Iquino, Ignacio F.

(1910-1994)

   Ignacio F. Iquino belonged to a Catalan show business family, and his first vocation was drawing and designing. In the 1930s, he was a photographer. His career as a director and producer lasted 60 years, and, although his films became increasingly lacking in artistic ambition from the 1950s, he remained a key personality for his attempts to continue to work on popular, audience-friendly, industrially efficient formulas.

   At the start of his career as director, Iquino directed a number of competent, solid pictures that showed promise. His comedies El difunto es un vivo (The Dead Man Is a Shrewd One, 1941) and the Enrique Jardiel Poncela adaptation Los ladrones somos gente honrada (We Thieves Are Honest People, 1942) are among the best examples of the genre in the 1940s, and Alma de Dios (Soul of God, 1941), which featured rural patriarch specialists José Isbert and Paco Martínez Soria, is among the most accomplished costumbrismo adaptations. His police thriller Brigada criminal (Crime Brigade, 1950) is probably his best contribution in terms of genre innovation, as it introduced unusual themes from Hollywood films in a Barcelona context. El Judas (Judas, 1952), on the other hand, was Iquino's response to the new trend for Bible stories. It was also the first film since the prewar years to be released in a Catalan version, and it was exhibited to coincide with the Eucharistic Congress of that year, which took place in Barcelona. The film was a huge box-office hit and was even selected for the Venice Film Festival.

   One important facet of his work lies in his attempts to set up a stable production company in Barcelona during the 1960s. In a country with a very weak film industry, Iquino's IFI España (created in Barcelona in 1949) survived without interruptions for 34 years with its own studios. He also set up his own distribution company, IFISA, in 1963, to facilitate his product being exhibited, and at one point, following the example of the great Hollywood moguls, he also had control over a couple of cinemas. To continue turning out movies (he produced almost four a year between 1953 and 1965), he had to sacrifice quality and was dragged into the margins of the film industry, always following successful trends: films with children in the mid-1950s, bullfighting movies, folkloric musicals, cheap desarrollismo comedies and, as censorship ceased, nudies.

   During José María García Escudero's period at the General Direction of Cinematography, Iquino took advantage of the support for more challenging filmmakers and even produced work by Mario Camus. The end of his career is dominated by soft porn, and he became something of the king of the S Classification, directing titles like ¿Podrías con cinco chicas a la vez? (Could You Do It with Five Girls at the Same Time? 1979), La caliente niña Julieta (Julieta the Hot Girl, 1980), and Jóvenes amiguitas buscan placer (Young Little Friends Seek Pleasure, 1981).