• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.34
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• pp.201-236
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• 2014

Juan $Mars{\acute{e}}$ was born in 1933 in Barcelona. Being the son of a City cleaner, he was able to watch, from a very early age, all the films he desired, as many times as he wished. This privilege meant a great help in future years, when having to develop the plots and characters of his works. In his last (latest) novel, Caligrafía de los $sue{\tilde{n}}os$, published in 2011, as he has done in his previous works he uses a cinematographic frame again. The explicit references to Hollywood's Golden Age -such as John Ford's Stagecoach and Cecil B. DeMiller's The Plainsman- bring very specific and vivid images to the reader's mind, leading to clear physical and psychological associations. The aim is achieved: the reader's attention is caught immediately. However, characters, plot and cinematographic structures are actually distracting mirages. They make the reader expect a predictable ending which, in fact, will be very different. Therefore, the surprised reader must step back, in order to approach the main topics of the novel from a certain distance. Doing so, he's following the Theory of the Distancing Effect. He becomes aware of the need of a new perspective on social problems that he had considered as familiar justo a few moments before. Thus, he is getting prepared for a more objective interpretation, such as the futility of war and the ideological differences that led to the (Spanich) Civil War and all its devastationg effects.