Among Jess
Franco’s actors, the background of Trino Martínez Germán, known as Trino
Trives, is similar to that of Antonio de Cabo. Though not primarily an actor, he was nonetheless a man of the stage who additionally gave acting performances in films by Franco – indeed, exclusively in Franco
films as he appears to have worked for no other filmmaker in his life. In the world of theatre, while he
did occasionally act, he mainly busied himself with direction, set design and the translation into Spanish of plays, not to the exclusion of some poetry
translating. In 1998, when his career had lapsed into obscurity, he was cited
in the newspaper ABC as one of the most relevant theatrical figures in Spain,
where he is essentially remembered as the man who, as a translator and stage
director, introduced many Spaniards to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter
and Eugène Ionesco during the sixties, notably with productions of such Beckett
plays as Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days.
The
Valencian-born Trives also served, for a while, as the director of the National
Theatre in Spain, but he was mostly active either abroad or working in the
fringe. It may be that an openly gay man like him had limited chances in the
Spain of General Franco, or it might simply have borne on a personal penchant
on his part. Whatever the case, he alternated his activity in Madrid with work
in Paris, not to mention Portugal and Brazil, both of which were also frequented
by his fellow theatre professional Antonio de Cabo, with whom he thus became
acquainted; it could well be, in fact, that one of these two men recommended
the other to Jess Franco.
Trives’s
first recorded collaboration with Jess Franco came with his work as production
designer for Rififí en la ciudad
(1963), where he is credited as Trino Martínez-Trives. This was during his period of greatest prominence in the world of theatre. By the time he returned to
Franco’s cinema, in the eighties, Trives’s career was drifting towards a
marginal position, in which he was engaged in acting teaching and in fringe, non-profit
theatrical productions, with much of his income coming from the royalties of
his translations. Franco, for his part, saw possibilities in his appearance, bald and with a Van Dyke beard, and cast him in several roles, often villainous, as in Los blues de la calle Pop and Viaje a Bangkok, ataúd incluido.
However
obscurely, Trino Trives remained active as a stage director towards the end of
the century, gaining a 1998 award in Japan for his production of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. Interviewed in 2002,
Jess Franco said of Trives: “I’ve lost track of him but we’ve always been very,
very good friends” (1). Trives, at the time, had been diagnosed with lung cancer
and returned to his hometown, namely Orihuela, Alicante. In the summer of 2003, he refused to give an interview, saying: "Forget it. Those who've tried to rehabilitate my name by writing about me have merely screwed up. Anyway, with no sex and no work, death is a relief" (2). He died on 28 September 2003. His ashes lie
buried in Montparnasse Cemetery, in Paris. .
Los blues de la calle Pop (Aventuras de Felipe Marlboro, volumen 8) (1983)
En busca del dragón dorado (1983)
Bahía blanca (1983)
Viaje a Bangkok, ataúd incluido (1985)
La chica de los labios rojos (1986)
Dark Mission: Flowers of Evil (1988)
Trino Trives's imdb entry:
Text by Nzoog Wahrlfhehen (Special thanks to Ricard Reguant)
