'I will see you again', by Enric Sòria: a masterwork

We know Enric Sòria, one of the most valuable authors in contemporary Catalan literature, for his work as a poet, diarist, and essayist. Now he is releasing, at last, a singular work, which is also a major contribution to our culture: Et tornaré a veure(Apunts sobre cinema 1910-1945), which has just appeared in a superb two-volume edition by the Valencian Film Archive and the Alfons el Magnànim Institution. I write “at last” because I have had the good fortune to be one of the happy few who have followed the writing process of this book over the —many— years it has taken, and that authorizes me to say it: it is an important work.I'll See You Again brings together comments by Enric Sòria on films belonging to the period mentioned in the title, that is, from the beginnings of cinema as an artistic language until the end of the Second World War, with the transition from silent to sound cinema and the development of one of the most powerful cultural industries. The work offers a selection of these texts, but, even so, it is of somewhat overwhelming dimensions: twelve hundred pages divided into two volumes, with nearly nine hundred films commented on, ordered chronologically. There is cinema from everywhere, with a profusion of North American, British, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Japanese films, not necessarily in that order. The display of knowledge that the author pours into it on the subject he deals with is as spectacular as it is fascinating, and his writing, without a gram of pedantry or false erudition, has —as is its hallmark— the virtues of elegance, clarity, mastery of the language, and an irony that, fortunately, is frequent and achieves what is so difficult: to instruct and entertain the reader at the same time. They are texts of irresistible reading: it is difficult to stop at one and not want to continue with the next.In the illuminating prologue, Enric Sòria explains his personal —and familial— connection with cinema, emphasizes that it is an art that tends to abolish chance and, therefore, exactness, and stresses that it has been (often through the most unexpected means) a form of protest against the dictatorships and authoritarians that ravaged the first half of the 20th century, as they are also doing, for now, with the first third of the 21st. He also presents it thus: “From its origins, cinema is close to spectacles like illusionism, variety shows, and, above all, the circus: clowns, sword-swallowers, bearded ladies, acrobats, and lion tamers, but also other shows [...] like concerts, dance, theatre, and opera. Cinema did not just move between these two realms: it could encompass them, and that is what it has done.” Catalan culture counts and has counted, fortunately, with excellent film critics and scholars, but until now it did not have a work like I will see you again, the fruit of knowledge and literature, but also of pure passion, love, and fascination. A great party.