Antonia.
Who was Sara Montiel for me?
She was everything.
-Universal. -Singer.
-Actress. -Sara.
-Sara. Absolutely Sara. -Gorgeous.
-Absolutely gorgeous. -Sara Montiel.
Absolutely Montiel.
Like Wonder Woman. She was a superheroine, a goddess.
Sara is our first major international star.
Giddy up! Giddy up, horsy! Giddy up!
Icon. A perfect face. Committed. Ahead of her time.
A real firecracker.
Funny. Now it turns out that in Germany
I've been crowned queen of German gays.
Sara is Spain's first sex symbol. Was an erotic myth.
I was 7 years old. She completely changed my life.
She was sensuality, excess. She was eroticism.
She was Sara Montiel, one of a kind.
I guess she was a major influencer of the time.
At a time when social networks didn't even exist.
She was the forerunner of the filter.
The stocking is to put it in on the camera to remove all the wrinkles.
We couldn't understand many things about her.
She was so ahead of her time.
That pioneering spirit of freedom,
that ability to connect with one and all.
I believe she was one of the first feminists,
and without even knowing it.
At a time when it wasn't at all easy to be a woman and to be free.
Simply marvelous.
Don't move, Antonia. Don't move. Laugh a little.
- I'm not going to laugh. - No, no. Don't move.
She's always been Antonia. Always.
That relationship was one of a kind.
Everything two people can give each other, they gave to each other.
The doors of her home were always open to many friends.
Even to some who betrayed her.
She started crying like a little girl, hugging me.
She knew she was going to be very lost for a long time.
She had a second, a third, and a fourth life,
which I think is what eventually turns stars into stars.
If you're feeling blue,
just "Saratize" yourself and you'll have a blast.
SUPER SARA
Sara. How does it feel to have been a living legend
and a beautiful woman, and then go on to become a lying buffoon?
- No, no. - Yes, a liar!
Sara Montiel's final years were very sad.
Very sad for Sara herself.
Sara had the courage to go out in public without wearing makeup.
Don't be scared.
Don't wear see-through clothes because you have love handles
and if you wear them and people see through them, it looks dreadful.
In the 2000s, the media had stopped being very sweet
and went on to perhaps become overly aggressive.
All the respect they had for her on the sets was completely lost.
The best thing for her to do is lock herself away at home
and stop going out and making a fool of herself at nightclubs.
At the wedding. They attached Sara Montiel's wig with Velcro.
She has to start by respecting herself.
Sara didn't just undergo a sexist treatment,
but also an ageist treatment.
Are you seriously not aware
that the public doesn't see you the way they used to?
The fitting epitaph for a star in her final stage.
Pre-rigor mortis, I would say.
This mistreatment of a legend, of a very important figure
in our culture, was unpleasant and disproportionate.
So, what's this really about? About destroying others' self-esteem
or are we going to talk about mental health?
No, because if this woman had been even remotely weak,
you would've crushed her.
Is it true or false?
I'm ashamed that I didn't bang my fist
on the table and say, "Enough is enough."
I've cried so much. And I've kept it to myself.
She didn't kill, insult, or pick on anyone.
It was her life. She could do whatever she wanted.
How does a woman who's been a legend have to act when she gets older?
What do we want, for her to disappear?
It's Spain,
a country where the pleasure of destruction exists and is practiced.
Sara has gone insane.
She's lost her marbles. A way of doing things.
This made people of a certain generation
see a distorted image of Sara Montiel, from more recent years,
that had nothing to do with what Sara Montiel had been.
I'm not a nobody, I'm Sara Montiel.
Because I've brought Spain to the entire world.
My films haven't only been released in Valladolid or Palencia.
They've been released all over the world!
It seems like only yesterday that I was 15 and now I'm 16.
The mirror doesn't lie.
You can buy off a minister, a referee, a politician,
but not a mirror, a mirror says what it sees.
And there are so few of us who talk to it one-to-one.
I've only just arrived from overseas, no less.
I came from Hollywood, directly from Hollywood.
People cannot forget by any means that Sara Montiel
was the first Spanish film star to really win over Hollywood.
SARITA MONTIEL IN HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.
Many people in this country understood
that Sara could be Hollywood,
that she could be the American dream, that she could be all of that.
She placed herself in the category of:
"I'm a Hollywood star, I'm on a par with Elizabeth Taylor."
They would call me the Spaniard, from Spain,
"From Spain, Sarita from Spain."
The one who made the leap to Hollywood
all said and done and everything, is Sara.
Sara paved the way for all those who would come after her.
Penélope Cruz, Banderas, Bardem, they are such wonderful actors.
And from the beginning in Hollywood,
she began to make world-class productions.
SARITA MONTIEL THE VENUS OF "VERACRUZ"
The making of Veracruz was a spectacular film shoot.
With a huge international distribution.
With wonderful co-stars.
She worked directly with Gary Cooper, with Burt Lancaster.
Gary Cooper loved her very much and he called her "Montielito".
He would say: "Montielito, come here with me, with me, with me".
And he protected her a little, because she didn't know English.
Actually, I learned English phonetically
when I made the movie Veracruz.
She had a line where she had to say, "Do you want to fight with me?"
And then, in the first take, she blurted out to Gary Cooper's face,
imagine the shot, Gary Cooper right here...
I start: "Do you want to fight? Do you want to fight?",
and then I say to Gary Cooper: "Do you want to...
"Do you want to fuck with me?"
...do the thing' with me?", and he said:
"Oh, yes, of course, why not?"
The first Latin bombshell was Sara Montiel.
Not Sofia Vergara, not Salma Hayek, not Jennifer Lopez.
Just imagine, in a country as puritanical as the U.S.A.
suddenly this woman who was all sex.
She was kind of like our Marilyn.
Marilyn Monroe was seductive, and caused a certain morbid fascination.
Sara Montiel didn't even need to cause morbid fascination.
You fell over backwards just looking at her.
George Cukor said it,
the great director of actresses, Greta Garbo's director...
He directed practically all of history's greatest actresses.
"The three most beautiful women on the screen in the world are:
Liz Taylor, Ava Gardner and Sara Montiel.
Get a bit of the background in.
You have something white on the right side of your nose.
Cream.
Just imagine, I'm all cream.
I'm Pedro Víllora and I had the good fortune that in 1998
I was commissioned to write Sara Montiel's official biography.
Almost two years of working alongside her,
getting to know her, listening to her.
She had wanted to write her memoirs for a very long time.
And Sara Montiel's book is how Antonia Abad becomes Sara Montiel.
Sara Montiel's real name was, it's hard to say it in full, but it was...
María Antonia Alejandra Vicenta Elpidia
...Isidora Abad Fernández.
Sara Montiel's origins can be traced back to La Mancha.
She was Manchegan, from Campo de Criptana,
a dry land, a land of windmills.
What mattered to her was to show how someone who came from nothing
had achieved success, but thanks to a lot of hard work.
She was a girl with a desire to be successful to escape from poverty,
to be someone, to be something in life.
It had been a dream of hers since she was a little girl.
Just like Scarlett O'Hara, Sarah told herself, better dressed,
"I will never go hungry again".
An interest, of course, in getting ahead economically,
in living better and in climbing that social ladder.
But, above all, a drive to be a true star from a very early age.
Approximately at the age of 5 or 6,
her family left Campo de Criptana to move to Orihuela.
I'm from Orihuela and I grew up hearing, first-hand,
all the stories about Sara Montiel.
In the past, I think it was a difficult place to grow up
if you were different or had artistic aspirations
that weren't common for the rest of the people there.
When I was little, I was always a different person,
I've always had different tastes
and I've been bullied a lot because of that.
Later, when I was older, as a teenager,
all these stories that my grandmother used to tell me
when I was little became interesting to me.
I started to read about her.
I began to listen to those stories in a different way.
Once I was walking across the old bridge and a car appeared
and I saw it like it was in slow motion
and she was in the passenger seat.
Seriously? This woman lived here and made it to Hollywood?
How did she do it? That...
I still get goosebumps, because it was like a sense of hope of:
I can get out of here and I can be me.
She's back, she's survived everything. I took it as a sign.
And from then on, I carried that in my heart forever.
And it was a very strong impulse to say: "Get out."
Let's get moving, the wind's going to blow away the saint and everything!
What else might it blow away?
My wig is going to end up in town.
Everyone in Orihuela knew her.
She knocked on a door and they opened it, she went up and said:
"Ma'am, can I sing a saeta on your balcony?"
"Yes, Antoñita, yes, of course."
So they gave her a cushion, she knelt down
and when the Virgin passed by she sang her a saeta.
Look at her
Look at her coming I don't know.
And singing saetas with a choir during Holy Week
some people from a very important family,
from the radio, and media world hear her.
"Would you like to be an artist?" and she says, "'I have to be one."
"But, what if your parents don't let you?" and she said, "I'll run away."
"No, Mr. Isidoro, you have to take this girl and present her."
"Where am I supposed to present her?"
They were preparing her for a competition
that took place in Madrid, in the Retiro.
The most famous competition, it was Bobby Deglané's.
Bobby Deglané was an outstanding radio announcer.
So I sang "La morena de mi copla."
I won the prize with that song.
She was a complete unknown, all she had done was to sing at the Retiro,
practically, but the brilliant photographer, Gyenes, loved it,
he took some photos of her.
And those photos appeared in Semana magazine.
She's on the cover because she was gorgeous.
The impact of that cover had been so great that some director said:
"I'd like to give this girl a screen test."
That's the moment when we can speak of the birth of Sara Montiel.
Now, you just lie here nice and still and quiet.
Your life will be in danger if you don't keep quiet and still.
Sara Montiel took her first steps in film in Spain in the early 1940s,
with very minor roles.
That was how I worked, living from hand to mouth,
finding one film, then another. It was very difficult.
With Fernando Fernán Gómez she goes on to make several films.
He is so important to her as the man who teaches her how to kiss,
at least to kiss on screen.
I didn't know the right way to kiss and so I would go like this...
And I'd stay like this, looking stupid.
Then they'd say, "Cut", because it was ridiculous.
He told her, "Antonia, put your lips like this, do it this way,"
And without Fernando Fernán Gómez
we might not have had a Sara Montiel who could kiss.
The man she'd have a very deep relationship with
is the great Miguel Mihura.
He was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, without a doubt.
She would always like men who were older than her,
men who could teach her things.
I was platonically in love with him.
And he didn't want to get married.
And I imagine he didn't, because there was a huge age difference.
Sara always spoke so openly about being in love with this man,
who was highly intellectual,
she explained everything so matter-of-factly.
Someone who helped her
to develop intellectually and artistically, but also humanly.
Someone with whom she discovered love and even desire.
She, still a minor, surrendered herself to Miguel
and that, of course, wasn't at all usual in the 1940s.
Of course she had relationships long before she got married.
Despite the fact that it was a very prudish, very closed,
very folkloric, very conservative society,
Sara wasn't afraid of what people would say.
But I hate you much more because you believe in Jesus
and I in the prophet, because you are the daughter of Isabel
and I am the daughter of King Zagal.
Sara, at that time in Spain, wasn't very well-known at all.
She was a second-rate actress, nobody knew who Sara Montiel was.
-My blood is just as noble as yours. -You shut up!
She was very frustrated about not receiving any kind of recognition.
It's true that she was very young,
but the thing is, she was very ambitious.
She wanted to kill me!
Given that in Spain she was practically ignored,
it was Miguel Mihura who recommended
that she go abroad to try to find success.
And Sara said: "Me, stay here to be a supporting actress?"
"Antonia, this place is too little for you."
MEXICO
The Mexican film industry in the 1950s was the most advanced one
within the Spanish-speaking world.
There was a star system like Hollywood's, but Mexican-style,
with those tremendously strong and powerful women.
When she arrives in Mexico, she arrives as a young Spanish star.
Which she wasn't in Spain, at that level.
The thing is that she will very quickly win
over all audiences and become number one.
SARITA MONTIEL PRETTY, TALENTED AND TEMPERAMENTAL
I mean, I'm from Mexico.
And Sara in Mexico was very important.
She would work with the biggest actors,
with very good directors and she would sing in many of the films.
I think that's where she had her most interesting career,
artistically-speaking,
because that's where she explored different aspects of acting.
Mexico at that time was a paradise for the Spanish intelligentsia.
Buñuel was there,
León Felipe was there, a whole series of exiles were there.
I met some people who were wonderful, just wonderful.
Where did this girl come from? Who brought her here?
How is it possible that she's just arrived
and already settled in so quickly?
She goes to a café, the Café París,
where some of the Spanish intellectuals meet.
And the rumor spreads that she's a spy.
She's a spy for Franco's Spain.
She not only meets León Felipe, but many other people as well.
She also meets a certain Juan Plaza.
I was about to marry the head of the Spanish Communist Party in Mexico.
He was from Murcia and had gone into exile in Mexico.
He was a communist.
It was a very stormy relationship
because Juan Plaza fell madly in love with her.
There are several testimonies from the time
that describe it as a toxic relationship.
A very intense relationship.
But it was also a somewhat tempestuous love.
There are things she told me about Juan Plaza that I can't repeat.
Something happened that she didn't like
and she decided to call it not a break, but a definitive end.
But there was something there.
It seems she had a daughter with him,
two months premature, who was stillborn.
But I think she was a woman with an empowered soul.
I think she always possessed that strength.
She was born that way.
That's something you either have or you don't.
She knew perfectly well where she was at all times.
Her professional career led her to become something special.
Sara's life is full of legends.
And one is how she made it to Hollywood.
And it's thanks to Piel Canela.
It was the story of a very poor Cuban girl,
whose face was eaten away by rats when she was a little girl.
Some say that, thanks to the success of Piel Canela,
Warner Bros. spotted her.
And others say that thanks to Piel Canela, the person who spotted her
was Gary Cooper's daughter and she recommended her for Veracruz.
Sara became an idol in Mexico. An idol.
And obviously the logical step was to go to Hollywood.
Hollywood feeds off of and needs people, talent and beauty.
HOLLYWOOD
Her relationship with Anthony Mann began professionally.
I did several screen tests for the film, Serenade,
I really liked him as a director, I was a big fan of him.
For me, he's one of the greatest directors in film history.
Some of his westerns are breathtaking.
Anthony Mann couldn't resist that beauty and that personality.
He was getting on in years and splitting up with his wife.
We had a romance that lasted just over a year,
because we got married in 1957.
Marrying someone from Hollywood,
for a Spanish woman, wasn't very common.
He was 29 years older than me but he was a man, frankly,
one of the few I've ever met, who was wonderful.
Where is Sara Montiel's house in Hollywood?
Well, it's on a street,
where a little further down are Audrey Hepburn, Joan Collins.
Everyone lives on that same street.
My husband came up to me and said: "Honey, Antonia, come over here".
"Look, I'm going to introduce you to Greta Garbo ".
I was so scared I almost fell over backwards.
She rubbed shoulders with everyone.
With James Dean, with Elizabeth Taylor, with Joan Fontaine.
In other words, she knew the Hollywood bigwigs.
In her memoirs, she includes a picture of Alfred Hitchcock
and decides to caption it: "With Alfred Hitchcock, a fan of mine".
That's just mind-blowing.
By the way, something very funny happened to me
with Marlon Brando in Hollywood.
We can't talk about Sara Montiel in Hollywood
without remembering those delicious fried eggs for Marlon Brando.
I think we can almost smell them when we talk about Sara.
She said: "Come over one day and I'll make you
La Mancha eggs, from my homeland." She'd say: "From my homeland."
One morning, at 7:00 Margaret comes,
the housekeeper I had at home, and she says to me:
"Ms. Montiel, Ms. Montiel, Marlon Brando is in the kitchen."
"Oh, how funny, and why is that?
Well, tell him to come and have some eggs.
So I went and I made him some eggs with crispy edges,
with some garlic cloves, they're delicious.
And I think he, with a buzz on, must have said:
"I'm going to Sarita's house so she can make me some eggs."
I've tried Sara Montiel's fried eggs with crunchy edges.
All fried eggs. So tasty.
The question is the same for all of you:
"Have you ever seen a UFO?"
-Rosalía Dans, actress. -No.
Don Carlos García Rodrigo, who is a pilot.
No, I've never seen one.
Sara. Sara Montiel.
Well, I've seen, and I haven't seen one.
THE FANTASTIC SARITA
Sara's life was straight out of a movie.
And if it wasn't really like that,
she'd make sure she created the movie.
You could almost make a fiction series with Sara's stories.
One very important one is with James Dean.
She was at the Warner Bros. studios.
"Sara, Sara, my new car's just arrived.
Come on, please, let's take it for a spin."
"But Jimmy, I'm still filming. I'm in between takes right now."
Then she would finish by describing the situation,
an incredible long pause.
"That same afternoon, the terrible news arrived on set
that he had died immediately after crashing his new car."
LITTLE BASTARD
Sara Montiel is there for this historic 20th century moment,
which is the death of James Dean.
If I had been in that car, I probably would have died as well.
JAMES DEAN SOUGHT DEATH AND FOUND IT
My favorite is
one only Boris Izaguirre could tell and you wet yourself laughing.
Sara, as Mrs. Mann,
had a fabulous house in Beverly Hills,
with an incredible staircase.
And then she heard a woman singing and she had a marvelous voice.
At the bottom of the stairs,
a lady was mopping the steps of the staircase
with a very prominent nose
and suddenly Sara from the top of the stairs asked her:
"Hebrew, what song is that you're singing?"
And she said: "People".
And she asked: "Hebrew, what ́s your name?"
Then she said: "Barbra, Barbra Streisand."
It was Barbra Streisand.
The plane starts to go...
And it's going to take off,
the runway ends and the sea appears, and the plane goes...
I think my favorite stories are the ones that have to do with air travel.
For some reason she had a fixation with airplane stories.
It crashed in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.
She was able to break the window and got out going
"glug, glug, glug" through the window.
And they break them with a...
-But they're really tiny, Sara. -No, no, no. These were big.
Nobody has the guts to contradict that lady
even when you know that what she's saying is impossible.
We had to swim out of the plane.
I mean, swimming underwater.
At that point, the interviewer was stunned and said:
"But Sara, if you didn't know how to swim, how did you manage to do it?
And she says something that is the epitome of a diva.
I had to learn, because the will to live,
I said: "Antonia, you have to swim to the surface."
She motivates herself.
Sara Montiel, as well as self-marketing, did self-coaching.
"Antonia, you have to get out." And she swims out.
And I said, ''I believe all of them." They don't...
But I said, "It's true."
Sara Montiel is at an important event in Washington
and, suddenly, on the plane that's departing from Washington,
she realizes that Mrs. Kennedy is sitting in the window seat
next to Sara's, and the plane takes off.
There's this huge storm.
Then the plane starts to wobble
and to really start to feel like a disaster movie.
In the middle of this fierce storm,
the window on Jacqueline Kennedy's side explodes and bursts into pieces.
And she says to her, "Don't worry, Jackie".
She grabs her handbag, goes like this,
throws it at the window and plugs up the window.
Please. That was pure fantasy.
With a pair of ovaries because she was Super Sara!
I speak the truth. And nothing but the truth.
Many things don't add up , but that's the magic of Sara Montiel's stories.
Some say there was a great deal of fantasy in all of that,
but it was so believable because it was possible.
And there are photos.
She has photos with Alfred Hitchcock, with Elizabeth Taylor with Dalí,
with James Dean. How do you try to refute it?
You can't, it's too complicated.
Who cares if they are 99 percent accurate
or if there's some fantasy in them?
Because Sara is fantasy.
What she brought to those Spaniards who watched her
was the fantasy of what didn't exist in their homes.
Are we going to ask for proof?
This isn't CSI, get it? This is Sara Montiel.
Although she appeared to be strong, deep down she was actually fragile.
I think that also explains her fantasy.
That she built a shell for herself
and that the real Antonia was protected.
To a large extent, creating that fiction for others
was also a way of protecting herself.
In her life with Anthony Mann, she longed to be a mother.
She lost her baby and it was a traumatic moment.
It was something that hurt her greatly.
He died.
I fell down a flight of stairs and they had to remove it.
He died inside me.
Sara, ever since she had the miscarriage,
when she fell down the stairs at her home in Beverly Hills
when she was married to Anthony Mann, I think it left its mark on her.
She suffered terribly.
Sara is a very intelligent woman
and knows what she needs to do at every moment of her life.
I don't know if she does it consciously,
but she certainly does it fearlessly.
You don't need to think back, you need to move forward,
see the future and adapt to the moment that exists, that we exist in.
After five years without setting foot in Spain,
she receives an offer from Juan de Orduña to star in a film.
That film was El último cuplé.
In memory of those women who one day
were able to move us with the brief magic of the cuplé...
Anthony Mann tells her: "This is going to be a disaster.
Can't you see that there's no money here?"
He considers it to be an outdated film,
the cuplé was extremely old-fashioned.
Did you know I was performing here?
No, we came by chance.
"Well, I already know that I'm back home,
I'm in a shabbier, smaller place. I'll adapt and adjust."
Then I told him: "Okay, Juan, but I want to sing."
He says: "Well, the singing part is going to be trickier,
but the story is written for you."
They didn't want her to sing because they didn't trust her singing skills.
But, out of the blue, she receives an urgent call.
"What do you want?"
"Darling, come down to the set, immediately, to the studio,
because you're going to record the songs for El último cuplé".
The person who was going to record them
wants more money and isn't going to come.
And I went straight
to the studio to sing, which was exactly what I desired.
So she starts and she tells the maestro:
"Please, lower my pitch a semitone."
"Could you lower my pitch, please,
because I don't want to sing that high."
And she had just been out partying with Lola Flores
and her voice wasn't at its best and he said to her:
"Sara, if we go any lower we'll wind up under the piano."
-"Then we'll sing under the piano." -There's that temper.
You have to give me the right tone for my voice.
Back then they were songs that everyone sang in a raspy voice.
And she arrives and introduces a sensual voice.
Smoking is a great pleasure
Sensual
Smoking I wait for the man I love
A song that has been sung by millions of people.
It's a symbol of sensuality.
That sensuality and that way of acting had never been seen here.
It's more impressive to see Sara Montiel
doing this with her eyes and with her S's,
than listening to a Mariah Carey scream.
That way of singing back in those days
wasn't understood as a correct way for a woman to sing.
Sara found her place and knew how to assert it.
I remember that my mother, who was a big fan, would always say:
"Sara sings that way because she's got no voice," and I'd say:
"No, Mom, Sara sings that way because she has lots of character, dear'.
When I see your eyes Thirsty for pleasure
But she shoots the film thinking that she hasn't made a great film,
with the idea of resuming her Hollywood career.
Nobody could have foreseen that. Not her, not anyone.
I finished the film and left for Los Angeles, which is where I lived.
The premiere of El último cuplé was on May 6th, 1957.
Then they sent me a telegram from here, from Spain.
"Sara, something tremendous has happened.
You have to come immediately."
And they started to tell her
that there were lines and lines and more lines.
The same people who had seen it in the afternoon
were lining up to get tickets to see it that night.
Tickets were being scalped like it was a Madonna concert.
They were being scalped on Gran Vía and in Callao Square.
It was probably the biggest boom in the history of Spanish film.
The first one to bring a country to a standstill.
Windows were broken on Gran Vía and all that was capitalized on,
feeding back into the film's popularity.
And that's how the commotion, the mayhem, the success,
the goal, the boom of El último cuplé was formed.
-Can it be relived? -No, María, it's too late.
Juan, you live among artists, but you can't feel like them.
We are like a flame that must be fed so it doesn't go out.
Curiously, in Hollywood she saw how far she could go.
Playing a Hispanic, playing an Indian,
playing those roles was difficult.
She didn't want to spend her whole life playing a stereotype,
which is what they offered her.
In fact, I'd say that it was the film that contributed to her deciding
to return to Spain for a while and leave Hollywood.
Because I think she truly missed her homeland.
Buy this posy from me
To wear in your buttonhole.
The success of El último cuplé had been unexpected,
but the success of La Violetera is her confirmation.
She is a new global star, so she can start choosing what she wants to do.
It was Sara's big break.
But I'm willing to do anything just so I never lose you again.
She has illicit love affairs,
she has a vibrant sensuality
and what's more she makes the elite look particularly bad.
But showing up here with that woman.
She'll always look like nothing but a maid.
With La Violetera, I became even more famous.
Because La Violetera reached every corner of the world. That's right.
La Violetera was the film that made her famous outside of Spain.
It was successful in places where, without a doubt,
it wasn't at all common for Spanish films to reach.
Number one at the box office in Italy,
in Germany, in Mexico and in Argentina
and everywhere around the world.
It was a huge sensation, La Violetera.
From that point on, she was the best paid actress in Spain
and one of the best paid in the world.
Sara Montiel, hounded by autograph collectors.
Sara Montiel was a national monument.
The film star Sarita Montiel poses
at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid.
Sara Montiel had the misfortune
that so many Spaniards had of living part of our life,
she a little more than me, under a dictatorship.
That gray Spain, you can't imagine what it was like.
Ours was a very sad country.
Everything was very demure and very prudish and everything was like that.
And she arrived and spread her eroticism par excellence.
It's a real victory.
In spite of everything, Sara showed
that Spain also had joy, it also had sparkle, it had color.
Sara Montiel was out of her time.
And I think Sara is the great announcement
that the world was changing.
She is perfectly aware of her importance
within the country that she is destined to transform.
I have a world here where I'm the undisputed queen
and in Hollywood I wouldn't be."
Because she suddenly realized that she was an industry of a genre
called Sara Montiel
and that she was the pinnacle in Spanish entertainment for centuries.
The storyline? The storyline was Sara Montiel.
Her songs, her naughtiness, her way of doing things.
She was a prototype of characters
that obviously required a certain personality to play them.
They are always women bordering on the femme fatale stereotype.
What do we like? The ones with a godly life. No.
We like the other ones.
It's a blend of melodrama, insanity and a certain surrealism.
Suddenly, a nun was raped
and then there was no other option, now she was a prostitute.
We jumped from one thing to another and it was fantastic.
Sara Montiel's close-ups are legendary.
They're almost like music videos.
That shot like this...
Very few people could get through that shot.
It broke the fourth wall. Sara looks straight at the camera
and that's something completely unique in film history.
And, of course, one thing that happens
in all of Sara Montiel's films
is that she sings a lot and suffers a lot.
That's the Sara Montiel genre.
I'm Sara Montiel, like it or not. Nobody can ever take that from me.
The fact that Sara's films were successful has much to do
with the economic returns they produced
and, above all, in a political context
where Franco's regime was also interested in this image makeover,
to show a certain degree of openness, especially to the outside world.
It was even used as a bargaining chip.
They would sell my films to Russia,
and then, in exchange for Sara Montiel,
they would bring oil to Spain.
Even so, Sara Montiel was very much a black sheep, in a Francoist Spain.
When many bowed down, she stood tall.
When many accepted the morality of the moment, she rebelled.
During the years of Franco's rule,
there were a couple of days when actors and actresses and starlets
and so-called "stars" were called upon to go and perform.
She, for example, refused to participate
because she asked for her uncle,
in prison in Cartagena for political reasons.
Franco said: "No, if he's there, it must be for a good reason"
and she refused to go to that gala.
But she told me that one time she couldn't escape it.
So she said that she wanted to do something naughty.
Franco asked her to sing "La Violetera"
and she said: "Very well, now wait and see".
From the stage
She handed out violets.
She said very clearly to Franco: "Buy one from me, your excellence."
You take it, young sir
And then Franco got up to go and get that posy of violets.
And when Franco stood up, everyone in the stalls had to stand up.
She did something that in Spain at that time wasn't only uncommon,
but more than one was imprisoned for doing what she did.
And that was her tiny revenge.
She was the freest woman this country has produced,
from a generation that wasn't free.
And not even Franco could stop her. Not even Franco could stop her.
My name is Luis Fernando Carrasco. I met Sara when I was very young.
Well, yes, her best friend, her brother.
She called me almost every day. She knew I was very discreet.
The things they told me I never...
The first time I'm being interviewed for television is right now.
They're so good!
Luis Fernando Carrasco appears in Sara's life
like the little brother she had never been able to have.
Sara could never be alone.
If I had to accompany her somewhere, I would accompany her.
Our relationship was strictly human.
I'd never sought anything from her.
And that's what's important, because it's wonderful to have by your side
someone you don't expect anything from
and with whom you cry when you need to cry.
She had houses in Madrid, that nobody knew about,
where she would take refuge and stay for 10 or 12 days.
Her mother, her niece Toñi and I would go there. Period.
The 60s and 70s, which were enormously successful
from a professional point of view,
were a bit difficult for her personally.
She often felt very lonely.
And someone like her,
who had important emotional needs, maternal needs,
the abortions had really affected her.
MY HAPPINESS WILL NOT BE COMPLETE IF I DON'T HAVE CHILDREN
I HAVEN'T CONSIDERED ADOPTING A CHILD BECAUSE I'LL HAVE ONE
She could see that there were others
who had difficult lives and they had children, and she didn't.
I HAD A CHILD AND HE DIED SOON AFTER BIRTH.
It's been frustrating,
because I could have lived without having children,
but not with losing them.
I don't know if you understand me. But the fact is that I lost them.
IN THE NEXT EPISODE
Sara was at a point in her life
where she needed to find someone who knew how to handle her.
They were a couple who, wherever they went,
everyone would turn to stare at them.
She said to me, "Please don't tell anyone anything."
I kept the secret, but she was going through hell.
I want to show you this again, and it's so lovely.
Look at that. Madrid, Autumn 1992.
- Look at Daddy. Are you filming? - Yes.
- But, have you opened it? - Yes, I have.
I've felt other people's fondness
and love for having that family name, Montiel.
Feeling proud to say:
"I'm Zeus Montiel, son of Sara Montiel,
and here I'm for you to listen to me."