Ocurrió a la luz del día. La censura y las versiones de El cebo

Abstract

In full creative maturity, Ladislao Vajda began the production of a film conceived by playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The transgressive nature of the project, promoted by German-speaking Switzerland, involved a delicate administrative process that led to giving Spanish nationality to the film. Amidst all these conflicts, Vajda turned a double version, both in German and in English. The intervention of the Spanish censorship eventually resulted in filming a third version. This article aims to analyze the differences between Hellichten is geschah am Tag, It Happened in Broad Daylight (El cebo), the Spanish dialogue originally prepared for dubbing and the novel by Dürrenmatt, written once the film had been eventually edited. The comparison will shed light on the persistence of ‘multiple versions’ practice in the 1950s, while putting into perspective the interest in childhood in Vajda’s movies, among which It Happened in Broad Daylight represents a turning point.