The Filmic Literary Works of Gabriel García Márquez

Cinema is a very important area of GGM literary activity, which the author conceived as another way to tell stories, in parallel and connected to the ways novels/stories and journalism tell stories of their own. This article addresses the work of García Márquez as a filmic writer. After briefly explaining the influence of cinema on his literary education, the article focuses on some problems in the writing of subjects and screenplays in relation to film production, which also concerned García Márquez. His film work is discussed in chronological order, while also highlighting the more relevant thematic and aesthetic elements. The theme of destiny opens and closes the discourse, given that it is present both in the first and last important screenplays by the author, Tiempo de morir and Edipo Alcalde, linked to the influence of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Another relevant theme is that of the tension between realistic representation and the different forms of transfiguration of reality, via fantastic elements, absurd situations, and hyperbolic intensifications. Such aspects may be found in the screenplays of many films written by GGM between the 1970s and 1980s: Presagio, El año de la peste, María de mi corazón, Eréndira, Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes, and the series Amores difíciles. Finally, the article focuses on some unexecuted projects: unpublished screenplays or film stories, such as “Dios y yo”, “Para Elisa”, and “Blacamán”, which show the richness of the filmic imagination of García Márquez.