I have not wanted to look at the features of Marisa Paredes in the funeral home as death took hold of them like an invader proud of his conquest. My gaze has gone back, more than 30 years ago, to the night when the actress’s mouth amazed us on the stage of the María Guerrero Theater, and she won the challenge: to say at breakneck speed two of the four masterful short pieces by Samuel Beckett divided between the actor (Joaquín Hinojosa) and the actress, Marisa Paredes, both directed in all four by the writer and filmmaker Álvaro del Amo.
From that fascinating show it is impossible to forget that female mouth of different ages gushing the monologue. I don’t, where only a disproportionately open mouth shines in the darkness of the tables, chanting a text halfway between a prayer and a tongue twister, the central axis of Beckettianasince that is what the set of works was called for its premiere.
The last image of that theatrical evening was the backstage meeting of the stage protagonist and the engineer Juan Benet, the translator chosen by the CDN and expressly approved by Beckett’s very strict editors/executors. As both of them, Marisa and Juan, were humorous, each in their own way, the meeting made us, their companions from show business and novels, laugh with pleasure. “Sudden flash” was the favorite motto to tease each other. The little phrase is repeated like a mantra throughout the entire duration of the English original; Benet had translated it as “sudden flash,” which some of us found too long in syllables. “Sudden flash” is much shorter, and so, with some disagreement, we parted ways. Although two of those friends have already died, the brilliance of their books and their performances in film and theater makes them lasting.
Marisa has died between theater rehearsals and film shooting sessions. He knew very early that the commitment of artists is not only to the tradition of their art, but to the future of their society.