Cinema

The Tramuntana, the grand setting for filming

Megan Montaner, one of the stars of La Caza. Tramuntana. | Pilar Pellicer

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma16/03/2020 12:32

Majorca is a location for filming par excellence. In the recent past, the island has provided settings for The Night Manager, The Mallorca Files, White Lines, and among the treasures that Majorca has to offer cinema and television producers, the greatest of all is provided by the Tramuntana Mountains. The combination of varying landscapes, the peaks, the paths and the ways is proving and has proved irresistible to producers, with another television series, La Caza. Tramuntana, being shot in the mountains. A production for the RTVE national broadcaster, filming has had to be suspended for the time being.

The mountains have been a setting since 1913. The Italian Giovanni Doria used locations for a film El secreto del anillo - The Secret of the Ring. In 1925 came Flor de espino (Flower of Hawthorn), a fully Majorcan film in terms of production and cast. In 1926, there was El secreto de la Pedriza, which had been adapted from a novel by Adolfo Vázquez Humasqué, who also founded Real Sociedad Alfonso XIII Football Club, which was to be renamed Real Mallorca. This film was shot predominantly in Deya, with scenes of the Torrent de Pareis and the Soller train.

In the 1950s, the Franco regime viewed cinema as a means of projecting a better image of Spain and of attracting tourism. An example of this was the 1953 film Our Girl Friday. Starring Joan Collins, George Cole, Robertson Hare and Kenneth More, this comedy told the story of a woman shipwrecked on a desert island with three men. Elke Sommer in Bahia de Palma in 1962 was something of a sensation because of her bikini, and later that decade came The Magus with Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn - Playa del Mago took its name from this film.

In 1982, Evil Under the Sun with Peter Ustinov as Poirot featured Dragonera as the island for aerial shots. There were numerous locations, such as the Raixa estate in Bunyola, which was used for hotel exterior shots. Bert was a 1998 film directed by the Majorcan Luis Casasayas, while more recently there was Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks, for which the Tramuntana added to the film's sense of mystery and magic, and Toni Bestard's El perfecto desconocido (The Perfect Stranger) with Colm Meaney in the starring role.