RIP Juan Mariné

 

Centenarian cinematographer Juan Mariné dies

He received the 2024 Honorary Goya for a lifetime dedicated to cinema

Academia de cine

February 18, 2025

 

Mariné participated in more than 150 productions and, during the last decades of his life, he dedicated himself to the restoration of films

The director of photography, restorer and film researcher Juan Mariné, Goya of Honor 2024, died yesterday in Madrid, at the age of 104.

He entered cinema at the precocious age of 13, when he arrived at the filming of The Eighth Commandment to deliver new cameras from France that only he knew how to make work, and in his last years of life, ninety years later, he frequently went to the ECAM to restore films. He promised himself that at the end of the Civil War he would dedicate his life to cinema and Mariné has fulfilled that pact until his last days.

Mariné, the first cinematographer to enter the Film Academy, received the 2024 Honorary Goya last year. The centenarian restorer collected this honorary award for his entire career and contributions to the history of Spanish cinema in an intimate ceremony that was held at the institution's headquarters, surrounded by his family, friends and colleagues.

Born in Barcelona in 1920, his love for cinema came to him when he was only 4 years old, when one day while summering in Arenys del Mar he saw a screening of Charles Chaplin's first short films. The impact of those images was so great that he asked his mother to enroll him in school early so that he could read the posters of silent films. Already in his adolescence, he frequently visited the Arenys del Mar film club. There, the projector used to break down regularly and so Mariné had his first contacts with these devices: trying to fix them so that he could continue watching the films that they made him enjoy so much. Thanks to that ingenuity and curiosity he managed, a year later, to put those cameras to work with The Eighth Commandment.

To talk about Mariné is to talk about the history of cinema, but also about the history of Spain: a member of the CNT union, he recorded the funeral of Buenaventura Durruti in 1936; he was Enrique Líster's war photographer; he was interned in the concentration camps in France and in the prison camp of La Rinconada (Seville); and he was a photographer for the General Staff of Catalonia, a position he combined with his work as a photography assistant in productions in Barcelona.

His debut as a cinematographer came in 1947, in an episode of the film Cuatro mujeres, by Antonio del Amo, the first of the 150 films he shot until his retirement in 1990. Mariné was a regular in the productions of del Amo, Pedro Lazaga, José María Forqué, or Pedro Masó. Historias de la televisión, by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia; El astronauta, by Javier Aguirre; María de la O, by Ramón Torrado; The Perfect Crime, by Fernando Fernán Gómez; and The Big Family, by Fernando Palacios, are some of the many titles in his filmography. His work even caught the attention of Orson Welles, who invited him to stay at his house to give some lectures at the University of California, a proposal that Mariné rejected as he was not attracted to Hollywood.

He also stood out as the inventor of new photographic techniques, such as the Mariné Format. After his last film in 1990, La grieta, by Juan Piquer Simón, he dedicated himself fully to the very important work of restoration, managing to rescue many Spanish films that were considered irrecoverable. "Impossible is something that takes a little longer to achieve", was one of the maxims that the Catalan restorer always had in mind. Mariné invented various devices to help him in this task, such as an optical copier or a negative washing machine. He carried out this work daily at the ECAM, in a basement where he had his office - full of machines and film material - which the students of the school nicknamed the "sub-Mariné".

Mariné was recognized with the National Cinematography Award, the National Photography Award, the Gold Medal of the Academy, the Honorary Spike of the Seminci of Valladolid, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts and the Juan de la Cierva Research Award, among others. In addition, his figure has been honored on many occasions and from different spaces such as the Spanish Film Archive, the Film Academy, the Josep M. Queraltó Film Classroom Foundation and the Circle of Film Writers. His figure and work have also made him the subject of several documentaries such as Juan Mariné. A Century of Cinema, Juan Mariné: the adventure of making cinema or The Submariné.

Today we say goodbye to a key figure in the history of Spanish cinema. In addition to inspiring other cinematographers with his work such as José Luis Alcaine or Rita Noriega, he leaves us a huge legacy of cinema. Not only for those films he made as director of photography, but also for all those to which he dedicated his time, patience and ingenuity so that they could be restored and not fall into oblivion. Mariné understood the importance of recovering our cinematographic heritage as much as possible and, thanks to that, people will be able to discover the cinema of the past and be inspired by it.

His mortal remains will be held at the M30 Funeral Home in Madrid today, starting at 3:00 p.m.

 

MARINE, Juan (Juan Mariné Bruguera)

Born: 12/31/1920, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Died: 2/17/2025, Madrid, Madrid, Spain

 

Juan Mariné’s westerns – cinematographer:

Legacy of the Incas- 1969