The Rocket from Calabuch

Professor Hamilton is one of the best-known atomic scientists in the world. He works out late what his work is for, and one day he disappears. He settles in Calabuch, a town on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, and tells nobody who he is. Things move slowly there: the priest plays chess with the mayor, the smuggler is everyone's friend, the schoolmaster argues with the lighthouse keeper. Hamilton joins in and starts building a rocket for the town's fireworks competition. Then the world comes looking for him. Luis García Berlanga directs; a hundred and two minutes. Edmund Gwenn plays Hamilton. It was made under Franco and had to pass the censors, and what it says is plain anyway: against a world that manufactures weapons it sets a town that manufactures nothing.