Media Type: Film
Year: 1972
Who wrote / made it : Gonzalo Martínez Ortega
Plot summary: El principio, as the title suggests, examines the lead up to the Revolution in a series of flashbacks from the perspective of David Domínguez Solís (Fernando Balzaretti) a member of a wealthy local family. He has recently returned home from nine years in Paris to a town traumatised by the Revolution with few inhabitants able to provide him with detail on what they have suffered.
The use of a sweeping orchestral score and vivid depictions of violence serve to evince the feeling of trauma caused by war. It is a flawed film, which never really moves the plot beyond a tense oedipal struggle.