the sensual maturity of an actress who with her forty years well planted knows what she wants and how to do things.

With the arrival of the nineties, María Silva decided to embark on a new direction in her professional life and, after participating in the series Taller mecánico by Mariano Ozores in 1991, she publicly announced her retirement with the aim of dedicating herself to the representation of actors.

We dedicate this article to the memory of María Silva, who although she spent these last decades with great discretion away from the media, will remain in our memory as one of the most charismatic actresses of cinema and television in our country.

SILVA, Maria

B: 8/16/1941, Palencia, Palencia, Castilla y León, Spain

D: 3/17/2023, Spain

 

Maria Silva’s westerns – actress:

Shadow of Zorro – 1962 (Irene)

The Terrible Sheriff – 1962 (Clementine)

Zorro the Avenger – 1962 (Irene) [as Mary ilvers]

Shoot to Kill – 1963 (Mary Thompson)

Cavalry Charge – 1964 (Valerie Jackson) [as Mary Silvers]

Kill the Wicked! – 1967 (Shelley)

I Do Not Forgive... I Kill! - 1968 (Isabel Alvarez) [as Mary Silva]

Santana Kills Them All – 1970 (María Anderson)

The Black Wolf – 1980 (Marquesa)

Revenge of the Black Wolf – 1981 (Marquesa)