The Wide World of Shorts: La Cabina (1972, dir. Antonio Mercero, Spain)
by Matt Olsen
(Continuing my series examining a few of the mere thousands of interesting/entertaining/provocative short films which, though well-regarded, remain mostly invisible to the majority of chronic film-goers like myself.)
La Cabina is a 36-minute short made for Spanish television in 1972 which, as any professional mathematician will tell you, makes this year its fiftieth anniversary. As much as I’d like to suggest that its inclusion here was part of some grand synchronous plan on my part, I hadn’t heard of this film until approximately two months ago when I was internet-searching “bleak movies”. So, the credit rests squarely on the shoulders of chance, destiny, or whatever higher power currently answers your e-mails.
For any reader who did not immediately close the page upon encountering the “bleak movies” descriptor in the previous paragraph, first of all, hello, I am you. Secondly, La Cabina is a comedy – a very dark comedy – about a man’s increasingly difficult challenge to maintain his dignity under trying circumstances. This summary admittedly sounds an awful lot like another dark comedy called, you know, life. In other words, it’s entirely relatable.
The film begins in the early hours of the day. A well-maintained public square sits empty, surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings and office towers. The peace is broken when a flatbed truck carrying a bright red phone booth pulls up next to the plaza and four bald men in identical coveralls efficiently exit the truck. They carry the phone booth to the exact center of the plaza where it is quickly bolted into the concrete. Seconds later, the men are gone but the phone booth remains, looming silently in the quiet morning.
Soon, the square comes to life as the residents exit their homes to begin the day. A brown-suited, middle-aged bald man (male pattern baldness is a recurring theme here and not my own personal fetish/slight) walks his young son across the plaza and into a school bus. Returning, he enters the phone booth only to discover that the phone is not functional and, furthermore, the door is stuck. He’s trapped inside. The man, identified in the credits only as Hombre de la cabina, draws the attention of the public. A crowd gathers. A pair of laborers attempt to help pry the door open but it’s to no avail. A flock of children press their faces against the glass of the booth and mock him. The man, a well-executed caricature of the standard uptight businessman archetype, becomes more flustered. As his situation becomes more desperate, the audience surrounding him grows.
Within the crowd, small moments of understated humor, reminiscent of Jacques Tati’s Playtime, evolve. A mover walks through the exhibition carrying a wing back chair across his shoulders. He sets the chair down and offers it to a bystander. A stooped elder wanders through the plaza peddling lottery tickets. A fire brigade arrives with a hose. Meanwhile, the Hombre de la Cabina remains en la cabina. Then, the second half begins.
“A man is trapped in a phone booth” certainly doesn’t seem like enough to carry a film, regardless of length, but that discounts the imagination, humor, and gleeful nihilism of this wonderfully realized oddity.
La Cabina is currently available on YouTube in an okay (bright but not high-resolution) transfer with an annoying logo bug in the bottom right corner and poorly translated subtitles. If at all possible, I recommend finding the version on Vimeo which is so much more pleasing to watch.
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.