Directory of World Cinema: Spain 1841504637, 9781841504636

Citation preview

SPAI

DIRECTORY OF

WORLD CINEMA

ISBN 978-1-84150-463-6

00

9 781841 504636

www.worldcinemadirectory.org intellect | www.intellectbooks.com

EDITED By LorEnzo J. TorrES HorTELAno

Volume 7

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA SPAIN

Edited by Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA

Directory of World Cinema

First Published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Publisher: May yao Publishing Assistant: Melanie Marshall Cover photo: La niña de tus ojos, Penélope Cruz, 1998. Lolailms/Cartel /The Kobal Collection. Cover Design: Holly rose Copy Editor: Heather owen Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. yorkshire Directory of World Cinema ISSn 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSn 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: Spain ISBn 978-1-84150-463-6 Directory of World Cinema: Spain eISBn 978-1-84150-577-0 Printed and bound by Cambrian Printers, Aberystwyth, Wales.

2 Japan

CONTENTS

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA SPAIN Acknowledgements

5

Introduction by the Editor

6

Film of the Year: Biutiful

9

Interview with Jaime Rosales

13

Industry Spotlight: Spanish Film Production

19

Cultural Crossover 22 Inluence of European Avant-garde representations of Violence Don Quixote Visual ridings Festival Focus 37 Semana de Cine Experimental de Madrid / Experimental Film Week of Madrid Film Location: Madrid

40

Directors Edgar neville Fernando Fernán-Gómez Carlos Saura Víctor Erice Pedro Almodóvar

45

Auteur Melodrama/ Melodrama de autor/ Essay reviews Grotesque Comedy/ Esperpento Essay reviews Iberian Drama Essay reviews

66

84

104

Musical (But Not Only Flamenco…) Essay reviews Period Films/De época Essay reviews Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema Essay reviews

124

144

164

The Transition to Democracy Cinema/Cine de La Transición 182 Essay reviews Crime and Thriller Essay reviews

200

Fantasy and Horror Essay reviews

220

Experimental Documentary Essay reviews

242

Recommended Reading

262

Spanish Cinema Online

266

Test Your Knowledge

271

Notes on Contributors

274

Glossary

282

Filmography

285

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Directory of World Cinema

This book began to take shape in my mind during Christmas 2009 on a visit to rome: an ideal place to dive into history. From that very irst moment I began to contact the many contributors to this irst edition of Directory of World Cinema: Spain. Without the work of more than 60 of them, it would have been impossible to accomplish. It is time, therefore, to thank them for their time; and those who have worked as reviewers as well. I also thank those at Intellect for the fantastic work in publicizing new aspects of national ilm, in this case, Spanish. I especially appreciate the help of the professionals who worked with me directly on this project: May yao and Melanie Marshall. I would also like to acknowledge the help of one of the collaborators, Juan Mas, who encouraged me from the beginning and ensured that EGEDA (Management of Audiovisual Producers) was interested in the project. Through this organization I have obtained permission for most of the reproductions that illustrate the critiques. The commendable work of this institution on behalf of Spanish cinema is much appreciated. It was Victoria Bernal who accompanied me all the way and to whom I owe special thanks. other studios, producers and ilm-makers have independently provided their consent, for which I am grateful: Andergraun Films, Antonio López García, El Deseo, Emiliano otegui, Fresdeval Films, Cine Art Group , Impala, Messidor Films, Mod Producciones, nickel odeon Dos, Paulino Viota, Producciones Cinematográicas Telecinco and rodar & rodar Cine y Televisión. Thanks also to those responsible from the Cines Verdi for assistance in capturing a few frames, as well as Alicia Potes, from Filmoteca Española. Special thanks for his invaluable assistance in the inal stage of the book to José Miguel Burgos Mazas. With him I was able to complete an extensive interview with one of the most interesting present Spanish ilm-makers, Jaime rosales, to whom I am indebted for his willing cooperation, and also with Helio San Miguel for the translation into English of his interview. I am very grateful to the team of reviewers that gave me a invaluable help to improve the quality of the texts: Jaime Céspedes, José Díaz-Cuesta, Almudena Escobar López, Pietsie Feenstra, Juan Mas, Victoria Pastor-González, Helio San Miguel, John Sanderson, Ana Sedeño and Kuhu Tanvir. Finally, I dedicate this book to my wife, Covadonga Cocina, whose spirit animates every single line of this book.

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

Acknowledgements

5

Directory of World Cinema

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR

Spanish cinema was born almost at the moment that crystallizes one of the burdens of recent Spain: the permanent loss of the colonies; a moment that, in fact, created an antagonism to the nation that would have such an important role in the development of the new art – the US. It is not, therefore, surprising that Spanish cinema is strange and contradictory, but I am not proposing a reading with an inferiority complex. In any event, it is a wonderfully contradictory story because, at base, it is an art developed in the country of Velázquez, Goya and Picasso. But do our ilm-makers have the pre-eminence of these universal masters of the painted image? It is debatable; nevertheless, one of the primary functions of this Directory is to propose a kind of canon that gives new generations of viewers a guide to this diverse cinematography that may assist them to decide whether the ilms discussed here can excite them as much as, for example, the painting Las Meninas. The ilms in this Directory are divided into ten genres, each looking at ten ilms within the genre. But this is not a ‘100 best ilms’, nor is it a ‘history of cinema’ for academic or professional use. What I have tried to relect is the everyday ‘use’ that both professionals and academics and the viewer make of the different ilm genres. Therefore, the concept might be thought impure, in the sense that it does not correspond exactly with the academic characteristics or with the speciic professional uses of Spanish cinema or the viewer’s normal conception of genre; and the ten proposed genres have been placed within three broader areas: De época/Period Films, Crime and Thriller, Fantasy and Horror and Experimental Documentary: These are the most conventional genres of the Directory, as deined primarily by the features that normally correspond to the genres. Its originality, then, comes

6 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

from the unique idiosyncrasies of the combination as formed by professionals of Spanish cinema (and the inevitable legislature of their time) plus the Spanish audience. It may not be obvious, since the Spanish ilm falls into that category of national cinema produced primarily for domestic consumption, which does not detract from their validity or quality. In any case, they are standard genres in their own right whose presence in the Spanish cinematography is, accordingly, important enough to dedicate a space. Melodrama de autor/’Auteur’ melodrama, Esperpento/Grotesque Comedy, Iberian Drama and Musical (But Not Only Flamenco...): These are, in turn, genres that the reader will probably not ind elsewhere and are, perhaps, an original idea in terms of generic classiication. They assume, irst, a theoretical relection on a body of ilms that are usually ascribed to standard genres of the type mentioned in the previous section – but whose personality makes it appropriate to think otherwise; and, secondly, is a deduction from my personal experience that attempts to explain what I think are the three great spiritual veins of Spanish cinema: melodrama (and just drama), comedy and musical. Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema, Cine de la Transición/The Transition to Democracy Cinema: If the irst two major groups of genres have referred to professional practice and theoretical relection, inally, in this third group, I attend to what many viewers on a daily basis tend to think when they talk about certain types of ilms – ‘de la Dictadura’ or ‘de la Transición’ (I left for a possible second volume another large group of ilms that would it here, ‘de la Guerra Civil’) – which, from a theoretical point of view, are not, logically, comparable with the previous ones, but I think that enrich what the DWC: Spain can offer to complete a journey through the best of more than 100 years of Spanish cinema history. It is worth noting that in the genre Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema I also propose a joint tribute to several generations of directors who, due to ideological reasons, have had their work suppressed, which led, in many cases –such as with Edgar neville – to oblivion. Though International conferences and several books of various AEHC (Spanish Association of Film historians) partners have preceded me in this tribute, it is, without doubt, still needed. The book opens with three articles (in Cultural Crossover) that address three aspects, which, while not speciically cinematic, deine Spanish culture in a universal way: irst, from the aesthetic point of view, the inluence of the avant-garde, in which Spain played an important role, and in which the igure of Buñuel has its own brightness; secondly, a more sociological aspect about how violence is represented in Spanish cinema: a subject that Marsha Kinder (1993) already pointed out in Blood Cinema, and somehow marked the international theoretical understanding of Spanish cinema, but that now requires some revision; and, inally, an article on ilm adaptations of that universal, Spanish character, titled ‘Don Quixote Visual Ridings’, since Don Quixote’s ridings are also readings of the deepest Spanish being. But Spanish cinema needs to be impregnated with new blood from the most avantgarde currents worldwide. The task has been in progress for some time, as is pointed out in the article about Experimental Film Week of Madrid, whose twentieth anniversary was celebrated in 2010. This very important aspect is also discussed in the essay Spanish Film Production. From this need should be understood the inclusion, perhaps controversial, of Biutiful for The Best Film of the Year. Although Iñárritu is a Mexican director, the ilm is a co-production, set in Barcelona, and several members of the technical and artistic team are Spaniards, with the Spanish roots in the story, etc, and it is even more Spanish if we consider one of the biggest criticisms that it usually suffers: the relative weight of Javier Bardem in the whole ilm. But his tone is aimed at a global audience – which is important in contemporary Spanish production. Beyond this, we believe that Spanish cinema has for too long turned its back on Latin American cinema and, therefore, in a sense, the choice of Biutiful is a tribute and a desideratum.

Introduction

7

Directory of World Cinema

Madrid is the most important city in the history of Spanish cinema. This fact has not been suficiently weighed. Again, we see ideological and political motives in this. That is why I dedicate to this city the Film Location section. In considering directors, I have already noted the claim for neville. The same goes for Fernando Fernán-Gómez – as complete an artist as they come. Erice and Almodóvar need little introduction: they are living examples of two radically-different ways of understanding cinema. And inally, Carlos Saura, the irst of the ive to be recognized internationally. But we do not forget an absence: Buñuel; but let us leave something for the second volume... A formal note: some of the ilms included does not have an oficial translated title from Spanish into English, in cases like that, the offered title comes with parenthesis or square brackets. And a decisive declaration: synopses of all ilms are original and have dealt with all of the events that occur in the ilm. I do not understand the fear of the so-called spoiler alert. I think this continues to show a basic misunderstanding; the truth of a ilm is not primarily about what is told, but how is it told, so, knowing the story is the best way to focus on what is important. Anyway, what I have tried to do is what Santos zunzunegui (2005: 16) proposed as an analyst of Spanish cinema: what to choose to see the past; to understand contemporary cinema; and, inally, analyse how ilm can help us to express ourselves as a society and understand it better. Without the last task, the rest is in vain and, perhaps, therefore, is, the most urgent task.

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

8 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Biutiful, Javier Bardem in Biutiful, Mod Producciones.

FILM OF THE YEAR BIUTIFUL

Film of the year

9

Directory of World Cinema

Biutiful Languages:

Spanish English Wolof Chinese Studio:

Mod Producciones Ikiru Films Menage Atroz Director:

Alejandro González Iñárritu Producers:

Fernando Bovaira Alejandro González Iñárritu John Kilik Screenwriters:

Alejandro González Iñárritu Armando Bo nicolás Giacobone Cinematographer:

rodrigo Prieto Art Directors:

Marina Pozanco Sylvia Steinbrecht Composer:

Gustavo Santaolalla Editor:

Pablo González del Amo Duration:

150 minutes Cast:

Javier Bardem Maricel Álvarez Eduard Fernández Diaryatou Daff Filming locations:

Barcelona navarra Year:

2010

10 Spain

Synopsis The ilm starts and ends at the same point: Uxbal and his daughter Ana talk about a ring, lying in bed in a darkened room. What happens in between is a great lashback. Enjambmented to the dialogue of the boot scene, we see a dream: a snowy forest, a dead owl, and another man younger than Uxbal. right at the end of the story we will know that this man is his father, whom Uxbal did not know because he was exiled to Mexico, where died shortly afterwards. The story itself – the broad lashback – begins at a hospital: Uxbal, an unlucky and desperate father, separated and with two young children, undergoes a medical examination: he is diagnosed with prostate cancer that will let him live only a few more months. To give his children a good start in life, Uxbal runs both the drug trade in his neighborhood in Barcelona, the raval, and the traficking of illegal immigrants, apparently at arm’s length but, as the story unfolds, he will become increasingly involved in the lives of dealers, bootleg peddlers and their families, Chinese and African immigrants, and his own dysfunctional family. In addition, Uxbal, as a spiritualist, has the ability to speak with the dead, that is, to put together two separate worlds, and to bring into contact the police with the underworld of drugs, and illegal immigrants with the foremen of the building works, assisted by his brother, who sleeps with his estranged wife, Marambra. She suffers from a bipolar disorder that prevents her from leading a normal life. Disorder, then, resounds in Uxbal’s position as mediator. Before dying, he wants to order his life by entering into in a race against time, one in which he needs to forgive the son who pees the bed; his wife (who let to return home, which fails); his brother (who always helps, but betrays him with Marambra); and himself (for his involvement in the deaths of Chinese immigrants or the deportation of the Africans). Finally, he will ind peace with himself and, as well as the money he gets together in his haste, he will donate a token gift to his children that is contained in the simplicity of (protective) black stones which contain a lesson: what is worthwhile in life is beyond the imaginary level. The scene in which the spiritualist gives them to Uxbal in the irst place is at the geometric centre of the ilm which endows it with great symbolic signiicance.

Critique Biutiful is the irst feature ilm Gonzalez Iñárritu made without Guillermo Arriaga, his usual screenwriter; signiicantly, the seeds of this project were planted in 2006, the year of his break with Arriaga. The director himself began writing the script and, subsequently, he was joined by the Argentines Armando Bo and nicolas Giacobone. If 21 gramos/21 Grams (2003), Amores Perros/Love Dogs (2005) and Babel (2006) are examples of fragmented narratives, Biutiful’s story is linear, except, as noted above, the fact that most of the ilm is a great lashback. As a result this should be given special consideration because therein lies, perhaps, the

Directory of World Cinema

key to Uxbal’s character: one cog in a globalized world that is not inally working. Precisely, one of the greatest of Iñárritu’s virtues is his ability to be able to combine a number of narrative and aesthetic keys in a non-nationalistic way; to provide a work that is addressed to a global audience, pointing out the contradictions of globalization without falling into demagoguery. In fact, when Iñárritu irst came to Barcelona in 1981 he experienced its brutal contradiction: a global world and, simultaneously, closed nationalism. Hence, perhaps, at the same time, this feature typically, and often, becomes the target of the biggest criticisms against Iñárritu’s cinema, as his work seems to fall into cultural relativism. This dialectic continues to show the laws and complexities of the phenomenon par excellence of the twenty-irst century: the already-mentioned globalization, beginning with the dependence of culture on nationalisms, which is still perceived in the global world. The ilm is close to pure melodrama but, as will be discussed below in the appropriate gender essay, Biutiful speciically its into the auteur melodrama in which the Mexican director is a master; it has reference to social cinema while being full of poetry. Barcelona has probably never been represented in a rawer and yet dreamy way, far from the city of tourists, or Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). you do not ind Gaudi’s Barcelona – although it still appears beautiful, here it is rather ‘biutiful’ – and, above all, you do not get a Sagrada Familia ‘postcard’: when Uxbal stares from the window of the treatment room hospital, he gets to see it through a ghostly panorama shot in the distance, still under construction. This symbolic Barcelona temple is precisely what Uxbal seems to long for in his wanderings through the streets – a Law that will guide his decisions. And, therefore, the story of his father, who he could not know, becomes the secret key of the ilm, especially when he allows his daughter to say goodbye to him through a ring, and through the promise that might be enclosed within it. So, it makes sense that the ilm is framed in that sequence as a prologue and epilogue, with its derivative in the snow dream in which his father shows him a way out. There is thus a spiritual evolution of the protagonist who, after a descent into hell – like the Chinese illegal immigrants who die in the basement poisoned by gas – furrowing a dirty, realist landscape – very close to the irst Iñárritu’s ilm, Love Dogs – emerges in a magical and supernatural space, represented by black butterlies emerging from the ceiling in his most desperate and relective moments. In these – as in the stones he donates to their children – we also ind the aesthetic pointed to by the word ‘biutiful’: not an imaginary beauty but transcendent – see, for example, the tremendous Barcelona sky streaked with black birds (used in the trailer) which is the work of the fantastic rodrigo Prieto, director of photography for all Iñárritu‘s ilms – and Brokeback Mountain (2005), among others. This rareied aesthetic crystallizes in the character’s name: Uxbal is a strange name, as strange as would be that morning in which Iñárritu and his sons were preparing breakfast listening to the piano

Film of the year 11

Directory of World Cinema

concerto in G major by Maurice ravel and which made them sad, and the very same morning that a character named Uxbal knocked the door of the director’s imagination. The ilm is not the best of Iñárritu, although by February 2010 it had raised over 3 million euros in Spain alone. But there is no doubt that this is, perhaps, the best Javier Bardem performance. And, for us, it is undoubtedly the best ilm shot on Spanish soil in 2010.

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

12 Spain

Jaime rosales in the set (Fresdeval).

INTERVIEW WITH JAIME ROSALES

Interview

13

Directory of World Cinema

Jaime rosales was born in 1970 in Barcelona. He graduated in Business at the ESADE school of economics, but his vocation was cinema. With two grants, he spent three years studying at the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba) and then at the Australian Film Television and radio School in Sydney (Australia). After completing these studies, he worked as a scriptwriter for television until March 2001, when he started as a producer in Fresdeval Films. Before his debut with the feature ilm Las horas del día/The Hours of the Day (2003), he made several short ilms with great success, but it was The Hours of the Day, which also received the FIPrESCI Award at the Cannes Film Festival, that established his reputation. In 2007 he shot his second feature, La soledad/Solitary Fragments, which unexpectedly won the Goya award for best ilm and best director, and selected at the Cannes Film Festival’s in ‘Un Certain regard’ section. His latest ilm, Un tiro en la cabeza/A Bullet in the Head (2008), received more mixed reviews. It would seem, with honorable exceptions like yours, that the whole of Spanish cinema turns its back on the issues that really matter to the public. Are you aware that you are an exceptional case, another ‘solitary figure’ in Spanish film? To what do you believe it is due; what do you feel is the reason? When will we leave this eternal adolescence in film topics, or get beyond financial demands or seeking quick success? I think all artists feel quite lonely in the creative process, one that contains many more uncertainties than certainties. The truth is that I do not think of cinema from a national point of view. of course I am Spanish, I care very much about what happens in the country I was born and live in, Spain but, regarding ilm matters, I do not operate from a national perspective. I will not watch a movie simply because it›s Spanish, French, Iranian or American. I›ll watch a movie because I feel like it is going to offer something that interests me. That something that interests me is usually also very varied. In some movies I can be looking for some things, and in others, for different ones. But I never relect from a national point of view. not even when I conceive or make a movie. I do not think of it as a Spanish ilm for the Spanish public. I think of it just as a movie. A ilm that must address a series of interests that concerns me at a given time. I do not know what issues should be discussed and what topics should not. In fact, I do not think the topic is so important. I do not believe cinema is limited to a technology to illustrate a thesis, a theory or an ideology. I do not know what cinema is, but I do not believe it is that. The Directory of World Cinema: Spain tries to establish a sort of canon of Spanish cinema, thinking in terms of non-Hispanic audiences. In this context, do you feel comfortable inside Spanish cinema? What are the most immediate references when you get to work? I think I have partially answered this question in the previous response: I do not think of cinema from a national point of view. Many people think of cinema – and other things: sports, literature, politics – from a national perspective. I already said that’s not my situation about that. on the other hand, I feel well integrated in my culture, the Spanish one. I like living in Spain and I like raising my daughters in Spain. The Spanish ilm industry has been good to me. They have allowed me to make my movies – with some dificulties – and that is much appreciated. France has also welcomed me very well and I am also grateful to the French. The dificulties are good. Sometimes I hear colleagues complain about the dificulties in ilm-making. Partners who make movies regularly, who really don’t have many problems, complain for the sake of complaining. I do not share this victimization. I ind it a privilege to make movies and I feel privileged. I feel I have more duties than rights. And I always try to meet them. As for the references, we are back to the same topic: I do not see it from a national perspective. Besides, the references vary over time. At one point Bresson may be more 14 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

important than Tarkovsky; at another it can be Cassavettes or Buñuel, who was Spanish himself. I don’t know..., ozu was very important to me and now he barely means anything to me. Almodóvar is arguably the author who has best lead his career in the world today. In Spain I like Erice’s ilms but it didn’t even cross my mind to make a ilm like him. Lynch, Godard, Antonioni..., Lars von Trier, Haneke... There are many references, many movies. Where did you get the idea of making Solitary Fragments? Is there any event, any comments, or an image that is at the origin of the project? Solitary Fragments comes, on the one hand, from an emotion, and on the other, from an event. The emotion is becoming a father for the irst time. I started writing Solitary Fragments a few months after the birth of my irst child. It was something that changed my perception and my place in the world. It was a big change. Since then I looked at life in a different light. I am particularly impressed by the mixed feelings of seeing the strength and fragility of life. nothing embodies this dual role in a more visible way than a baby. A baby is fragile and is strong. Actually, that’s life, and that’s the human being: weak and strong. on the other hand, the event prompting the making of the ilm was the Atocha Station’s terrorist attacks of 11 March 2004. Suddenly, I felt I had to incorporate that into the movie. I had to include this event in some way. That’s the reason for the attack on Solitary Fragments. At the same time I had to incorporate it in a different way from the one that the media and politicians were addressing it. In the ilm nobody speaks about perpetrators, or police conspiracies, or political issues. It is loss of a life. That’s the real issue in a terrorist attack. The film is full of shattered hopes, impossible encounters and, as you pointed out, broken dreams. Is it not this very same tension that is at the core of the emotion that your characters, and their visual representations, provoke? I do not know. you start a movie with some ideas and over time everything changes. you start writing alone, then you’re joined by a co-writer, and then by more and more people. This collective creative process is very rewarding, very exciting. But the authorship of the work, as a result of this process of collective creation, is being diluted. I feel it is not something so mine. All that is incorporated, and what stays in the inal cut is not something that I have consciously placed to generate a speciic stimulus. It is something that is there. For sure it’s there, but I cannot explain very well why it is there. The images are there to be read. The uniqueness of cinema – that is not the case in literature, for example – is that what one writes in images can then be read in many different ways. you tell me that the movie is full of dashed hopes. Probably you’re right. I cannot disagree with that. First, because, in my opinion, every spectator is sovereign. But I didn’t make a movie about shattered hopes or broken dreams. I didn’t make a movie about anything. I made a movie with images and sounds. These images and sounds carry many possible stimuli. Dashed hopes, shattered dreams... yeah, sure. Many other things too. That tension seems to be perceived equally in the countryside and in the city: the two areas where you place your characters. Is there in the visual work of the movie –cinematography and mise-en-scène – a desire to bring closer these two areas, despite the fact that both domains are equally ‘corrupted’ by a sense of extreme loneliness? I have no desire to inluence anything. I do not think I can tell anyone what is best for him. I cannot tell anyone that my politics are better than theirs, that my moral values are higher than theirs. I have my ideas; I have my values, of course, but do not try to impose them through a movie. I do not believe that I should. That would put me above others and I don’t think it is appropriate to do so. I feel a lot of things. A series of characters start talking to me. They tell me their lives. They don’t serve my ideas. Although they Interview

15

Directory of World Cinema

are ictional characters, they have their own ideas – or should have. Sometimes they do things I don’t understand. They sometimes do things that I don’t want them to do. But they are as they are, and I cannot and should not interfere in them. In addition, the actors, later, incorporate their own ideas and feelings. In that sense, and to answer your question, I do not want to bring the country closer to the city. nor do I want to move it away. I have no clear opinion on this issue and, if I had, I would not make it explicit in the ilm. I’m simply a witness of my reality, the reality of my time. That’s my job: to be a witness of my time. To leave evidence of my time through images and sounds of a reality that is there. I do not think that my job is to model the reality; to try to change it. Cinema as action is propaganda cinema. It’s not a great cinema. There are people, colleagues, friends, who believe that cinema should be a tool for political action. It’s social cinema or political cinema. It seems to me a very poor cinema. They treat the audience like a small child to be lectured. They treat them like a toddler. As if the spectators were not capable of seeing, reading, thinking. In The Hours of the Day, your first film, the protagonist is responsible for some extremely violent murders. Is the fragility of the vital links between people that dominates in Solitary Fragments one of the keys that make possible an uncontrollable rise of violence in our cities, and our villages? This question has nothing to do with cinema. you ask me for a causal relationship in human behaviour. A widespread human behaviour in society. It is a question for a psychologist or a sociologist. It is not a question for a ilm-maker. I don’t know which are the key factors to explain the uncontrollable rise of violence. In fact, [it is] not only [that] I don’t know them, but I think it is not possible to know them. In fact that’s, for me, the topic of The Hours of the Day, although almost nobody noticed it: the impossibility of understanding. The inability to understand the human being. I do not know why Abel, the protagonist of the ilm, kills. I think that Abel does not know either. no one really knows. I have attended many debates about the movie and in many cases people come out with different theories. Some think it is for this and others for that. But very few of them think that you cannot know. Most feel the urgency of inding an explanation. one explanation for everything. I do not believe you can ind explanations for everything. For science this is unacceptable: everything has a cause. And we live in times of great scientiic fervour. I do not even think that we can even know very simple reasons. I do not think you can know why a man chooses one profession and not another; why you choose to marry one woman and not another; why he likes tomato juice and not orange juice. We live in a world that wants to know and learn. For me, a part of wisdom comes from learning to accept the limits of knowledge. Learning to live with the lack of information. I do not know why Abel kills. I do not know why there is so much violence. I am a witness to such violence. Taking into account that Polyvision [a technique in which the screen is divided into several parts with different scenes, and actions are represented at different times] has been used since the beginning of cinema, can it still be claimed, as it has been, that it is your attempt to renew film narrative? If not, what’s the reason – narrative, expressive, symbolic – for using it? Is there a relationship between this formal choice and the loneliness felt by your characters? First of all, it is true that it has been said that I was the inventor of polyvision, which is not true. As you say, polyvision has been used since the beginning of cinema. What has not been used – at least, not that I’m aware of – is the way in which I have used it. I do not mean to give myself special merit, but to try to shed light to an attribution that, on the other hand, I’ve never claimed. Why has the authorship of an invention that is not mine been attributed to me? Perhaps because of the way I used it. I ind no other explana-

16 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

tion. I gave it a particular sense. In my ilm, polyvision did not provide – as had been always the case until now – temporal simultaneity over two separate spaces; but spatial simultaneity of two points or angles of the same space. I think this is the novelty of my proposal. We always see the same space, the same time, with two angles. What we see are not two joined spaces on the screen, but the same space divided on the screen space, a split space. It is a technique that does not bring closer; it is a technique that distances you. Secondly, my job is not an attempt to renovate cinema. I do not think that cinema should be renovated, as if it were an old house. Cinema is something alive in continuous constant motion. I do not think anything should be renovated. It’s all good. I love old movies and the modern ones. Each one belongs to its time and contributes something to its time. In this regard I have to warn that some avant-garde movements sometimes fall into rather disappointing mannerisms. The search for the new, the original, the radical, the groundbreaking at any cost, produces monsters. In our case, ilm monsters. not anything goes, nor is everything good because it is means something unprecedented. The reason I incorporate polyvision as a recurrent technique in the ilm is because I think it can add expressiveness. I think it can add expressiveness in relation to ilm matters and to drama. In relation to the ilm because it can make the viewer spectator aware of what cinema is made of: space-time blocks. And in relation to the dramatic expressiveness in those scenes where there is a tension between two people who want to be together and cannot do it. It is a technique that adds expressivity because it visually separates. It is particularly suitable in those scenes where two people emotionally separated try to approach each other without success. There is a feature of your films that particularly catches my attention. It is the slow pace and the presence of some idle moments where nothing significant makes the story progress. What are you trying to achieve with this technique? What feelings do you seek to provoke in the viewer? rhythm and time are essential parts of the ilm. In fact cinema is just that: blocks of spacetime that are illed with life. Time is essential. How long should a shot be? A scene? A movie? The ilm spectator is trapped in ilm time. Like the audience of a play or a concert. But this privilege of the ilm-maker, the playwright or the musician, is a very delicate one. He must know how to manage it very well. It is not easy to answer this question. I don’t believe you should impose a slow or fast pace throughout a whole movie. I believe that every moment has its own pace, each shot its own tempo. It is very dangerous to stretch a shot more than its due time. There is a risk of falling into conceit. A shot has an aesthetic component (the pure image) that should be understood. The more visually rich an image is, the more time it needs to be read. on the other hand, a shot has a dramatic component (emotion) that also demands its time. An emotion must be prepared, must be taken to its climax, and must relax itself. That also means a use of time. The ilm image is effective when the aesthetic and emotional times are adequate. There is no rule. Each shot is a prototype. But, in a good move, time is perfectly managed. The critics have unanimously praised the work of your actors. How do you prepare them? What importance do you give to casting? To what extent are they aware that acting for you is qualitatively different from other Spanish film-makers? I’m starting now the long process of casting for my new ilm. In this case I am choosing to go with natural actors, amateur actors with no previous acting experience. But the process is similar. I have arrived at the conclusion that, in relation to the actors, the key to success is like marriage: you have to choose well and then you have to work hard for it to work. It is not enough just choosing or working hard. If you choose wrongly, you cannot change the outcome. neither is it enough if you have chosen well, but you don’t work

Interview

17

Directory of World Cinema

hard. I have a very long casting process in which I personally get involved. I interview hundreds of people. I do not let a previous ilter make a pre-casting. I see everyone. I do the tests. That takes months of work. Then I make reading- and improvisation tests from a set of pre-selected players. And inally I get the deinitive actors. From then on begins the whole rehearsal process. I rehearse the entire script. We spend hours rehearsing, days, weeks, in some cases, months. The most important thing is to give conidence to the actors, let them know you›re there with them. That you are going to help them. That they can count on you. Every actor works differently. Some are sprinters and others are marathon runners. It›s good to know them well. Ultimately, it is impossible not to make mistakes. I make mistakes, of course. I make mistakes in the casting and then I make mistakes during rehearsals. It is inevitable. But the more time, energy, work and dedication is given to casting and rehearsals, the better. The fragility of human connections, their incorrigible confinement, lack of communication leads human beings to a sense of profound helplessness. However, do you think are there reasons to believe that in extreme solitude there are also new possibilities of meaning? In one of the above questions, I told you that it was not a question for a ilm-maker, but for a psychologist or a sociologist. now you ask me a question that is not for a ilmmaker either. It is for a philosopher. I’m not a philosopher; but I will try to answer as a simple individual, not as a ilm-maker. you talk to me about the meaning of life and loneliness. They are two things that in my opinion are not linked, at least not conceptually. Loneliness is inevitable; it’s something we cannot escape. To a certain extent we are alone. Whether we like it or not. other people’s company, life in community, the love for your fellow men, is indispensable. I do not think we can live well in absolute solitude. Life, and especially human life, is designed to be lived in company. The more we work the relationships with others, the better. The more we help others, the better. But we also must know how to live our loneliness. Loneliness should not cause us anxiety. Many human activities require solitude. We must ind relection, meditation, prayer, introspection in solitude. Loneliness should not scare us. on the other hand, you talk about the meaning of life. For me it is clear that we need oxygen to live, but the goal of life is not breathing. In a inancially-organized world we also need money in order to survive, but the meaning of life is not making money. Each individual must ind meaning in his life. I think the meaning of life must be built in a harmonious relationship between what one is and what one does for himself, because it provides him with pleasure and comfort, and what one is and does in relation to others. It is very dificult to ind the meaning of life outside the work one does for others. For me, a part of the meaning of life is to enjoy life – that treasure given to us – but also to help others. you can help others in many ways. you don’t need to do great things and get to ight for general causes. But you’ve got to give. Cinema allows me to give. It gives me a lot, too. Would you like to add one last comment for all those non-Hispanic viewers who want to start enjoying our movies and particularly yours? I cannot think of anything. If they don’t know my movies, or they don’t know a certain type of cinema, go watch a movie to try. If they don’t like it, in the end, they will have lost only a couple of hours. It’s not that much. If they like it, that’s great. They can try another one. At the end of the day, they will have some disappointments. It is inevitable. Those who felt disappointed, I hope will forgive me.

Online interview conducted by José Miguel Burgos and Lorenzo J Torres, December 2010.

18 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Water tank, Ciudad de la luz (Alicante).

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT SPANISH FILM PRODUCTION

Industry Spotlight 19

Directory of World Cinema

The Spanish ilm industry went through several different stages during the twentieth century, in line with the vagaries of the national economy, with periods of expansion or recession relected in the number of ilms made. This has nothing to do with the creative capacity to innovate – there is a simply a direct relationship between expansive cycles and increased investment in ilm production. It is therefore no surprise that the resources made available to the Spanish ilm industry have increased considerably over the last 30 years. More than 150 ilms are currently produced each year, involving a total investment of 250 million euros. That said, the production sector has never been excessively professionalized, as it is very fragmented. There are a great many studios producing one ilm every so often, and only a few studios producing several ilms a year with a certain degree of continuity. This has led to an absence of a solid industrial fabric able to produce in an economically-viable way. on the contrary, the Spanish ilm industry works almost on a ‘hand-made’ basis around the production of a ilm, with a signiicant rotation of projects performed almost single-handedly. The upshot of all this is that most production companies are small and weak inancially. As in other European ilm industries, this structure of small, weak production companies is caused by the fact that it is easy to produce ilms for new producers, and because successful studios are built up around one director with his or her own style that allows them to become a long-running ‘success’. The irst reason is due to the low budget of Spanish ilms and to the institutional network that helps create them. The second reason is the absence of an industrial project to convert an author’s creativity (independent cinema) into a corporate structure to generate income instead of maintaining his or her ilm-making ‘style’. This is the dilemma of independent cinema as opposed to commercial cinema – something to which the Spanish ilm sector is no stranger – when trying to create an industry. This situation has serious drawbacks from an industrial point of view. The upside is that it allows room for many different creators, and fosters innovation. A more corporate approach would turn away potential artists who are given an opportunity under this system. The Spanish ilm industry has traditionally beneited from direct subsidies and a system of protection. Annual injections of public money over the last 30 years have ranged anywhere from 20 to 90 million euros. However, the Spanish ilm industry, which has produced an average of around a hundred ilms per annum over the years, could not have become what it is today without income from television. Television and subsidies have therefore made the Spanish ilm industry possible over the last few decades. Television channels are ‘obliged’ to invest in the production of Spanish ilms (the promotion system). of course, when public television was still a monopoly, investment in ilm production was part of its identity and one of the functions assigned to public television. But when private commercial TV stations came onto the scene in the early 1990s, the State obliged channels to invest 5 per cent of their income in ‘independent’ studios to help make ilms. This investment has often also been poured into iction series and has varied in recent years in line with the development of television advertising investment (2.5 billion euros). In addition to these two sources of funding (State subsidies and investments from the TV channels), the Spanish ilm industry has enjoyed a system of protection which has had a marked inluence on its survival within a highly-competitive market. The system was based on a series of measures that have remained more or less unchanged over the years: •   Screen quotas. This policy enforces a minimum number of screening days of European  ilms in relation to foreign ilms and has varied between 1 day of European ilms to 2 or 4 foreign ilms. This measure was taken as a defence against US ilms, which make up most of the output of Spanish cinemas. •   Distribution quotas. This obliges multinational distributors to distribute European ilms  in exchange for the right to dub their ilms into Spanish. The tradition of dubbing ilms into Spanish dates back to the 1930s and was originally promoted by the Second republic and later reinforced by Franco in 1941. •   Low consumption taxes – ilms are classiied as a cultural product (carrying 7 per cent  VAT as opposed to 18 per cent on most other products). However, the maximum rate is applied for pay-per-view and home video services. 20 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

•   Rules governing television channels, such as the EU Directive limiting foreign broadcasts to half of all programmes shown, or prohibiting the free purchase of television channels without government permission. These protection systems and promotion measures (subsidies plus television) are very similar in other European countries with a certain ilm-making tradition, although such measures are currently being questioned within the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) under the so-called ‘cultural exception’ and the problems raised by the defence of cultural diversity. The Spanish ilm market is not only extremely ‘fragmented’, with many studios producing only a few ilms, but also has to cope with a highly-concentrated distribution sector and a cinema sector owned by foreign capital. This means that US distributors control the distribution business through a powerful oligopoly, in addition to owning the major cinema chains. At some points in history this has prevented the Spanish cinema industry from being distributed properly. At present there is an excess of screens, coupled with stagnation in the numbers of cinema-goers. Be that as it may, the market share of Spanish ilms in cinemas has varied between 10 and 15 per cent over the last 30 years, whilst the share of American ilms has ranged from 70 and 90 per cent. Films from other countries have been few and far between. The same levels of presence have remained constant both on television and on the video market. From a inancial point of view, the Spanish ilm sector has certain weaknesses that hold back further development in all the markets: a low budget (2-3 million euros), little commercial promotion, low exports, low proitability, etc. However, its real challenge is to have access to international markets to recover investment and attract more resources to bolster the production sector. There are a great many problems, but new opportunities are opening up with the Internet. To date, the Internet has not provided any fresh income for the Spanish ilm sector. on the contrary, the Internet is a threat in Spain, as in the rest of the world. The traditional value chain, structured around window-based distribution, has been blown apart. The new emerging value chain does not imply a radical change, however; the problem is simply that it does not attract any additional income. If the Internet were simply one more window, there would not be a problem. The danger lies in the ‘cannibalization’ of such windows and the entry of new intermediaries that provide scarce value while taking over the centre of gravity of the audiovisual business, which is distribution. From a inancial point of view, the Spanish ilm industry must make the most of the Internet and integrate better into the diversity of European Culture to conquer the global market. The best way to do this is by having a particular style of one’s own. ‘Local ilms for a global market’ would be the best solution to reach other markets and resolve the fragmentation in Europe. European promotion policies must be corrected to set up a common strategy to help European cinema ind its rightful place on the international markets. Here in Spain, we must correct certain dysfunctions to allow cinema to improve. The market is clearly ineficient. Too many ilms are made without taking the public into consideration and with no reasonable commercial plan to back them. From a creative point of view, we need to build new areas of creation and hybridization, irmly based on our own culture and traditions. In this connection, new horizons were opened up with the creation of Ciudad de la Luz (City of Light) in 2004, the most modern audiovisual production industrial complex in Europe, which was originally promoted by Luis García Berlanga.

José Mª Álvarez Monzoncillo note: This article was written as part of the research Project ‘Production and Distribution of Spanish Fiction’, Ministry of Science and Innovation (Government of Spain), CSo200912568-C03-03, of which Mr Álvarez is the Main researcher.

Industry Spotlight 21

Un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel.

CULTURAL CROSSOVER INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE

22 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Spanish intellectuals lived, during the twenties, under the impact and sometimes the spell of cinema. It had taken time. This new form of expression had appeared in the form of rejection from the pens of the whole Generation of ’98 (the novelists, poets, essayists, and thinkers active at the time of the Spanish-American War, 1898) and, shortly after, ramón Gómez de la Serna enthusiastically embraced it (see his novel Cinelandia, 1923) and even starred, in 1928, in a brief monologue before the cameras under the title El orador (The Speaker); inally, the so-called literary Generation of 27 (Morris 1980), and the artists of those years, celebrated and visited de la Serna, referred to him constantly, trying to emulate the features characteristic of his inventiveness, and occasionally, raided his work. The cinematic imaginary, then, lies with the Spanish avant-garde, and does so regardless of the low volume of Spanish ilms which could be ascribed to it. Film culture assailed the pages of cultural magazines; the institutions where intellectuals are educated allowed access to the new art, and artists were sensitized to its presence. In this sense, the phenomenon is not qualitatively different from that in Europe in those years. There were many channels that acclaimed avant-garde Cinema in Spain. First, there was the Cine-club Español, opened in 1928 by the eccentric igure Ernesto Giménez Caballero, and linked to his publication La Gaceta Literaria. Thus, between 1928 and 1931, the ilms were released to an audience of the elite, an elite nourished by European avant-garde Cinema, as well as by the most creative US productions. This includes canonical works of German Expressionism (Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920; Das Wachsfigurenkabinett/Waxworks, 1924; Tartuffe/Tartuffe, 1925; Schatten/Warning Shadows, 1923); of French Impressionist and Dada art (L’étoile de mer/The Starfish, 1928, La chute de la maison Usher/The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928; La fille d’eau/Whirlpool of Fate, 1925; Ballet mécanique, 1924; Le chapeau de paille d ‘Italie/The Horse Ate the Hat, 1928, Sous les toits de Paris/Under the Roofs of Paris, 1930...); Soviet classics that were all the rage in the West (Bronenosets Potyomkin/ The Battleship Potemkin, 1925; Potomok Chingis-Khana/Storm over Asia, 1929; Staroye i Novoye/Old and New/The General Line, 1929...); and also American ilms that showed the major technological and aesthetic changes but, however, could hardly be ascribed to avant-garde sensibility (Greed, 1924, The Jazz Singer, 1927; slapstick...) (Gubern 1999, pp. 279 et seq.). Far from being conined to its Madrid origins, the Cine-club Español opened branches in Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia, Valladolid, managing to ignite avantgarde ilm culture among a select but relatively broad audience that had already become informed by Paris correspondants through journals such as Screen, Popular Film, etc. An immediate predecessor was Luis Buñuel’s planned series of movies, from his vantage point in the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, from 21 May 1927 (Gubern 1999), following the model that the Aragonese director had discovered in the French capital, including avant-garde ilm, classic American ilm and any documentary (Puyal 2003: 317). Spaniard José Miguel Durán, director of the Parisian cinema ‘Ciné-Latin’ since 1927, also served as a bridge, bringing to Spain many of the ilms shown there before he moved back home. Familiarization began in Barcelona with sessions organized like a weekly Mirador (artistic journal) at the rialto cinema between April 1929 and June 1930, and the ‘Studio- Cinaes’ with its headquarters at the Lido cinema. Such circulation also contributed relections on cinema that drew in intellectuals and publications, so that, although La Gaceta Literaria, fortnightly between 1927 and 1932, was the main platform through its movie section (managed by Buñuel, and then, by communist critic Juan Piqueras), there was also the prestigious magazine Revista de Occidente, founded by ortega y Gasset (whose volume 43 devoted important insights to the new art) and other journals, such as L’Amic de les Arts, Mirador, Hèlix, Nueva España, Octubre and Nueva Cultura. Luis Gómez Mesa, Manuel Villegas López and Guillermo Díaz Plaja were among the animators of this new sensibility. The scenario may seem rather vague – as ambiguous as the status of avant-garde ilm in Europe during these years. Indeed, what we call avant-garde seemed to split, as far as Cultural Crossover 23

Directory of World Cinema

the movies are concerned, into three trends: irst, the effort to turn into art a new form of expression, i.e., aesthetic sanction through the use of poetic devices, pictorial or pictorialist compositions (formative theories which, from Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L’Herbier and Jean Epstein, postulated for cinema a music of the eyes, a visual poetry, a photogenic art), and, secondly, the emergence of avant-garde artists of the medium to explore phenomena such as montage, movement, time, associations, mechanics – among the latter Walter ruttman, Man ray or Fernand Leger stand out; and, thirdly, the provocative aesthetics and nihilism that Dadaism had instituted, and its politicized extension in Surrealism, as manifested in the work of rené Clair and Francis Picabia, Man ray, and Buñuel himself (Sánchez-Biosca 2004). The violent clashes, for example, which emerged from Germaine Dulac and Antonin Artaud in the wake of La coquille et le clergyman (1928) in which the Surrealist group as a whole took part, clearly illustrate the instability and contradictions of this French avant-garde (Virmaux 1999). When we look at Spanish avant-garde ilm-making, the diagnosis is bleak: some called it a desert; some accused it of international mimicry and disorder. Though production was certainly very low, initiatives and script projects revealed an interest and effort that, while the ilm industry was not able to compete, should not be dismissed lightly: Gómez de la Serna’s scripts, for example, (Caprichos, and El mundo por diez céntimos (The World for Ten Cents), which should have been ilmed by Buñuel); Porlán Merlo’s El arpa y el bebé (The Harp and the Baby); Babaouo, (published by Salvador Dalí in 1932, and consisting of a compendium of Cinema History) (Pérez Perucha 1983); Viaje a la luna (Trip to the Moon), which Lorca wrote in 1929 under the inluence of Un chien andalou and coinciding with the split his poetry experienced between populism and surrealism. Viaje a la luna is, perhaps, one of the most important unrealized works: written in new york on the advice of Mexican painter and ilm-maker Emilio Armero, its imagery recalls Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York) and translates the concerns that powered the poet from Granada in its exchange of ideas with Dalí and Buñuel (Monegal 1994: 11). Comprising 72 images or scenes, the powerfully-metaphorical literary use recalls Buñuel; to Man ray, its system of irrational associations and his insistence on sexual matters follows the path that Lorca had investigated earlier. However, what were the actual results of this imagery on the screen? Un chien andalou’s (1929) widespread phenomenon has obscured evaluation of any other product of the Spanish avant-garde and, at the same time, has cut it off from its Spanish background, claiming it as a result of the author’s own imagination, or as a result of the French tradition, whose aesthetic, moral and political fabric was indeed critical to its success. There is no doubt that Buñuel’s surreal diptych achieves its impact through the infrastructure of production, exhibition and the turmoil existing in Paris, and the surrealist group support that enthusiastically approved the irst part and drafted a manifesto in defence of L’âge d’or (1930). It is equally true that in both works can be seen some continuity with the references, concerns, allusions that had germinated in Spain. Either way, there were other events that came to fruition. The irst is El sexto sentido (The Sixth Sense) (nemesio Sobrevila, 1929), which takes the inluence of Dziga Vertov’s futuristic theories on ilm technology and the mechanical eye, while using an associative montage inspired by the French poetry trends of the twenties. In fact, the ilm has a ragged plot in which planning and avant-garde imagery have left little trace, except for a few fragments projected in its midst by a bad-tempered character, Kamus, declaring himself fascinated by the irrefutable truth that only the mechanical eye of the camera can record. The short ilm projected by Kamus in front of the ictional characters is full of references to the ‘Absolute Films’ or European abstract ilms made shortly before by Viking Eggeling, Hans richter and Walter ruttman, and had, iguratively, crystallized in Berlin in Die Symphonie einer Grosstadt/Symphony of a Great City (ruttmann, 1927). In contrast, Kamus’ ideas, transcribed by the posters of the ilm, actually relect the principles of Cine-Ojo:

24 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Este ojo extrahumano nos traerá la verdad. Ve más profundamente que nosotros… más grande, más pequeño, más deprisa, más despacio… Lo han prostituido haciéndole ver como nosotros pensamos, pero yo le dejo solo… libre y él me trae lo que ve con precisión matemática. Verá usted los casos de una manera distinta. Con nuestro sexto sentido. (This extra human eye will bring the truth. Go deeper than us...bigger, smaller, faster, slower...I have prostituted them into seeing as we thought, but I’ll leave you alone... free and he brings what he sees with mathematical precision. you see cases differently. With our sixth sense.) There is no doubt that El sexto sentido proves it is well aware of the styles that were all the rage among the French and Soviet avant-garde because it not only intimates them, but imitates them and, furthermore, parodies them. A previous Sobrevila ilm, never released, Al Hollywood madrileño/To the Hollywood of Madrid (1927), was structured in sketches in which he incorporated two episodes of avant-garde stamp: one cubist, the other futurist. Dificult to assess from a cutting edge is La historia de un duro (The Story of a Coin), 1927 Sabino Micon’s short, which, according to the chronicles of time, was about the avatars of a coin passing from hand to hand, using a fragmentary montage full of overlays. In his inspiration it is possible to see Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarksscheins/Adventures of a Ten Mark Note (Berthold Viertel, with a script by Béla Balázs, 1926), which had precisely that theme. He also used photographic tricks and overlays for the description of a futuristic city Madrid en el año 2000 (Manuel noriega, 1925), now untraceable. The catalogue also includes Giménez Caballero’s Esencia de verbena (Essence of Verbena) (1930), which attempts to synthesize the traditionalism of the Virgen del Carmen openair festival with a pictorial iconography of avant-garde lavour or proto-avant-garde that the producer borrowed from Picasso, Maruja Mallo (author of a pamphlet entitled Verbena in 1927–1928), Picabia and Goya. In a line also followed by rafael Barradas, Carlos Saenz de Tejada, Gabriel García Maroto and José Caballero (Puyal 2003: 289), Esencia de verbena was, with over a dozen boxes full of imaginative rhetoric and verbal associative montage, an assimilation of German and French ilms premiered at the Cine-Club, and was released on 29 november 1930. Noticiario del Cine-Club (Film Club Newsletter) (1930), from the same director, was a silent short ilm that aspired to inaugurate the genre of news and that, whilst being an invaluable visual record of the contemporary Madrid intelligentsia, lacked avant-garde formal features. This panorama is, of course, thin in avant-garde results. However, several considerations should be taken into account in order to avoid the usual topic of Spanish anomaly. First, there is a very noticeable gap between the avant-garde imagery of movies looking for a horizon of expression and the actual production of ilms. Writers and artists turned to the movies, attracted by the possibility of irrational association, the rhythmical effect of montage, and fantasized about expressing themselves with these tools, even though such fantasy objectives rarely resulted in actual ilms. However, not much different happened with the French and German avant-garde, and it was even more exaggerated in Italy: dozens of uninished projects, statements of intent, mere notes and sketches. Secondly, the Spanish industry was less robust than in other European countries, but, to be fair, the question should also be whether avant-garde European cinema was, for its part, based on an actual ilm industry. Data shows that it was no more than a handful of enlightened sponsors (the Viscounts of noailles, Charles and Marie-Laure, for example, who had inanced Man ray’s Les Mysteres du château de Dé, as they did with L’âge d’or), together with a group of cultural activists who operated screenings in the theatre, who showed any effort in mobilization. Indeed, there was gap in the Spanish infrastructure,

Cultural Crossover 25

Directory of World Cinema

but not the abyss that has often been noted, nor a qualitative difference. Third, if we consider the traditional way of avant-garde ilm-making, Spain, apparently so strangely anomalous, was curiously the one to provide – irst from Luis Buñuel’s and Salvador Dalí’s pen and eye, and, straight after, from Buñuel alone – the two most surreal movies of all time, without which the movement in question would have remained barren and mired in a mass of general statements, slapstick extemporaneous praise, Louis Feuillade’s serials, and cross-sectional and fragmentary reading of conventional ilms. These works were, of course, Un Chien Andalou and L’âge d’or. Spanish ascription of these ilms, with their moral, aesthetic and political effects, is arguable, but one only has to glance at their images to recognize a literary universe, a type of humour, some religious references, some ghosts; an imagery, in short, that in a substantial part cannot be explained outside the Spanish context (Sánchez Vidal 1982, Gubern & Hammond 2009). Perhaps we should remember that the identity of numerous avant-garde European works was also questioned; that Dadaism just gave a handful of events, more dependent on each projected chance than of the work itself (Elsaesser 1987); and Surrealism, Buñuel aside, at least bore mixed fruit. Adopting a cultural perspective that does not identify manifestations of avant-garde ilm with actual production of ilms, but behaves more generously, and a comparative gaze with all that happened in the same period in Europe, would help to relativize a little the perennial complaint about Spanish anomaly, so dear to cultural exoticism. Alfonso Puyal does not lack reason (2003, p. 354) when he says: ‘El cinema se constituyó para los artistas más como un nuevo modo de pensamiento visual y menos como un resultado en soporte fílmico’ (‘Cinema was set up for artists more as a new mode of visual thinking, and less as a result on ilm’).

Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

26 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Representations of Violence, The Cuenca Crime, In-Cine / Jet Films.

CULTURAL CROSSOVER REPRESENTATIONS OF VIOLENCE

Cultural Crossover 27

Directory of World Cinema

representations of violence have varied over the decades, depending on historical, national, cultural and production contexts, and these representations also impact on stylistic features. Distinctions between European and American cinemas have been established, with critics like Sanchis arguing that ‘the American directors have always preferred to emphasize the spectacular narrative whilst the European (ilms) seem to be anchored in their cultural tradition. European directors have tended to think about the causes of violence, its evolution and meaning (Sanchis 1996: 12). Whilst recognizing that some of the features of contemporary Spanish cinema are truly national and culturally speciic, many of the features of Spanish ilms could indeed be seen as representative of a European style and sensibility. However, at least as many can be attributed to an increasingly global ilm industry dominated by an industrial US-based model. Violence has been a feature of Spanish cinema for many decades in a nation in which there has been a fascination with violence visible in the works of such historical igures as Cervantes, Calderón, Lope de Vega, Goya and Picasso, and, later, with the dictatorship in the institutionalization of violence ‘through the art of bullighting, the neo-catholic revival and the fascist aesthetic, all of which glamorized blood and death’ (D’Lugo 1997: 130). Spain is a country in which violence has played an important role in history dating back to the Inquisition and the Conquest of the Americas, factors which contributed to the establishment of a ‘Black Legend’1 of cruelty of violence’ (Kinder 1993: 1), some associations of which remain part of Spain’s cultural identity to this day. In her section on violence in Spanish cinema of the 1960s, ilm scholar Marsha Kinder points out that ‘within the Spanish context the graphic depiction of violence is primarily associated with the anti-Francoist perspective’ (Kinder 1993: 138). She refers, here, to a period in which any portrayal of violence was repressed, forcing oppositional ilm-makers to portray violence in more subtle, even allegorical ways, in contrast to the healthy Spanish society which Francoist censors wanted them to show in ilms. According to Kinder, ‘anyone attempting to describe the distinct characteristics of Spanish cinema usually begins with its excessive violence’ (1993: 137). However, Kinder also questions whether Spanish cinema is more violent than any other cinemas, but she admits that the ways violence is depicted and their cultural implications may vary (1993: 137). The Spanish ilm industry, however, has not always had this reputation for excessive violence. Florián rey’s La aldea maldita/The Cursed Village (1929) portrays mild violence, and marks the beginning of an increasingly violent trend which continues to the present day. Violence, however, does feature in a number of ilms which form part of the surrealist movement. An example of this was Buñuel’s Un chien andalou (1929) with its startling and brutal images. A decade later, Franco’s dictatorship signalled an abrupt institutional change in the portrayal of violent images. The economic and ideological position of Franco’s regime portrayed violence in a limited number of ways. It was used as a means of glamorizing the deaths of Fascist heroes, exempliied in Raza/Race (José Luis Sanchez de Heredia, 1941). Additionally, violence was integrated into melodramas and was directed towards stylized institutionalized conlict such as bullighting (Allinson 1997: 319). A turning point in cinematic representation during the dictatorship came in 1951 with Surcos/Furrows (José Antonio nieves Conde). This ilm was one of the irst to show violence in what we would now call a social-realist context, in which its causes and effects are shown rather than emphasizing their potential for spectacle or entertainment. Furrows marked the beginning of ‘oppositional cinema’ (Jordan & Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 21). For the irst time, ilm-makers began to challenge the censors in order to express the issues which had long been denied. Films of the oppositional cinema used violence as a means of expressing political concerns and beliefs (Kinder 1993: 138). A good example of this oppositional cinema is La caza/The Hunt (Carlos Saura, 1963). As Kinder argues, Carlos Saura uses violence as a feature to represent the Spanish Civil War and its consequences. Saura’s ilm relates the story of four men whose initial hunting

28 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

camaraderie turns into a murderous explosion of resentment and settling of scores. The ilm has been read as an allegory of the tensions within the Franco regime and of the legacy of the Civil War. Its violent representations were highly stylized and metaphorical since this ilm was shot under conditions of the dictatorship and censorship (Kinder 2001: 64). In addition, she argues that ‘this narrative orchestration of violence – with its varied rhythms, dramatic pauses, and cathartic climax’ (Kinder 2001: 65) had an important impact on Sam Peckinpah’s ilms. other cultural inluences such as Goya’s work provided inspiration for this new oppositional cinema as well as being a useful model, as it allowed ilm-makers to see that the use of violence could transmit a subtle social critique. In Llanto por un bandido (Lament for a Bandit) (1963), the most violent sequence directly quoting ‘Duelo a garrotazos’, one of the most popular of Goya’s paintings, depicts two ighters who are buried in dirt up to their knees, an iconic image ‘which has frequently been used to represent the Civil War and which Bigas Luna would later parody using ham bones in Jamón, Jamón/A Tale of Ham and Passion (1992)’ (Kinder 1993: 157). These images relect a society that is destructively self-consuming. It is interesting to note the contrast between the deep psychological memory scars of a civil war and their effects on a nation with the unifying historical legacy that is represented by inter-national conlicts. Thus, while war ilms symbolize a national rallying point for the British, they represent something much more divisive for Spaniards. While socially-engaged and often formally-experimental ilm traditions continue into the 1960s and 1970s, an altogether separate, almost unique phenomenon of the 1960s onwards is the work of Jess Franco. His ilms made use of graphic violence, and his more than 250 ilms make him ‘by far the most proliic of all directors specializing in horror cinema’ according to the British Film Institute Companion to Horror (newman 1996: 121). However, Hawkins points out that this director has been neglected because of his preference for the production of popular and low quality ilms (Hawkins 2000: 88). Film critic Jim Morton points out that Jess Franco ‘makes his ilms quickly and seemingly with little regard to production values’ mainly directing horror ilms in which violence and sex are exploited (Morton 1986: 194). Spanish horror ilms and the Iberian sex comedies were the most successful ilms in the 1960s and 1980s (Lázaro-reboll & Willis 2004: 12). The fact that Jess Franco’s ilms were aimed at a very speciic audience (by no means necessarily a Spanish audience) at that time, as well as their use of pornographic material, and that some of them were almost incomprehensible in terms of narrative, is a subject worthy of a study in its own right. Ibáñez Serrador’s success with the horror-suspense series in Historias para no dormir (Stories for not Sleeping) (1966–8) on Spanish television also responded to a demand for a ‘new Spanish popular cinema’ at the time. According to Lázaro-reboll, Serrador’s irst feature ilm La residencia/The Boarding School (1969) played an important role since in ‘breaking stylistically and qualitatively with cinematic forms of the period’ (Lázaro-reboll & Willis 2004: 165), it was considered one of the irst representations of horror ilms in Spanish cinema. But at the same time this cinema represented the beginning of new popular Spanish cinema (Lázaro-reboll & Willis 2004: 165). Also at this time, Eloy de la Iglesia’s horror ilms such as La semana del asesino/Cannibal Man (1972) or Una gota de sangre para seguir amando/Clockwork Terror (1973) had a signiicant impact on audiences. According to Willis, the horror genre ‘offered de la Iglesia space to explore an array of contemporary issues such as masculinity, sexuality and class’ (Willis 2003: 77). Later, de la Iglesia turned to more realistic ilms such as Los placeres ocultos (Hidden Pleasures) (1976) or El diputado (The Member of Parliament) (1978) which combine social and political melodramas and graphic depictions of violence. Mark Allinson points out how Spanish ilms from the 1970s and 1980s cover all Spanish forms of violence. There is a wide range of ilms which show political violence,

Cultural Crossover 29

Directory of World Cinema

exempliied in Camada negra/Black Litter (Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 1977), psychotic violence as seen in Tras el cristal/In a Glass Cage (Agustín de Villaronga, 1985) and also stylized incarnations such as Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986) (Allinson 1997: 319). A few years after the death of Franco, Pilar Miró directed the controversial El crimen de Cuenca/The Cuenca Crime (1979), which tells a story of two men condemned for a crime they did not commit, portraying judicial corruption at the beginning of the twentieth century with the use of brutal and graphic representations of physical violence which shocked audiences at the time. The violent sequences of Civil Guards torturing these two men (and the much wider and more sensitive political implications of such a portrayal) were so controversial that Miró was subjected to a military trial, in what became something of a test case for Spanish cinema and political, civic society. Consequently, the ilm was temporarily banned, though the case against her was eventually thrown out of court (Borau 1998: 259-60, Martín-Márquez 1999: 153), and the political exposure contributed to the ilm’s critical and box-ofice success. In the 1980s, Vicente Aranda’s El Lute, camina o revienta/El lute I (1987) or El Lute II: mañana seré libre/El Lute II (1988), are ilms which combine elements of ‘period drama, thriller and social realism’ (Jordan & Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 26) where the protagonist, a gypsy, is seen as a ‘victim of social and political circumstances’ in which violence becomes a means of opposition to the hostile attitude towards the gypsy population at that time. Contemporary Spanish cinema has been described as ‘undergoing a renaissance’ in the 1990s as ilm-makers began to accept that elements of art and commerce are compatible with each other (Buckley 2002: 1). This new aesthetic enables ilm-making to be commercially successful without sacriicing originality and artistic value (2002: 1). Due to the fact that Spanish cinema has managed to ind a middle ground between quality and commercial cinema, new directors can also acknowledge the commercial appeal of violence as featured in Hollywood’s movies. In the 1990s violence continued to be present in Spanish cinema. However, new directors have progressively introduced a major change in the Spanish industry. They started to combine the formula of American genres, taking into account that ilms must target a wider audience. This entertainment model contrasts with the quality cinema as encouraged by the Socialist policy in the 1980s with the so-called Miró legislation1 (Jordan & Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 2). In clear contrast to this quality cinema, Jordan and Morgan–Tamosunas point out that ‘new blood’ is emerging in the Spanish cinema with the appearances of new male and female directors, actors, scriptwriters since the 1990s (1998: 6–7). In other words, these new directors focus on using American genres whilst also creating hybrids with local and European elements. A very good example of this is Alejandro Amenábar, who subtly merges the entertainment bias of Hollywood with the more socially-conscious European tradition. The decade of the 1990s, therefore, represents a new emergence of genres and a new period in the Spanish cinema. There is a clear division between what is called social cinema in which, as Quintana points out, there is a return to ‘politics and a timid realism’ (2005: 155). In social cinema, directors do not choose spectacular violence but, rather, less explicit violence whose main role is social critique in line with the socio-political positions of the ilm-makers. Such positioning helps us better to understand social issues such as domestic violence towards women and children in ilms such as Te doy mis ojos/Take my eyes (Icíar Bollaín, 2003) and El Bola (Pellet) (Achero Mañas, 2000). In addition, a signiicant number of ilms were released in the 1990s that deal with representations of violence and ethnicity. Among these ilms we ind, for example, Las cartas de Alou/Letters from Alou (Montxo Armendáriz, 1990), Bwana (Imanol Uribe, 1996), Taxi (Carlos Saura, 1996), Saïd (Soler, 1998), Salvajes/Savages (Carlos Molinero, 2001) and Poniente (Westerly) (Chus Gutiérrez, 2002).

30 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

In contrast to this social cinema, Spanish audiences are offered ilms closer to the mainstream Hollywood genre ilms, including popular genres which normally show frequent and spectacular violence: war ilms, serial-killer ilms and thrillers coexist with more auteur ilms in those genres. For example, some war ilms focus more on the generic features, satisfying audience expectations and showing spectacular violence typical of these ilms (Guerreros/Warriors, Daniel Calparsoro, 2000) while others concentrate on characters and the historical period which is portrayed (Silencio roto/Broken Silence, Montxo Armendáriz, 2001). Additionally, and relatively recently in Spanish cinema, there are genre ilms which are made exclusively for a certain audience, such as an adolescent audience. In these ilms, portrayals of violence are very graphic and highly stylized, as these genres require spectacular features linked to the spectacular narratives that they normally entail. Good examples are Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley/Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law (Santiago Segura, 1998), in which violence and parody appear throughout the ilm, but just as pure entertainment and spectacle, without having the effect of critique of any violent act. In this respect, ilm scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon argues that teen ilms ‘offer what they have always offered: action, escape, violence, drama, the simulacrum of personal involvement without actual presence or risk’ and that teen ilms are now more violent and less innocent than earlier teen ilms (Dixon 2000: 139). Cinematic violence takes many forms and remains a feature of Spanish cinema. This does not imply that Spanish cinema is more violent than American cinema or other national cinemas; moreover, both common characteristics and certain differences from American cinema are found in the way violence is portrayed. Hence, cinematic violence is a very complex phenomenon, shaped by various elements such as social and ideological dimensions, stylistic choices and industry (different contexts of production). It will be worth looking in more detail, for example, at differences in the production, context and reception of the ilms and whether certain patterns of representing violence will still persist in the future of Spanish cinema.

Agustín Rico-Albero Notes 1. The term ‘Black Legend’ is, in fact, based on a politically motivated myth constructed by the English as part of an imperialistic, cultural and religious power struggle (see Gibson, 1966). 2. Miró’s legislation promoted quality ilms to put Spanish ilms on a par with the European cinema and intended to portray an image of Spain’s valuable cultural legacy (Gubern et al. 1995: 400-3)

Cultural Crossover 31

Directory of World Cinema

Don Quixote, El Silencio Producciones.

CULTURAL CROSSOVER DON QUIXOTE VISUAL RIDINGS

32 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

It is universally accepted that Quixote heralds the modern novel as a genre, not so much for the realism of its subject matter in relation to the society of its time but because it contains the seeds of many of the problems which affect contemporary narrative, both in literature and in cinematography. It is not surprising, therefore, that many famous directors have been fascinated by the Don Quixote character throughout their careers. The names of Chaplin, Capra, Hawks, Welles or Gilliam are examples of those who attempted at realizing this seemingly impossible dream, given the complexity of the book. Even a diagnosis of the genre to which a Quixote ilm belongs is far from simple, and the producers know that the category of ‘drama’, which is most appropriate to the book, can frighten off mass audiences, who know less about the Cervantes novel than they do about its universal protagonists, related mostly with comedy. In fact, when Dale Wasserman premiered the musical The Man of La Mancha (1965), he admitted to not having read the book, since what he sought to do was explore this great myth that Spanish literature had brought to world culture in more depth. Indeed, the pair formed by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza not only constitutes the universal Spanish myth which has had most success in world culture, but it is also the one which is best suited to the cinema: contributing to it both in the visual dimension (the unmistakable silhouette of the knight and his squire) as well as the dialogic nature of two contrasting igures united by ties of friendship, which has often been imitated ever since (Stan Laurel and oliver Hardy; Abbott and Costello; Terence Hill and Bud Spencer; Frodo and Sam; etc.). It explains why the myth of Don Quixote was brought to the cinema at the very beginning of the medium. As early as 1898, the Gaumont Company ilmed a brief scene of 20 metres – barely a minute long – which preceded one of the irst adaptations of William Shakespeare’s work by a year. However, the works of this contemporary of Cervantes went on to enjoy much greater fortune with master pieces which are not to be found in the cinematographic Quixotes, in spite of the honourable versions that GW Pabst (1933) and G Kozintsev (1957) left to us. They generally it into a fairly simple narrative proposition, according to an academic simpliication of the concept of realism which belongs in the nineteenth century. This tendency to avoid the meta-narrative and meta-ictional peculiarities of Cervantes’ novel is more pronounced in the Spanish case than in other ilmographies on Quixote. United to the proverbial tradition of Spanish realism, which is closely linked to the literature and painting of the Golden Age, it obeys a desire to respect something which is considered to be national heritage (which implies a certain disdain towards the freer, non-Spanish versions). However, this pride and zeal have not particularly beneited the cinematic results, since cinema deals with a very different language than literature, and only the freest adaptations have achieved real cinematographic value. Like other national ilm industries, Spain hurried to bring Cervantes’ work to the screens, and if there was any lagging behind France, the United Kingdom or the United States, it was due to the evolutionary underdevelopment of Spanish Cinema in these early stages. In 1910 the irst version of Quixote was brought to the screen – a fragment of El curioso impertinente/The ill-advised curiosity, an episode from chapters 32–35. There are no surviving copies of this version, which was by Barcelona producer Iris Film and directed by the renowned photographer narcís Cuyás. other adaptations of the Novelas ejemplares/ Exemplary Novels of Cervantes were to follow, but Quixote as a story, rather than a myth, was regarded with due respect in Spain for the reasons we have already discussed: tackling it cinematographically in its entirety was no easy feat, despite the deeply cinematographic nature of many of the descriptions and dialogues. With the exception of ramón Biadiu’s documentary La ruta de don Quijote/The Rout of Don Quixote (1935), which was screened in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair with great success among the visiting public, republican Spanish cinema remained largely uninspired by Cervantes. In contrast, Francoism would ind much to

Cultural Crossover 33

Directory of World Cinema

work with in Cervantes, in light of the regime’s desire to appropriate the great myths of the homeland for its own ideological ends. In 1939 Carlos Fernández Cuenca directed a farce, entitled Leyenda rota (Broken Legend), in which the three great Spanish myths coincide: Don Quixote challenging Don Juan to protect Carmen. In 1946, Luis Arroyo ilmed a irst Spanish version of Dulcinea based on the homonymous work by Gaston Baty, which had had much success in the theatre. However, it did not have so much luck on the big screen, perhaps because of the Franco regime’s ostracism of the piece. Dulcinea still inherits a bitter approach to the myth, which follows in the wake of Galdos’s Nazarín, and which is a forerunner in many respects of Buñuel’s Viridiana. It stands in stark contrast with the whitest or most idealized reading of Don Quixote that is characteristic of the Franco regime, exempliied by Jesús Gil’s Don Quijote de la Mancha (1948). The regime wanted a deinitive version (more than an adaptation), according to the criteria of idelity to the novel previously mentioned. Produced by Cifesa, it was premiered on the occasion of the fourth centenary of Cervantes’ birth and received wholehearted support from the regime, in the form of both grants and prizes, in a particular context in which the Caudillo Francisco Franco was compared with Don Quixote: ‘nobleman of the homeland which had been paciied by his hand and was at peace as a result of his will’, as published in a famous journal of the time. The public was not as enthusiastic, partly because its predictably-boring narrative and partly because the public was already fed up of oficial didacticism on the great exploits of the homeland and the constant reminders of the literary fruits of the Spanish Empire’s Golden-Age writers. Although the ilms were of a very different character, both inherited a Late-romantic reading of Quixote which dates back to the Generation of ‘98 (particularly Miguel de Unamuno and his Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho). An interpretation which was, in its turn, inluenced by the messianic vision of Dostoevsky and of Turgeniev, who, in his famous article ‘Hamlet and Don Quixote’, presented the two characters, both created in 1605, as opposing symbols in order to deine Europe: apathetic doubt versus utopian ideals. Paradoxically, Quixote (who would become a symbol of both russia and Spain) served as a source of utopias for opposing ideologies and, unforeseeably, built cultural bridges between two countries whose borders were hermetically sealed. In fact, the Soviet version of Quixote by Kozintsev, also in the Late-romantic and messianic spirit, although of a contrasting ideology to Gil’s national-Catholicism, was the irst russian ilm seen in Franco’s Spain, as late as 1966. Meanwhile, in 1948, another version of ‘the ill-advised curiosity’ appears, directed by the Italian Flavio Calzavara which went by unnoticed despite the popularity of the leading actress, Aurora Bautista. It would be adapted once again in 1968 by José María Forqué with the title Un diablo bajo la almohada/A devil beneath the pillow, and in 1984 by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón in La noche más hermosa/The Brightest Night. But the most interesting version of Quixote from that period is the second Dulcinea, that of Vicente Escrivá (1962). The protagonist is Millie Perkins (famous for the Diary of Anne Frank by George Stevens, 1959) and the music is by Giovanni Fusco, Antonioni’s regular composer. It received very good reviews in Venice. It diverges from Baty’s version and is closer to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). We are presented with a decaying Castilian landscape and a sinister atmosphere which culminates in the burning of the witch Dulcinea by the Inquisition. Despite the interest of the focus (still heir to the messianic vision of the Quixote) and the quality of the inal result, it was poorly received by the wider public. The next great production of the time is the Hispano-Mexican Don Quijote cabalga de Nuevo/Don Quixote rides again (1973), with Cantinlas in the role of Sancho Panza and Fernando Fernán-Gómez as Don Quixote. The scriptwriter in charge of the Spanish team was Carlos Blanco, who takes up an old script that had been commissioned by Samuel Bronston in 1959 to be played by Gary Cooper. At the movie’s climax, Sancho

34 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

comes to the aid of his master and convinces him to go back to helping the weak and to continue with his usual folly. In general, in spite of the veiled humour, this version follows the parameters of Kozintsev in the open ending and in its defence of the ideal despite the adverse circumstances, which its perfectly with Dale Wassermann’s utopian musical in the spirit of ‘68, which brought Arthur Hiller to the screens in 1972. Don Quixote is not simply a ridiculous madman who ends up being beaten to a pulp. In fact the dialectic is never aggressive but, instead, functions in the orbit of the ‘pure spirit’ consecrated by the actor Cherkasov in the previously-mentioned Soviet adaptation. This heroic Late romantic image starts to change in the 1980s when a more realist vision of the character prevails, in relation to the tragicomic reading of the novel. The great Spanish Quixote series according to this aesthetic was produced by Emiliano Piedra for TVE in 1991, and directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón with a script (which was not used in the end) by Camilo José Cela and photography by Teo Escamilla. Comprising ive episodes, with Fernando rey and Alfredo Landa as Quixote and Sancho, the scope of the action is restricted to the irst part of the novel. The second part of the novel would see the light in 2002 with the title El caballero Don Quijote/The Knight Don Quixote, also directed by Gutiérrez Aragón. In addition to the well-known episodes, it also has the peculiarity of including, like Peter yates’ Quixote (2000), the adventure in the cave in Montesinos. In fact, the whole ilm is conceived as a voyage of initiation for Don Quixote, which demands – as in the case of Ulysses, Aeneas and Dante, the travelling heroes that preceded him – his descent into hell, like the very antechamber of death. However, in this second part, the director took great liberties with the script, also in relation to the apocryphal Quixote: instead of going to Barcelona, the adventurers head to Toledo, where Don Quixote comes face to face with his double (another symbol of self-initiation) and is defeated by him. Spain bought the rights of orson Welles’ Don Quixote, a collage by Jesús Franco premiered in 1992, which only allows us to imagine something that could have been a masterpiece. The most recent Spanish – ilmed in Catalan – cinematic attempt is Honor de cavallería/Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) (2006): a very free adaptation, presented as a simple journey into nature in which the characters hardly speak, Sancho in particular. It represents very well the current trend for environmentalism, in favour of which almost everything else in the novel is sacriiced. TVE has produced three versions of Don Quixote (1962, 1972 and 1991). But, among the amount of versions for television, the most interesting one is the Spanish-Soviet co-production (or Basque-Georgian, since it was inanced by Euskal TB with Georgian actors and script-writers), Tskhovreba Don Kikhotisa da Sancho Panchosi (1988), by rezo Chkheidze. Special mention should be given to documentaries and animated ilms. In animation, it is worth mentioning a Quijote-Garbancito (the name of a Spanish popular character for children) which dates from 1945, and is conceived in the romantic-utopian line previously commented upon, but in this case justiied as a fairy tale. It is of interest as it was Europe’s irst animated feature. There are other examples but the most noteworthy of all is the series of cartoons by Cruz Delgado, made for TVE between 1979 and 1981, released later on DVD in 2005, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the novel. The feature-length animation Donkey Xote, was directed by José Pozo in the same year, 2005, and tells the story of the knight and his squire from the novel point of view of his mount. Also for children, in 1961 Eduardo García Maroto was able to make the short ilm Aventuras de Don Quijote, with Ángel Falquina in the role of the nobleman, and Ángel Álvarez as his squire. It was envisioned as the irst episode (33 minutes) of a series of six, aimed at the children’s audience, but this was the only chapter that came to be ilmed. In terms of documentaries, as early as 1905 a short had been ilmed to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the irst part of the work, directed by Morlán, which can only

Cultural Crossover 35

Directory of World Cinema

have shown images of Alcalá and other areas along the famous route of Don Quixote. This was followed by the already mentioned ramón Biadiu’s La ruta de don Quijote (1935) and Los lugares del Quijote (1948) by the journalist Arturo Pérez Camarero. In 1961, Luciano G Egido ilmed Los caminos de Don Quijote/The ways of Don Quixote, a documentary which included music by regino Sáinz de la Maza and etchings by Picasso. The documentary by Julián de la Flor, Rutas de Don Quijote, made in 1962, imitates Biadiu’s 1935 work, even in its title, and the same can be said of Claudio Guerín Hill’s ilm (1967), although it was of better quality. The photographer and publicist ramón Masats made La Mancha de Cervantes (1968), for the TV series La víspera de nuestro tiempo/ The Eve of Our Time. of great interest also are the documentaries Andaduras de Don Quijote/Rides of Don Quixote, by César Ardavín (1977) and La Mancha alucinante/Hallucinating La Mancha (1978), by Alberto Lapeña. El secreto de don Quijote/The Secret of Don Quixote, 2005), by raúl Fernández rincón, plays with the mysteries of the Kabalah, and inally, El Quijote: Un viaje cinematográfico/Don Quixote: A cinematographic Trip (2005) by Javier rioyo, could be an excellent point upon which to draw these lines to a close. Despite, maybe, the lack of masterpieces, Spanish Quixotesque ilmography is abundant, and each example gives testimony of the time in which it was made, thus enabling us to extract a particular image of Spain’s recent history from the perspective of reception. The reading that each director makes of Quixote depicts in some way the society to which he is presenting his interpretation, or in the face of which the interpretation is being asserted.

Jorge Latorre Izquierdo and Antonio Martínez Illán [This article is part of the project The Myth of Don Quixote and the Shaping of the New Europe (HUM2007-64546), inanced by the Spanish Ministry of Sciences and Innovation (www.quijoteste.casadelest.org)]

36 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Experimental Film Week of Madrid (2010).

FESTIVAL FOCUS SEMANA DE CINE EXPERIMENTAL DE MADRID/ EXPERIMENTAL FILM WEEK OF MADRID Festival Focus 37

Directory of World Cinema

In 2010 the Experimental Film Week of Madrid celebrated its twentieth anniversary. This makes this Festival the oldest-running, uninterrupted, ilm festival in Madrid. It started as part of the ArCo International Art Fair, which included a segment on art expressions in video format. This section was named ‘Video-Arco’. In 1993 this section gained independence from ArCo and became one of the few ilm festivals in Europe dedicated exclusively to experimental cinema. The promoters of this initiative are, irst, the ilmmaker José Luis Borau, director, producer and writer. Between 1994 and 1995 he was President of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in Spain and is presently President of SGAE and the Borau Foundation, dedicated to the promotion of new ilm-makers. He is also Fellow of the royal Academy of the noble and Fine Arts of San Luis and the royal Academy of San Fernando, and was named, in March 2008, Academic of the Spanish Film Academy. The other great promoter of the Experimental Film Week is natasha Molina. Molina was the creator of the Video-Arco initiative and assumed the responsibility of Executive Director when this programme was transformed into an independent ilm festival. The ilm-maker’s constant pursuit of innovation presents both issues and valid aspirations from which Madrid’s Experimental Film Week feeds: a different and necessary cultural event; a festival with a small budget aimed at collecting proposals and innovative works in the world of cinema; a collection of works, very different in origin, that offers daring technical treatments or the results of overlowing imaginations. There have been 20 years of discoveries and trials, with various degrees of success, with the intention of widening horizons and, at the same time, reclaiming the authors and views of those who once set their efforts in renovating ilm-making. Since its beginnings, Madrid’ Experimental Film week has been an independent festival inanced by the support of various public institutions and private sponsors. It has served as a showcase for many innovative directors. Throughout its 19 previous festivals we have been able to see the works of Spanish directors such as Álvaro del Amo, Adolfo Arrieta, José Val del omar, Javier Aguirre, Ivan zulueta, Fernando Arrabal, as well as the works of internationally-acclaimed directors such as Andy Warhol, Ulrike ottinger, Gérand Courant, Martin Arnold or, more recently, Lisandro Alonso or Dusan Hanák. Since its conception, the Festival has tried to act as a showcase for all of those who take risk as the starting point in their work. Experimental ilm is characterized by trying to go beyond the established in ilm language, be it from a formal point of view, or in its content. The risk that experimental ilm directors take creates new ways and perspectives in ilm-making. This risk can remain an individual perspective, or be adopted with time as a common form; but in both cases it will be a growing process for cinema. The Festival’s main focus since its conception has always been on the works selected for competition in the oficial section. These works compete for the awards given each year by an international jury composed of leading personalities from the ilm industry. Throughout the years there has been an important evolution in the number and economic value of the prices. At present, the selected works opt to the following prizes: 1st Prize, presented by the Comunidad de Madrid, to the Best Film, 9,000€. 2nd Prize, Special Prize of the Jury, presented by the Madrid City Hall, 6,000€. 3rd Prize ICAA, to the best director of a ilm produced by a ilm academy, 3,000€. 4th Prize Telson to the best Spanish ilm with the best audiovisual effects. Postproduction service to the value of 3,000€. 5th Prize AEC – Spanish Association of Cinematographic Photo Authors. 6th Prize ‘Pablo del Amo’ to the best editing. 7th Prize voted by the audience.

38 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

But the evolution of the Festival is characterized not only by the number and value of the awards but also by the content of its sections and retrospectives, and by the development of the audience. A Festival of this kind requires a faithful public who can value the essence of what directors/investigators would like to contribute to the world of cinema, an audience who knows that this value lies not so much in the inal result, but often in the path taken to get there. In a world where audience attraction is essential for the survival of a Festival, initiatives such as these are impossible to maintain without a considerable number of spectators to justify the efforts and costs that organizing such an event imply. The volume of spectators is even more remarkable if we take into consideration that Madrid’s Experimental Film Week is organized on a small budget. An average of 25,000 spectators are attracted each year to the Festival, which takes place during the last week in november; a considerable audience which continues to grow and is the reason behind the increase in the number of cinemas hosting the event each year. The 2010 Festival had a total of eight hosts comprising commercial cinemas, museums, universities and cultural institutions. This constant evolution is the reason behind the widening of the Festival’s limits beyond purely experimental works. Today, the only strictly experimental section is the Section in Competition, consisting of an average of 50 international short ilms selected from over 600 that are received annually from across the globe and that aspire to be selected for competition. This section shows, year after year, the newest and most adventurous works in ilm language. The other large section of the programme is dedicated to the Guest Country. Each year a different country selects 15 of its feature ilms to be shown in the Festival, providing an insight into the country and its cinema. This section usually contains works by well-known directors as well as works of younger ilm-makers who are starting to be recognized in their country. As an example, for 2010 the Festival chose Afghanistan and exhibited, for the irst time in Spain, some of the ilms that were saved from destruction by the Taliban, thanks to a heroic ilm-makers’ group. The rest of the Festival is composed of independent ilm series and retrospectives, not necessarily experimental but always courageous and innovative in their approach to ilm language. Good proof of this is the retrospective organized in 2009 around the works of the Argentinean Lisandro Alonso, a ilm-maker who, with only 4 feature ilms as director, has become one of the most acclaimed independent directors and one of the selected few who has released all of his works at the Cannes Film Festival. As part of Madrid’s Experimental Film Week, the organization also releases a book each year based around the works of one of the directors whose retrospective is exhibited, or around the cinematography of the invited country. An exhibition of photographs themed around the guest-country’s cinema is also presented every year at the Festival’s main venue. To conclude, Madrid’s Experimental Film week is the only festival in Spain with an experimental section in competition and one of the few in Europe that encompasses experimental and independent cinema.

Luis Miguel Rodríguez

Festival Focus 39

Directory of World Cinema

Carmen Maura in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, El Deseo / Marcusa Cores.

FILM LOCATION MADRID

40 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

When tourists arrive in new york or Los Angeles for the irst time, they usually experience a strange feeling. They feel puzzled and even if they know the answer, they still ask themselves: have I been here before? When have I visited ny or LA? They know the answer: ilms and TV series have ilmed them so many times that it is easy to feel that one has walked their streets. American cinema has transformed these cities into ideal cities. This does not happen with the city of Madrid. Tourists who arrive in Madrid, even those who might have a passion for Spanish cinema, will never feel they have been there or lived there before. At most, a cinephile might remember some ilm or other while walking up Gran Vía, or a character in a neville ilm, or an Azcona dialogue or one of Almodóvar’s transvestites. Madrid is not an ideal city when it comes to cinema, not in the way new york is, or Los Angeles, or San Francisco, not even in the way Paris or rome might be. However, it is true that Madrid is the most depicted, ilmed and studied city within Spanish cinema. Its streets have always been full of characters and stories. From the cinema of the Spanish republic up to that of more recent times, the capital of Spain has been the most representative image of Spanish cinema. This is not because Madrid is the most beautiful, industrial or attractive city in Spain. on the contrary, it does not possess the beauty of Granada or Barcelona; it is not as charming or popular as Seville or Cadiz, not even as historical as Toledo or Valladolid or as industrial as Bilbao or Valencia. However, unlike all of these, Madrid has two clear advantages: it is, on the one hand, the most cosmopolitan of these cities and, on the other, it is the seat of the Spanish government. Madrid is the most cosmopolitan and open city in Spain. Anybody who arrives in Madrid becomes ‘Madrileño’ just by the simple fact of wishing it. Thus, many ilms from the ifties and the sixties showed ‘inexperienced’ Spaniards that went to Madrid and became great Madrileans and citizens. This is the case, for instance, of Recluta con niño (Recruit with Child) (Pedro Luis ramírez, 1955) or La ciudad no es para mí (The City is Not For Me) (Pedro Lazaga, 1965). Also, that which is purely Madrilean, authentic, farcical, is, without a doubt, also open, tolerant and welcoming. Anything can happen in a city like that. nevertheless, the main reason is, undoubtedly, the dependence of Spanish cinema on politics. no industry amongst the ilm industries of the democratic world depends so much on governments and the ruling classes as the Spanish one. Politicians, general managers, MPs and even Spanish TV chief executives have determined the history of Spanish cinema in such a way that whole historical periods or laws are known by the name of a politician – like the García-Escudero period or the Miró law. This is why it is not strange that Spanish cinema made the capital of Spain its centre: Madrid was the place closest to politicians. However, Madrid was not always the most important and depicted city of Spanish cinema. During the irst years of the twentieth century, when Spanish cinema was slowly emerging, Valencia and Barcelona were its two great cities. The irst Spanish cinema entrepreneurs were from Catalonia and Valencia and, by being much closer to Europe and the industrial culture, they understood before anyone else that cinema was both an industry and a business. Spanish silent cinema is, above everything else, a cinema of folklore removed to a great extent from the city Madrid. one of the irst ilms to present the city in a complex way is La aldea maldita/The Cursed Village by Florián rey in 1930. This silent feature ilm tells the story of a group of peasants who, after suffering the hardships of life in the village, decide to travel to the big city in order to survive. Madrid, however, will not be the place for them either. Spanish sound cinema transformed the view of the city. not so much because sound ilms by Florián rey, Luis Marquina or the irst comedies by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia

Film Location 41

Directory of World Cinema

portrayed the city wisely but because Gran Vía became the great axis of cinematographic shows. From the time of the republic until the irst years of the twenty-irst century, Gran Vía has been the main street and the showcase for Spanish cinema and foreign cinema shown in Spain. Films that succeed in any of the screens on this street will invariably be a success in the rest of the country. During the Spanish Civil War, Madrid was transformed into one of the symbols of the republican resistance. The cry ‘they shall not pass’ was repeated by all antifascists in the world. Thus, during this period, a great number of republican documentary ilms about the defence of the city appear, the best amongst them being Mourir à Madrid/To Die in Madrid (1961) by Frédéric rossif. once the Civil War was over, Franco’s regime tried to create a ilm industry. The dictator dreamt of creating a cinema as magniicent as the German or the Italian one and, with this in mind, a small Madrid ilm industry was encouraged and supported. Undoubtedly, the funding depended on the director being loyal to the regime and, therefore, a irm control and censorship on ilms was established. one way to avoid censorship was to turn to those elements which were more farcical, popular, and typical of Madrid. Thus, Edgar neville, who had fought for Franco’s army, uses the city of Madrid as a magical, endearing and social universe. Almost all his ilms are located and set in the city, which becomes an essential element in many of them. In La torre de los siete jorobados/Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1943), the protagonist uncovers a terrible conspiracy that a group of hunchbacks are preparing to hide down in the sewers; La vida en un hilo (Life on a Thread) (1945) narrates the story of a young widow who travels to the capital and whose life could have been different if she had fallen in love with a young artist from Madrid. Domingo de Carnaval (Carnival Sunday) (1945) and El crimen de la calle Bordadores (The Embroiderers’ Street Crime) (1946) speak about Spanish customs and traditions, the black press and typical Castilian society. However, without a doubt, neville’s most perfect tribute to Madrid is El último caballo/ The Last Horse (1950). The ilm narrates the adventures of the ‘last horse’ in the city. Its protagonist is a young man just discharged from the cavalry military service who wanders around the streets without knowing what do with his horse. neville, who was aware of the importance of advertising, lost no time in promoting his ilm as the irst Spanish neorealist ilm. The truth is his that work is not neorealist and only invokes that movement in that it was ilmed on natural locations. At the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s a number of ilms emerge which are inspired by a return to realism. Several fascinating ilms appear under the inluence of the popularity experienced by neorealism, poetic French realism and American ilm noir. An example of this is Surcos/Furrows (1951), directed by José Antonio nieves Conde. Here, we once again watch the arrival of a group of peasants in Madrid; in this case, however, the director is not so accommodating and presents the city as a dangerous and corrupting place. The family of peasants is completely desperate and Madrid is not only unwelcoming but is for them a fatal trap. Also under the inluence of realism, we ind the irst ilm directed by Luis García Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem: Esa pareja feliz/That Happy Couple (1951). This ilm shows the life of a young couple from Madrid who win a radio contest and who will be, for one day, ‘the city happy couple’. However, the directors do not make a romantic comedy but a scathing critique of society and a poverty-striken Spain. years later, Juan Antonio Bardem ilmed one of his greatest ilms, Muerte de un ciclista/Death of a Cyclist (1955), which portrays Madrid as a grey, melancholic and dismal place. A completely different vision is that of the well-meaning, humorous and nostalgic popular cinema of the 1950s and the 1960s, where the city of Madrid is pleasant, approachable and attractive. In these ilms, the protagonists meet with the affection of the people of the city. Madrileans are so welcoming that, even if they are pickpockets or criminals,

42 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

they repent and show themselves as generous people. This happens, for instance, in one of the chapters of Historias de la radio/Radio Stories (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1955) or in the 1960s’ funny rascal comedies such as Los tramposos (Pedro Lazaga, 1962) and Atraco a las tres/Robbery at 3 O’clock (José María Forqué, 1962). But if there is one ilm that clearly shows the sweet vision that Franco’s regime wanted to give of the city, it would be, without a doubt, Las chicas de la Cruz Roja/Red Cross Girls (rafael J Salvia, 1958) where all the elements of the farcical and the authentic are present, from the ‘chulapa’ to the ‘chulapo’, the statue of the goddess Cybele, the Prado, real Madrid football team, Gran Vía… Everything in this musical praises the joy of the ‘modern’ Madrid of the ifties. nevertheless, while this happy vision of the city was being reinforced, rafael Azcona, one of the scriptwriters who would portray the city more harshly, was getting ready. Three of his irst scripts are essential ilms about the city of Madrid: El pisito/The Little Apartment (Marco Ferreri, 1958), El cochecito/The Little Coach (Marco Ferreri, 1960) and El Verdugo/ The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1962). All three ilms examine the social reality in such a thorough and detailed way that they end up distorting it, exaggerating it. Thus, in The Little Apartment a young man who is desperate to ind a house to live in with his girlfriend ends up marrying an old lady with the intention of awaiting her death and inheriting her rented lat. In The Little Coach an old, paralytic man dreams of buying a wheelchair so that he can go for walks, and, in The Executioner, the one with the darkest humour, a young man becomes an executioner so as not to lose his subsidized house. Censorship made sure that this vision of Spain was as little critical as possible, and in the censorship archives one can still ind advice and comments on these ilms given by readers. They recommended removing or cutting out sequences and they even banned projects and inished works. Another director who will encounter the problems of censorship is Carlos Saura. His irst ilm, Los golfos/The Delinquents (1959) is one of the most heartrending ilms about poverty and misery in the streets of the capital of Spain. Filmed in the suburbs and with the appearance of a documentary ilm, it is one of the most forgotten works of Spanish cinema. It would not be until the arrival of democracy that Carlos Saura would ilm another masterpiece on the life of criminals in the outlying areas of the city: Deprisa, deprisa/Fast, Fast (1980). The arrival of the Transition and the establishment of democracy coincide with one of the moments of greater cultural and social activity in the capital of Spain. Madrid is transformed into a free place where young people give up their ight for a democracy that has already been attained in favour of partying, drugs, music and art. This is the so-called ‘La Movida’. Very close to this social scene is the appearance of the new Madrilean comedy. This new cinema is based on a reinvention of some of the most authentic and popular elements. now, the protagonists are not ‘chulapos’ or ‘organilleros’ but young university students, musicians or artists. Among these, are ilms by Fernando Colomo and Fernando Trueba. The former is responsible for Tigres de papel/Paper Tigers (1977) and ¿Qué hace una chica como tú en un lugar como éste?/What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1978); the latter, Ópera Prima (1980) and Sé infiel y no mires con quién (Be Wanton and Tread No Shame) (1985). However, the king of Spanish cinema and, especially, of the city of Madrid is Pedro Almodóvar. His vision of the world, his iconography, his characters, and his stories could not be understood without the city of Madrid. Almodóvar started to make underground cinema in the environment of ‘La Movida’. The joy and happiness brought by the transition not only provoked a freer and new, more sexual comedy but also a completely revolutionary and youthful movement. ‘La Movida’ must be understood as an opposition to the previous state of society and culture.

Film Location 43

Directory of World Cinema

The cinema of Almodóvar is very melodramatic and close to popular elements. It is an exaggeration of everything Spanish and, amongst its strategies, we ind an unbounded love for the city of Madrid: its streets, its buildings, but, above all else, its people, its youngsters, its transvestites, criminals, prostitutes, porters, etc. Starting with his irst ilms in the 1980s until his recent works, the capital of Spain has always been present, one way or another. Gran Vía, the Austrias area, but also the poor and the working–class areas have been portrayed by this director, who shows himself to be very close to the city. Almodóvar neither pretends nor tries to be realistic; what he intends to do is talk about cinema and show in his ilms a very cinematographic city. Madrid as created by Almodóvar is not real but cinematographic. And so ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?/What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984), Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1987), La flor de mi secreto/The Flower of My Secret (1995) are the construction of an ideal city, a magical city as dreamt by Almodóvar. The love for the city of Madrid has not yet been exhausted. Quite the opposite: from the end of the 1990s and during the irst years of the twenty-irst century several young directors have appeared who show their admiration for the city of Madrid. Many of the best ilms released every year are set in this city. This is the case, for instance, with Alejandro Amenábar’s irst two works: Tesis/Thesis (1996) and Abre los ojos/Open Your Eyes (1997). one of the greatest icons of the relationship between cinema and the city of Madrid is Alex de la Iglesia’s El día de la Bestia/The Day of the Beast (1995), where Madrid is the place chosen by the devil to start the Apocalypse. The buildings, the streets and its types are portrayed with incredible perfection, creating a mysterious and sinister atmosphere. The star of The Day of the Beast, Santiago Segura, became director with Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley/Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law (1998), a ilm that shows the city with sarcasm and led to two more ilms. Torrente became the maker of the most popular saga in the history of Spanish cinema. However, without a doubt, the latest great vision of the city of Madrid is that of León de Aranoa. His cinema is a return to realism; he loves to deal with the human factor and to listen to the disadvantaged. Two of his greatest ilms, Barrio (Suburb) (1998) and Princesas (Princesses) (2005), show the working-class neighbourhoods of Campamento and Carabanchel areas in the south of the city. Madrid is not the most beautiful city in Spain, nor the most industrial or most touristic, not even the most popular; however, Spanish directors and scriptwriters have chosen it and still choose it as their city. It seems natural to suppose that, for many years to come, Madrid will be the city of Spanish cinema.

Luis Deltell

44 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Edgar neville and Isabel Vigiola (script girl) in La ironía del dinero (The Money Irony). Videomercury.

DIRECTORS EDGAR NEVILLE

Directors 45

Directory of World Cinema

Edgar neville romrée, IVth Count of Berlanga de Duero (Madrid, December 28, 1899 – April 23, 1967) was, apart from being a ilm director, a celebrated writer and playwright, and also a painter. It depends, of course, like most things, a little on chance, or its benevolent face which we call luck, but, for ilm-goers who belatedly discovered the ilms of Edgar neville after his death, it was more than a surprise; it was a revelation bordering on the unbelievable. neville was the conirmation that, even under the oppressive greyness of the 1940s, the conformist 1950s, in the midst of enforced mesocracy, there wandered through the boundaries of our very depressing cinema a sort of free and blithe spirit, of a rounded and humorous appearance (that anticipated by some 20 years the igure of Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps with a bit of late orson Welles). Armed with cutting irony and plenty of ingenuity, and showing a deep, unabashed love for whatever was not oficially accepted in Spain (from romanticism to carnival or true lamenco dance & music, from fantasy to British-style comedies or detective stories), and with the authentic Spanish lavour known as ‘castizo’, the ilms were set in his hometown, Madrid, their usual setting, or, more exceptionally, in the least ‘European’ part of Barcelona, as in Nada (Nothing) (1947) and El señor Esteve (Mr Steve) (1948). Here was a man who, despite being regarded as some sort of dilettante ilm-maker by the most of the professional directors and by the critical establishment, knew how to make movies with incomparable ease, as if Chaplin and other illustrious friends, most of them American directors and writers, had ‘infected’ neville with their ‘magic touch’. of course, neville himself had started to make ilms before the talkies with the medium-length tellingly-titled Yo quiero que me lleven a Hollywood (I want to be taken to Hollywood) in 1931, after co-directing there, with Ward Wing, the ‘Spanish’ version of George Hill’s famous The Big House/El presidio (1930). The utterly unexpected joy such a discovery as neville caused was immediately threatened by a doubly-worrying fear: could we be ‘imagining’ things? Were our senses deluding us? or was it the sheer desire that there must be some Spanish movies really worth watching, even in that darkest period of our history? Was it merely an illusion stemming from our wishful thinking, that psychic phenomenon so intense and frequent but for which, curiously, there is no word in the Spanish tongue? But, when neither repeated viewings of that irst-seen neville picture nor the avid but watchful discovery of all his other preserved movies one succeeds in contemplating (and I mean contemplating, watching them without hurry, at ease, not looking distractedly nor trying to gather something from their damaged remains or from some sort of plot synopses of dubious precision) manage to dispel such an impression but, on the contrary, conirm and reinforce it, we must conclude that we are not crazy but, rather, that there was, even then, a free madman, a humorist, despite environmental indifference or hostility. Far from looking at the shooting of a picture as a routine job, ilm-making was for him a pleasure (although there is an enduring legend portraying him as someone who dozed off on his director’s seat, an image I ind dificult to match with the utter precision of his framing and camera movements). He liked it so much that he always dared to ilm whatever he wished and the way he wanted it, and never what was just considered the thing to do. Therefore, amongst so many spiritual exercises, so many dusty Imperial epics in plaster – only occasionally redeemed by a sudden burst of delirious folly – in the midst of the usual scenic rigidity there really was someone who, well hidden by the lack of interest in him and (even today) forgotten, was some sort of Chestertonian Father Brown who could measure himself against Hitchcock, Welles, Jean renoir, Jacques Becker or Chaplin, or even with Max ophuls or Ernst Lubitsch, Sacha Guitry or Gregory LaCava. Particularly during the ten years from Correo de Indias (Courier of the Indies) (1942) to Duende y misterio del flamenco (Magic and Mystery of Flamenco) (1952) neville can again be linked with other ilm-makers who came to ilm from writing or the stage, and

46 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

who, whether they wrote the screenplays they directed or not, considered that once the script was written the ilm was already made in their head. The shooting process was, therefore, for them, a mere step, sometimes a bit cumbersome and exacting, since it required having to wake up early and leave their usual meeting places or watering holes to spend most of the time waiting for the lights to be in place before actually putting the script on ilm. Therefore, and since they were usually articulate enough to convey their wishes and instructions, they could leave part of the task to the care of some assistant director or the actors, who knew their parts by heart and had attentively read the detailed instructions in the screenplay, if they had not represented the play a hundred times on the stage. This type of ‘absenteeism’ has more than a few links with others such as Jean renoir and roberto rossellini, who seemed to trust in the creative capacity of reality itself, of the actors and of the settings (whether natural locations or a studio set) and therefore were ready to accept the spontaneous (though often provoked) collaboration of chance. However, watching La vida en un hilo, Domingo de Carnaval (both 1945), El Baile (1959), Correo de Indias (1942), La Torre de los Siete Jorobados/Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1944), El crimen de la calle de Bordadores (1946), El último caballo (The Last Horse) (1950), La Ironía del Dinero (The Irony of Money) (1955; partly directed by Guy Lefranc, released in 1959), El marqués de Salamanca (The Marquis of Salamanca) (1948), Mi calle (My Street) (1960), Flamenco (aka. Duende y misterio del flamenco, 1952), El señor Esteve or Nada, and observing the precision and exactness of the camera angles and distances, of the combined movements of the players, their expression and their rhythm of speech, I feel such accounts must be hugely exaggerated. And I cannot accept as a valid explanation of this mystery a variation on the popular wisdom, according to which ‘in the country of blind men, the one-eyed man is king’, which suggested something like ‘in the country of zombies – of the living dead – the dreamer is king’, because such quality of the mise-en-scène is rare, not to say exceptional, even among the most alert Spanish ilm-makers of these decades. It should be not forgotten that what is usually understood as ‘classicism’ in, say, American cinema, with its varying degree of abstraction and stylization, with its careful narrative schemes, is almost wholly absent from Spanish cinema of most periods, and that such a style is precisely neville’s major contribution, fragile or short-lived as it may have been, to our cinema. And that, in spite of considering that the main value of nevillian cinema is not his ‘overall classicism’ but rather his ingenuity and invention, both gentle and full of irony, the luidity and lightness of touch, the credibility that he lends to the screen, to the craziest and most unbelievable plots and characters, his lirting with a certain kind of surface realism, such as Nada, is not only much less brilliant but also, as cinema, a lot plainer and lacking continuity with the ensemble of his work. This explains, I think, the blatantly superior quality of Correo de Indias, La Torre de los Siete Jorobados, La vida en un hilo, Domingo de Carnaval, El último caballo and the late El baile (The Dancing), when compared to El crimen de la calle de Bordadores, Nada, El señor Esteve, El marqués de Salamanca, Duende y misterio del flamenco, La Ironía del Dinero or Mi calle, however interesting are the ilms of this second group. To continue with the paradoxes surrounding neville, his relevance might inally reveal itself partly an illusion, as it is not impossible that his prestige has beneitted so far from the almost unlimited credit created by his best movies, some adapted from literature (Santiago rusiñol, Carmen Laforet, Emilio Carrere, Carlos Arniches, Tomás Borrás, etc.) and most adapted by him from his own earlier stage plays, which are the better known, while we still ignore the more suspect pieces in his ilmography. I do not refer exclusively to the propaganda ‘documentaries’ produced for the Departamento nacional de Cinematografía during the Spanish Civil War or immediately afterwards, the short ilms La Ciudad Universitaria (The University City), Juventudes de

Directors 47

Directory of World Cinema

España (Spanish youths) (1938), Vivan los hombres libres (Cheers to Free Men) (1939), but also to the features shot in fascist Italy with titles as ominous as Carmen fra i rossi (Carmen amongst the Reds) (1939) and Sancta Maria/La muchacha de Moscú (The Girl from Moscow) (1942, co-directed by or at least co-credited to Pier Luigi Faraldo), which reveal neville’s least attractive side: a face that sometimes surfaces leetingly even in some of his good ilms, thus entailing the risk of neville turning out as more of a mirage than a true oasis in the midst of the desert. Because it must be acknowledged that, especially in his less successful, and perhaps more autobiographical, pictures such as the last one he shot, Mi calle, there is a certain aristocratic aloofness and superiority (very ancien régime) that leaves him anchored to the nostalgic view of his adolescence’s Belle Époque. As he surrounded himself every time he could with the same protective group of collaborators – the music composer Muñoz Molleda, a couple of faithful editors and assistant directors, a few directors of photography, art directors, set dressers, costume designers and a whole informal stock company of main and supporting actors, led by his most faithful and intimate co-worker, Conchita Montes, also author of the scripts of some of his ilms – he almost never took into account what happened afterwards, which he usually found, if not a horror, a mistake, a vulgar show of bad taste, some sort of decay, or a nuisance. This reaction, which soon made him cease his praise of Francoism and which could make him seem some sort of rebel or dissident, acquires a less-endearing look, disgustingly reactionary, if one looks more closely or compares his treatment of characters he considered his ‘peers’ – the Marquis played by Jorge rigaud in Mi calle, the Marquis of Salamanca in the ilm dedicated to him, the main couple in El baile – with that given to the more ‘popular’ or working-class ones – Lina Canalejas in Mi calle – not only by the other, higher-class characters, but by neville himself as author.

Miguel Marías

48 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Fernando Fernán-Gómez in Mambrú se fue a la guerra (Mambrú Went to War). Altair Producciones

DIRECTORS FERNANDO FERNÁN-GÓMEZ Directors 49

Directory of World Cinema

Born in Lima (Peru) during a Latin American tour of the theatre company where his mother, the actress Carola Fernán-Gómez, worked, his birth is registered in Buenos Aires (Argentina). Fernando Fernán-Gómez (1921–2008) is perhaps the most vigorously national director of Spanish cinema history. This is so because, unlike almost any other director, FernánGómez experienced for himself the direct impact of (or even took part in) virtually all the ingredients that would give to some Hispanic cinema of the ifties and sixties –perhaps, ultimately, the most daring and vigorous in a formal and semantic sense, the most lucid and violent – its particular texture, its extreme, popular and virulent grotesque and comic tension, of which perfect examples are such extraordinary movies like El mundo sigue/ Life goes on (1963) or El extraño viaje/Strange Voyage (1964) that were banned by the Franco regime. Even as an actor, as soon as the occasion allowed him and relying on his deep knowledge of the Spanish theatrical tradition of the twentieth century (from comedy to melodrama, from classic theatre to the scene fantasies of Enrique rambal), he wove his characters from the post-war proletarian of Madrid; of stylized Arniches’ lineage in titles like The Last Horse (Edgar neville, 1950) or Esa pareja feliz/That Happy Couple (Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García Berlanga, 1951), he had already decided to get behind the camera, without neglecting the incentive his presence on screen could give the audience. The source of much of the stylistic means of the movies directed by Fernán-Gómez clearly can be found encapsulated, ready to emerge into his overlowing textual complexity, in a seminal sequence of the ilm That Happy Couple. Here, from the roof of the rented building they live in, the couple looks to the past (the 1940s) to tell, from a time and declarative distance as if it were a movie, the beginning of their relationship at a fair in Madrid, where, from the top of a broken Ferris wheel, they looked with hope at the dark evening of post-war Madrid. In this subtle combining of the Ferris wheel and the roof, incorporating, even, direct references to Valle Inclán’s concave mirrors and the Civil War, Bardem and Berlanga launched, albeit embryonically, a process of critical distance and tension: a route that, starting generally, but not only, from traditional material, would eventually spark off the great, bizarre and grotesque works of our best cinema of the 1960s – from The Little Coach by Marco Ferreri, in 1960, to El verdugo (The Executioner) by Berlanga in 1963, but also Strange Voyage. This was a cinema that was immediately ostracized by an administration clearly much more determined to support the ‘new Spanish cinema’ than the ilmic outbursts by Ferreri, Berlanga or Fernán-Gómez: the genuine new Spanish cinema, a modern and devastating consummation of a ilm tradition that had not ceased from growing and showing signs of aesthetic vitality (but also political, in spite of everything) from the very end of the war. From these vital and heterogeneous cultural ingredients, Fernán-Gómez’s cinema will be a unique ilm ’stew’, irregular but tasty; the result of reining the formal experimentation of ‘the telluric’ with neville’s popular and comic carelessness; his own and Galdóslike realistic and traditional will; and with the most vigorous avant-garde expressions from Gómez de la Serna as much as from Jardiel Poncela or Mihura. Thus, after two unique and original ilms (his tenuous and ironical version of the ‘historical ilm’ of the time, El mensaje (The Message), 1953, and the literary, relective and dark Manicomio (Mental Hospital), 1953), the making of El malvado Carabel (The Evil Carabel) (1955, based on Wenceslao Fernández Flórez’s novel, which would be for Fernán-Gómez one of the pillars of a traditional Spanish neorealism) is already the irst embodiment of his unique stylizing of a critical and dark ilm comedy. It was a model that, from the unequalled titles by neville after the war, but also certain ilms by José Luis Saenz de Heredia (and especially El destino se disculpa [Fate Apologizes] 1945) a movie with an increasingly historiographic scope, also based on a story by Fernández Flórez, where Fernán-Gómez played

50 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

the leading role), combined the star presence of his character – determined and courageous, sometimes misplaced but always ironic, distanced and intimately dissident – with a new and unique textual thickness, absolutely personal. Moreover, a way, both comical and sordid, traditional and desolate, of describing the Spanish society: of ofices, small employees, pensions and rents. He had in Amado Carabel the perfect character so that, for the irst time and as an already-established sample of semantic and expressive possibilities for his future ilms, he could direct and play a role in a work corresponding to his idea of a popular, even vulgar, (with a more careless internal composition of the shot than in the Hollywood comedy, but – as he said – ‘more authentic and that harmonizes better with what Spain is’) that would characterize, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the circumstances, his entire ilm work. The start of this irst process of thickness and critical distance, combining the most basic lessons of Italian neorealism (which he himself had helped to introduce into Spain) with the ilm comedy so laboriously established during the forties, can be seen in his famous La vida por delante/Life ahead (1958) and La vida alrededor/Life Around Us (1959), both continuations of the formal and semantic indings of That happy couple, of a critical transformation of some romantic and insubstantial comedies successful at the time, played by himself and produced by José Luis Dibildos: Las muchachas de azul/ The Girls in Blue (Pedro Lazaga, 1956) and Viaje de novios/Honeymoon (León Klimovsky, 1956). In Life ahead and Life Around Us, he captures Spanish daily life in a colourful frieze of situations led by the young couple Fernán-Gómez and Analía Gadé which show authentic glimpses of the scarcity, the meanness and the general mess of the time. It is developed in a story with loops of more and more complex narrative temporality, through the protagonist’s comments to the viewer, breaking the diegesis over and over again, in order to talk (to us) of his situation, past and present, while his wife sleeps peacefully. Some deconstructed and tense comedies (which, despite the apparent comical and traditional lightness, draw on distressing situations close to those experienced by the middle-class audience he addresses), the blackness and the incipient ferocity of that relexive and increasingly sharp look (Jardiel Poncela is one of its indisputable literary references) will achieve their maximum expression (along with the brutal climax that was, in 1976, ¡Bruja, más que bruja!), with two masterpieces in the 1960s: Life Goes On (1963) and Strange Voyage (1964). In the irst one, based on the novel by Juan Antonio de zunzunegui, published in november 1960, it could said that the couple Eloísa and Faustino inherit the unfortunate daily life of That Happy Couple from a decade before. But now Fernán-Gómez relates the facts with an unprecedented tension, combining his extremely authoritarian position with a virulent and sharp documentary intent, with abrupt, surprising and commonly realistic detours that break the line of the diegesis without fear of the confusing and potential effects on the conventional viewer. The use of the zoom – a stylistic igure of the ilm , for example, notes how the original realistic universe (or naturalistic according to author JA de zunzunegui, if you prefer) is but a simple platform on which to set an incendiary and devastating speech, built through a tense focus that now refuses (most of) the comical and Jardiel Poncela-like components (‘the angle of humour’), demonstrating how serial and realistic (melo)drama registers are useful for extracting, using critical distance; the rot sometimes (but only sometimes) hidden under certain traditional Spanish conventions. But this devastating portrait of a Spanish society still immersed in a long and dismal post-war, and the consequent and absolute lack of identifying basis that follows, and which the director himself recognized as one of the causes of the ‘failure’ of the ilm – the absence of any character with which to identify – is formally motivated (how could it be otherwise) by the work of the director Fernando Fernán-Gómez, by the choice, use and assembly of the elements of his palette, his ability to look and shape

Directors 51

Directory of World Cinema

his brutal and melancholy material in order to make it something different: an experience, strong and painful to the eye, within the conines of the grotesque. Indeed, on the one hand, if almost all the ilms by Fernán-Gómez present, as he said, ‘a mixture of very quickly edited sequences and very short shots, and then many sequence-shot attempts’, Life goes on seems to start, as any other of his ilms, from a desperate and pressing conception of the sequence shot. This seems to tend toward the denial of the off-camera and to choose a continuous, overwhelming and increasingly-chaotic story of the collective selishness, of wasted energy, of frustration and violence; a conception, however, attacked here again and again with the strange precision of a sharp knife blade randomly on the bloody and raw chosen point. This ‘cut’ takes ilm shape in the unexpected and violent irruption, like vomit, of virulent zooms, creating tone and narrative ruptures, redundant cuts or unprecedented ‘over-edited’ fragments of extraordinary formal and semantic complexity – like the lost Luisita’s famous homecoming which is able to link desires and memories of a lost and post-war childhood. no less important is to point out how, despite the constant movement of the camera (particularly striking inside the attic and the basement where the families live), it will always try to start or stop its motion on frames that radically reject the frontal, seeking oblique compositions, and are often chopped, multiplying the foreshortening, the diagonals and parallelograms, creating a tension in the spectatorial eye, of singular effectiveness. With no comic respite, the suffocating Life goes on represents the particular and desolate Spanish view of Fernando Fernán-Gómez: tense, distant and even cruelly ironic (at the beginning, the camera, documentary fashion, pans a popular neighbourhood of Madrid until, merciless, it catches its irst female character through a violent, relentless zoom), which is the highest point, historically and literally, of an exemplary ilmography. His great, lucid mature works, like Mambrú se fue a la Guerra/Mambrú Went to War) (1986) and El viaje a ninguna parte/Voyage to Nowhere (1986), came at a time when the author’s reputation as an intellectual (actor, playwright, novelist, famous talk show host on TVE and newspaper columnist) was consolidated in Spain after the arrival of the PSoE government in 1982. An only apparently-less virulent Fernán-Gómez, far from conforming to the academic and prestigious literary work supported by the State, he insisted on bringing his corrosive view of the past (just as in the extraordinary success, Las bicicletas son para el verano/Bicycles Are for the Summer, released in 1982, written by him and directed by Jaime Chávarri) and the present. Mambrú se fue a la guerra, for example, relects, with an old master’s lucidity and based on another script by Pedro Beltrán, on the concealment of the republican heritage – a subject rejected by the (alleged) general interests of the Democratic Transition – emphasizing with angry and critical eyes a Spain as cruel and distorted as the one drawn 20 years before in Strange Voyage, but with the politically incorrect view by which the moral decay of a ‘leftist’ family is now made to look absurdly ridiculous.

José Luis Castro de Paz

52 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Carlos Saura in El Dorado. Iberoamericana.

DIRECTORS CARLOS SAURA Directors 53

Directory of World Cinema

Saura’s career is one of the longest and most exciting in contemporary Spanish cinema. It represents a run of more than ifty years, and a ilmography that approaches 40 ilms. His work starts in the Franco regime, through to the periods of Transition and Democracy. The variety of his work has allowed him to cover genres as diverse as neorealism, the historical ilm, social ilms and musicals. Moreover, we can also speak of a certain misapprehension when assessing his work as ilm director in Spain, since he has not achieved the recognition his work deserves. one of his great qualities is to have known, as did Luis Buñuel, how to adapt himself to the economic circumstances over the years in order to continue his career. Artistic and social concerns are already evident in his irst three shorts – El pequeño río Manzanares (The Little River Manzares, 1956), La tarde del Domingo (Sunday Afternoon, 1957), Cuenca (1958) – that mark a new trend a Spanish cinema not used to social considerations. Cuenca, in particular, is a splendid colour documentary devoted to the rural world. El pequeño río Manzanares can be seen as an allusion to the current social novel exempliied in El Jarama (rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, 1955), which had just been published. In fact, the irst steps for Saura led him toward neorealism. This fundamental power in the history of cinema had had some inluence in Spain in the early 1950s, but the Franco regime tried to prevent its development. However, at the end of that decade, we see a re-emerging of social concerns that corresponded to the renewal of Italian neorealism with Rocco ei suoi frattelli/ Rocco and His Brothers in the work of Fernando Fernán-Gómez and Marco Ferreri (director of Los chicos, 1959), and, of course, the early career of Saura with Los golfos/The Delinquents (1959). This pioneering work, a logical continuation of his short ilms, would mark a new path for the Spanish panorama of black-and-white ilm of that period when colour had become the norm. The potential impact of the ilm could be indicated by the fact that the censors banned the original script four times. The Delinquents could be considered as a chronicle of the failure of four young people who seek to help one of their number, Juan, to realize his dream: to be a bullighter. Fussy censorship managed to remove the phrase ‘aquí es difícil llegar a ser alguien’ (‘it is dificult here to be someone’) which could be interpreted as being critical of the regime. These ‘golfos’ (‘street kids’) feel the weight on their shoulders of their inescapable fate; as if everything was already written in advance. While it may evoke in some respects Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados and we can perceive Visconti’s reminiscences, the inluence of the realist novel is undeniable. Despite being an artistic success, The Delinquents was an economic and political failure, and Saura’s irst feature ilm marked the end of what could have been a new path for Spanish cinema. It still remained too sensitive to talk about the reality of that Spain. This brutal break stalled the work of the director and he had to wait almost four years to ilm again. In fact Llanto por un bandido/Lament for a Bandit (1964) marks his irst attempt to escape from Spanish reality through a story set in the irst half of the nineteenth century. It was for the director to reinstate the igure of the bandit José María ‘El Tempranillo’ who, when in contact with a fugitive liberal, Pedro Sanchez, acquires a certain political consciousness and chooses the Constitutionalists. Behind this historical ilm comes a discourse on the need for ideological commitment which, in Spain, was a courageous stand. However, Llanto por un bandido, which in some ways followed the path of Visconti’s ilms, again had to suffer the onslaught of censorship and many cuts, the most emblematic of which was at the beginning of the ilm, when the executioner, ironically played by Luis Buñuel, was preparing to execute the condemned a garrote vil (by garrotting). As much as Saura tried, this new path was again closed and, in this case, with the complicity of the criticism that failed to support Llanto por un bandido. Third time, we could say, lucky. Frustrated attempts led the director to the ield of the parable and metaphor. With La caza/The Hunt (1965), considered by many critics as his best ilm, Saura organizes a story around a rabbit hunt that brings together four friends in a Castilian wasteland. Censorship, in this case was absurd as, for some alleged

54 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

erotic allusions, the original title ‘La caza del conejo’ (‘rabbit Hunt’) was changed for The Hunt. This work is well above the average Spanish production of the irst years of the 1960s. Throughout the story, the tensions between the four friends become increasingly obvious until they inally kill each other. The violence of the story is captured by the exceptional photography of Luis Cuadrado. As in the previous ilm, but with much more surety, Saura constructs a metaphor for his country that reveals, behind this, other, earlier, examples from Franco’s military uprising. Sufice it to recall that one of the protagonists, Paco, was played by Alfredo Mayo, the quintessential Francoist actor. La caza has become over time a classic of Spanish cinema. These irst three works saw the emergence of one of the best Spanish directors, who places his work within a political context. However, there is a very marked shift in what is sometimes referred to as his trilogy of the couple: Peppermint frappé (1967), Stress es tres, tres/Stress Is Three (1968) y La Madriguera/Honeycomb (1969). While the political dimension does not disappear entirely, the trilogy uses new forms of narrative, much in the vein of the new cinemas of the 1960s. All three ilms (with the female character played Geraldine Chaplin, his partner at the time), using closed universes, try to analyse the forms of desire and stress suffered by different couples from the Spanish bourgeoisie. So far, despite some appearances at Cannes, Saura’s career was rather marginal and virtually unknown outside Spain. With the 1970s came critical international recognition and he became one of the opponents from within, scarred by the Franco regime. The next three ilms offered a new vision, where the conservative family unit, one of the appropriations of the totalitarian regime, is attacked. Through metaphors, often obvious, Saura began a campaign against power and the institutions. The main character of El Jardín de las Delicias/The Garden of Delights (1970), the millionaire Antonio Carro, masterfully played by José Luis López Vázquez, has lost his memory and, with this, the key to the Swiss bank where he keeps his fortune. Attempts, in vain, by the family to recover it offer a vision of crushing capitalism. In an even more transparent way, Ana y los lobos/ Anna and the Wolves (1972) directly attacks the army and the church and the Spanish bourgeoisie. The clean-shot execution of Ana at the end of the ilm is also the death of a new Spain. With La prima Angélica/Cousin Angelica (1973), Saura goes beyond his two previous works in a game about memory and history, in which the moments of high drama, such as the plastered arm in a fascist salute, unleashed the wrath of right-wing extremists, who sought to prevent the screening of the ilm. With these three ilms (one of which, Cousin Angelica, received the Special Jury Prize at Cannes), Saura became one of the most respected international directors. Cría cuervos/Cria! (1975) is an essential work in the history of Saura’s cinema. on the one hand, it had the highest public success at that time and, secondly, it is one of the few ilms that indicate the changes that were taking place in Spain. Although the director kept playing with the times, Cria! is a more approachable work in which we see disappearing those embodying the past – the military, the mother, etc. – to leave space for the children, the bearers of the future. This transitional work – and perhaps of the Transition – marks a shift in the artistic creation of Saura. While it is true that some later work will continue on the path of these recent ilms, Elisa vida mía (1977), a masterpiece, and Dulces horas/Doux moments du passé (1981), the director left his metaphorical and allusive ilms to redirect his ilmography to the ‘quinquis’ (‘gangs’) movies, musicals and biopics. He had already partly addressed the subject of criminals in Los golfos but, from the 1980s, crime becomes a social fact that the cinema will shape repeatedly. Deprisa, Deprisa/Fast, Fast (1981) is a ‘musical tragedy’ in which real marginals are involved, as the director, adopting a posture of detachment, sometimes shoots his robberies like a documentary. ¡Dispara!/Outrage (1993) and Taxi (1996) completed a kind of trilogy in which the political commitment is evident, particularly in the last, bitter attack against the Spanish right wing that continues to survive after 20 years of democracy.

Directors 55

Directory of World Cinema

But musicals form the majority of his work from the Transition to Democracy, and ten movies are dedicated to the world of dance and music. The most emblematic, as the irst and one of the best, is Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding) (1980), from the ballet created by Antonio Gades, freely inspired by the work of Federico García Lorca. At irst it is almost a documentary in which Saura ilms the ballet rehearsals before its ilming of the performance. This makes Bodas de sangre not a simple transposition but really a reinvention for the camera of the most intense work of Gades, as with the duel between the two protagonists, during which the empathic camera follows each step of the mortal ight. Collaboration with Antonio Gades produced two ilms, Carmen (1983) and El Amor brujo/ Carlos Saura Dance Trilogy, Part 3: El Amor Brujo (1986). In the irst, the director is mixing the two levels of representation, the characters of the plot and the dancers of the French opera, thus returning to games already present in his work. This trilogy is his irst step into the world of music and is inspired by existing works but, with the diptych Sevillanas (1991) and Flamenco (1995), Saura removed, in a sense, the musical story, and dedicates himself to capture different flamenco dances, with an almost absolute sobriety in the irst ilm, and with virtuoso lighting by Italian Vittorio Storaro in the second. The director’s last musical works tend are diverse from a musical and geographical standpoint: Tango (Tango, 1998), Fado (Fado, 2007) and, again, the lamenco in his latest ilm, Flamenco, Flamenco (2010). These ilms range from a form of absolute respect for the represented art to more personal implications, such as the question of Dictatorship, with Tango’s questioning of the military assassinations in Argentina. Finally three works of classical inspiration, Salome (2002), Iberia (2005) and Io, Don Giovanni (2009) complete the artist’s palette. not everything can be reduced to a few genres in the work of Saura: from 1975 he made a few very different ilms that show not only his immense technical qualities but also a taste for diversiication that has not always been valued properly because it lies outside commonplace creative lines. Perhaps the most signiicant, and one of his biggest hits, Ay, Carmela! (1990), is a brilliant adaptation of the work of Sanchis Sinisterra, which describes the route, during the Civil War, of the ‘cómicos de la legua’ (‘travelling actors’) who end up facing fascism – the titular character Carmela paying with his own life. In addition to the impeccable direction of actors – Carmen Maura was breaking with Almodóvar, and Andrés Pajares leeing from more popular products – Saura’s Ay, Carmela! is a return to the subject of the Civil War which had never been represented head on and which he had just spoken of in his book Esa luz (That Light) (2000). A few ilms can be considered as biopics: Antonieta (1982), about the igure of the great feminist Antonieta rivas Mercado; El Dorado (1987), describing the epic of Lope de Aguirre; La noche oscura/La nuit obscure (1989), on the life of San Juan de la Cruz; or, in some ways debatable, Buñuel y la mesa del Rey Salomón/Bunuel and King Solomon’s Table (2001). The best ilm in this category is surely Goya en Burdeos/Goya in Bordeaux (1999) with the imposing presence of a Paco rabal absolutely steeped in a tailor-made role. Saura’s passion for the Aragonese genius is transparent throughout the ilm, with Storaro’s splendid lighting and with continuous games on memory, time and neglect, where the mobile sets, already used in other movies, show extraordinary lexibility, and facilitate the transition from one era to another. Saura is a ilm-maker who has always managed to adapt to situations, not only political but also economic, and so are born ilms as diverse as Los zancos/The Stilts (1984); an uninspired adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges El sur (1991); the oficial ilm of the olympic Games in Barcelona, Maratón/Marathon (1992), conceived as a musical; or El Séptimo día/The Seventh Day (2004) recreating the settling of a tragic score. over more than half a century, Saura has built a diverse but always demanding oeuvre, always with political compromises which had to be deined ideologically. His ilmography is one of the most exciting in Spanish cinema and he is without doubt one of the most important igures of Spanish culture.

Jean-Claude Seguin 56 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Víctor Erice in Dream of Light, rosebud.

DIRECTORS VÍCTOR ERICE

Directors 57

Directory of World Cinema

Despite his scant output, Víctor Erice (b.1940) is one of the most widely-recognized Spanish directors on the international stage. A cult author, slow and obsessive in his themes, jealously guarding his artistic sovereignty, he makes cinema which seems to challenge the laws of the market. Even so, his three feature ilms, El Espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), El Sur/The South (1982) and El sol del membrillo/ The Quince Tree Sun (1992) received important European awards and he also has a large group of devoted followers in Spain and abroad. He has been invited as a member of the Jury in Cannes 2010, and selected (along with Luis Buñuel, the only Spanish ilmmakers) for the project Paris-Madrid, allers-retours, directed by Alain Bergala. There is a DVD forthcoming, edited by rosebud, which includes two of Erice’s last works, the short Alumbramiento/Lifeline (2002) and the medium-length ilm La Morte Rouge (2006), which were not premiered on the Spanish commercial circuit but were shown as part of the exhibition Erice-Kiarostami, Correspondences. This event took place at MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art), La Casa Escondida of Madrid and the Pompidou Centre in Paris, from 2006 to 2008, and received hundreds of thousands of visitors. It would seem that Erice’s ilms are more appropriate for screening in a museum than for distribution through the current industry channels as a show with mass appeal. With the exception of The Quince Tree Sun, which is considered in the documentary mode and determined by the life and work of the painter Antonio López, Erice’s ilms relect his generation’s experience of childhood in post-war Spain. And this is emphasized not only in his great ilms The Spirit of the Beehive or The South, but also in all of his other works, from the irst of his surviving shorts, Páginas de un diario perdido (1962) up to the most recent of them, Lifeline (2002) or La Morte Rouge (2006), where he also deals with this childhood, autobiographical material, but, in the last one, it is no longer disguised as ‘other’ iction. Erice manages to delve deep into the poetical springs of his childhood memory, working with the very subject of the ilmed reality, and integrates the accidents of ilming into the tale. This memory frequently has to do with the cinema itself, such as it was experienced by his generation of children as ‘symbolically adopted children by the cinema’. That explains why one of the great themes of Erice’s ilms is cinema itself as a window to the world, as a teacher of life, which contains as much of dreams as it does of reality. This is fundamental in The Spirit of the Beehive, in La Morte Rouge and also in El Sur, where the cinema represents the link between Agustín and his hidden past, which his daughter Estrella will have to discover by travelling to the south. Another of the great themes that Erice tackles in most of his ilms is the mystery of the origin and sense of human destiny, which is also the main subject of El Sur. The short, Lifeline, for instance, performs, under an historical disguise, a real story, which the protagonists still hold at the forefront of their minds. For this reason, Erice decided to adopt a reportage style when working, with the amateur characters not acting but playing quotidian attitudes typical of the country. At the end we are shown, in black and white, a post-natal scene in a traditional house belonging to ‘Indianos’ (Spanish emigrants to America) back in Asturias in the immediate Spanish post-war context: the same month and year in which Erice was born. This resource of mixing past and present allows Erice to deal not only with the ghost of recent Spanish history, but also to pose symbolically the great questions of universal existence, such as the past and the meaning of life, which were also implied in the same cinematographic subject that was the leitmotif of the collective work Ten Minutes Older (2002), to which this short belongs. This method is no different from what occurred in his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Beehive, unanimously considered one of Spanish cinema’s best ilms. The ilm is historicbiographical and mythical at the same time: a domestic version of the myth of Frankenstein adapted to the Spain of the immediate post-war that the director wishes to recover cinematographically. However, the narrative dimension in a poetic tone of magical child-

58 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

hood memory, so revolutionary in its time, did not obey any previous intentions on the part of the director, or of the co-scriptwriter Ángel Fernández-Santos, but was brought about by the girls, who did not distinguish between reality and iction, work and play. In fact, the characters kept their irst names because that is how Ana Torrent addressed them. And also the structure of the ilm changed completely because of Ana, despite the fact that this change, which eliminated the lashback, could have made the ilm incomprehensible for the rest of the ilm crew, including the producer Elías Querejeta. Erice did so because, in his words, he felt he had to; not for magical reasons but for strong realism, due to a true respect for the reality, which was so open that it surprised even the ilm-maker. Thus, the initial pretext of Frankenstein (the horror genre was enjoying great success in Spain at the time) was gradually transformed by the documentary imperative into a window on the great existential questions about the lack of communication in human herds; the problem of evil and death; and the mystery of creation and re-creation. Cinema, in Erice’s own words, is at the same time the cause of the wound and its cauterization. With The Spirit of the Beehive Erice tried to cauterize the wound Ana had received from the complete visualization of Whale’s ilm Frankenstein (1931), which aroused in her the big questions about death and evil in reality. And the director does that through the apparition of the monster by the river during the night scene in the forest. This was something that provoked great controversy from the premiere of the ilm and still remains polemical since it breaks the tale’s supposed verisimilitude. Erice himself said that he introduced this poetic element because he felt that Ana needed it; because he recalled the faith which she had in the monster’s appearance – as a reward for that. This testimony calls to mind the miracle of Ordet (1955) by Danish director Dreyer, whose inluence Erice acknowledges. But it also shows that the inal solution depends on the director, on his role as a Doctor Frankenstein that plays with his ictional creatures. Ana Torrent, who did not really act since she was only six years old, followed her own initiative, but behind her was Erice both guiding her and letting her lead at the same time. He did this respectfully, but in the direction which suited him, according to his own memories of childhood and experience as an artist. The documentary dimension is used not for realistic purposes but for poetical ones, in order to recover in the present the personal experience of the past. It explains why Víctor Erice usually deines his ilms as historical poems, which talk about an encrypted time: that of his childhood memories; although this memory occurs live, more like the present than the past. To sum up, in The Spirit of the Beehive, the connection between Frankenstein and his creature is not so much that which occurs between Fernando and Ana, but more like that between Erice and Ana Torrent. Let us not forget that Fernando’s watch, like Agustín’s pendulum in The South, is a symbol of authority, and appears in the title credits of The Spirit of the Beehive next to the director’s name. This watch, which passes from hand to hand and indirectly causes the death of the fugitive – in Ana’s imagination, the incarnation of the immortal spirit – does not belong to Fernando, who is so chaotic in his schedules. He who really controls the time of the narration, the rhythm of the story, the true Doctor Frankenstein of the ilm, is Víctor Erice, as it falls to him to give life to the new creatures with his work as ‘sculptor of time’, using Tarkovsky’s famous title and ideas that Erice admires. Furthermore, the child in the attic in the short ilm Lifeline could symbolize the universal ‘great watchmaker’ who governs the fates of men; but above all it has to do with Erice’s childhood memory of playing with a chronometer drawn on his wrist, and dreaming of being able to control the time – the lives – of other people. This duplicity between the child in the attic and the protagonist born in the same month and year as Erice is none other than the duplicity that exists in all artists between creator and creature, of Doctor Frankenstein and of a monster without a name. The experience evoked by Erice himself with a family that had recently undergone that same narrated incident, splits

Directors 59

Directory of World Cinema

into different characters because one cannot have memory of one’s own birth; but Erice, thanks to historical iction, can recover the memory of this child who plays in the attic at being Chronos, the god-watchmaker. The former interpretation could help in also understanding the deep meaning of The Spirit of the Beehive, a ilm which, as well as talking about a concrete time in Spanish history, deals with the ambition for unlimited knowledge (let us not forget that it is inspired by Mary Shelley’s Modern Prometheus, the origin of the Frankenstein saga), and on the consequences this knowledge by experience has for the human person. Fernando the beekeeper is, like Doctor Frankenstein, father of a creature to whom he cannot give answers about the meaning of her existence; to the great questions about evil and death that Ana raises precociously after having watched Whale’s Frankenstein. This mythical content refers above all to the book of Genesis, which is quoted indirectly in the ilm, especially in the bucolic scene in the mushroom forest. The scene ends in a dramatic manner with Fernando’s threat of death to anyone who dares to try the forbidden mushroom, which evokes God’s advice to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, pointing at the Science’s tree: ‘if you eat it, you will die’. Also in Lifeline, the idea of the fugacity of the life of the ‘mortal’ (Lifeline could refer to the thin line which separates life and death) is emphasized with some symbols taken from the Judeo-Christian tradition (the apple, the serpent, etc.) which refer to the same existential meanings on time, freedom, the generational ills and inexorable death. These great themes are a primary preoccupation of Erice himself, since they appear in his writings of the 1960s, when he worked as a critic on Nuestro Cine, and also in the more recent writings, such as the book which he published about nicholas ray in 1985, where he wrote that evil is not only a social factor but, at the same time, arises as a relection of a mythical fall and guilt: as a sort of primordial misfortune engendered by ambition, cowardice, the loss of innocence or mere ageing. The passage of time is a subject present in the Spanish tradition of the still-life paintings called Vanitas; something which Erice raises once more in The Quince Tree Sun, where in painting his quince tree, Antonio López attempts to challenge time and the leeting light of the autumnal dusk, the time of this late fruit, the twilight, which provides the ilm’s title. Particularly illustrative of the Spanish Baroque’s thematic inluence on Erice’s work is the sequence from The Spirit of the Beehive in which a coquettish Isabel is putting on her lips a bit of blood from her inger, just a few seconds before the camera shows us in detail the skull in the painting of Saint Jerome. This Baroque memento mori alludes to the ephemeral nature of this rose of youth which will wither in time. In addition, like the baby’s cord bleeding onto a white cloth in Lifeline, blood spilt from Isabel’s inger symbolizes the sexual-procreative dimension of the human being. Both life and death, future and past are merged paradoxically in scenes such as these. Symbols can be paradoxical, especially in the Spanish Baroque tradition in which Erice inds inspiration: a realistic tradition which, despite its obsession with the death and the passage of time, usually concludes in relections of existential hope, or at least with an open ending. In Lifeline, despite the inexorable passage of time, of the advance of the scythe and the growing expanse of the blood stain, the child is saved by ‘chance’. The cat, which on entering the room seems to foretell death itself, is the saviour chosen by fate to rock the cradle and provoke the crying which makes it possible to heal him in time. ‘Agora no’ (‘not now’ in old Spanish) says the Asturian folk song at the end; all in its own time. The endings of The South and The Promise of Shanghai (a ilm meant to be based on Juan Marse’s famous novel El Embrujo de Shanghai, whose script was published in 2002) would have also been open, had the irst been inished and second actually made. And the ending of The Spirit of the Beehive can also be described as open, since Ana is an independent creature who determines the outcome of the story and, at

60 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

the same time, a creature guided by his creator, the real Víctor Frankenstein of the story, Víctor Erice. Five or six years, the same as Ana’s, was the age at which Erice experienced discovery of the world and its problems through the cinema, as he himself tells us, and now without disguising it in his last work, La Morte Rouge. The deeper meanings of the recent autobiographical ilm and The Spirit of the Beehive or Lifeline are not very different; everyone deals with the same concerns on the identity of the creator in dialogue with his work. The voice is Erice’s, but it is constantly switching between the irst and third person. It is extremely dificult in this type of poetic-realistic cinema, that follows the method of Pasolini’s Cinema di poesia, to establish what comes irst, reality or poetics, life or story. Erice recognizes that he does not know, as he feels that cinema is something real and unreal at the same time. He only knows that cinema allows him to recreate, as if it were the irst time, his own experiences of the past, and to extract universal symbols from these personal experiences, as the best poets do in their writing. The difference is that cinema, as Pier Paolo Pasolini used to say (and to which Erice refers frequently), is like writing on a burning page.

Jorge Latorre

Directors 61

Directory of World Cinema

Pedro Almodóvar in Broken Embraces.

DIRECTORS PEDRO ALMODÓVAR 62 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Pedro Almodóvar is, today, the most universal of Spanish ilm directors, and his production is well represented in the world, each ilm opening looked on as a true event. His varied work bears the unmistakable stamp of an auteur. In over thirty years he has created a personal stamp, supported in particular by his production company El Deseo. Almodóvar was born in La Mancha in the bosom of a poor family which would not seem to destine him for the profession of cinema director. The need to live in a better environment leads him, in the 1970s, to settle in Madrid at a time when Spain is going through dificult times in its history. His interest in art, and ilm in particular, takes him to meet alternative creators and to begin ilming a series of ilms on Super-8 or 16 mm, in the context of the underground comic, Rrollo, the irst Movida. From this point, the director combines humour with an unmistakably-daring narrative. Then comes Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón/Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1979-1980), a ilm not only essential for understanding the personal world of Pedro Almodóvar, but also to get to know the aesthetic changes that are occurring. The inluence of the new york underground is obvious, with Pepi, Luci, Bom... a sort of homespun Pink Flamingos (Waters, 1972). The thought-provoking commercials, special erotic games, chaotic script, disastrous sound, etc., undoubtedly mark this irst work, where his own technical failures contribute admirably to the alternative project. Pedro Almodóvar, with his next ilm, falls squarely within the Madrid cultural movement La Movida. It is dificult to understand a work like Laberinto de pasiones/Labyrinth of Passion (1982) and, to some extent, Entre tinieblas/Dark Habits (1983) if not considered in relation to the new creative situation that Spain, and especially Madrid, is going through at that time. The irst ilm is something of a compendium which involved, in one form or another, many artists of La Movida: Fanny Macnamara, ‘Las Costus’, Pablo Pérez Mínguez, ouka Lele, etc. The coral-like work has an overly-complicated script but this opening of narrative roads without closing them, shown in Labyrinth of Passion, forms the matrix for Almodóvar’s later productions. With Dark Habits, a better-crafted ilm, we begin to see a more assertive narrative pulse and more deined and complex characters. In the closed convent world, unlike the irst two ilms which were more open, drives and desires are intensiied (lesbianism, drug addiction, possible bestiality, etc.) in an atmosphere that relates in some way to zurbarán’s paintings. Undoubtedly, Almodóvar makes of Dark Habits a more ambitious work with new aesthetic pretensions. In the background of these ilms there is also the Almodóvar igure, one of the most popular entertainers of La Movida night in Madrid, where his happenings and songs – in an act with Fanny Macnamara – fascinated a whole generation. If it has been said that Almodóvar was the director of La Movida, it only, in fact, occupies a small part in his work. ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!!/What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) is one of his best ilms, and the most celebrated by critics since he began, not so much because of its intrinsic capacity to provoke – it is quite moderate – but because of its neorealist strength. For the irst time, Almodóvar places the action in the suburb of La Concepción, and shows an interest in social class embodied by the Gloria character, splendidly played by Carmen Maura. The characters themselves – Antonio (the taxi driver husband), Cristal (the generous prostitute), Chus (rural grandmother), the dentist pedophile, the impotent police, etc. – have great authenticity, despite the director’s, often humorous treatment. Alongside the sophisticated universe running through his ilms, What Have I Done to Deserve This? (freely inspired by Lamb to the Slaughter, 1958, an episode from ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’) offers a much darker reality, very little represented in Spanish cinema. Mixed with this realism, unusual touches arise both in the story: the lizard Dinero (‘Money’), the murdering leg of ham, zarah Leander’s songs, Almodovar’s own tribute to Miguel de Molina; and in the writing, with its ‘impossible’ points of view, as that of the lizard who witnesses the murder, or of objects, or travelling along the street to following Gloria, from inside the shop window. This universe will appear a few times in his movies, such as in Volver/To Return (2006), the movie that marked Almodóvar’s return to that society. For the promotion of the ilm, the director ilmed a short-cut for La Edad de Oro (‘Golden Age’. a TV programme), Trailer para Directors 63

Directory of World Cinema

amantes de lo prohibido (1985), which takes up some elements of the narrative of What Have I Done to Deserve This?, ilming a musical pastiche with touches of black humour. It can be considered that with this last ilm came the end of the most provocative and experimental part of his production; the works carried out hereafter mark a new artistic ambition for the director. Clearly, Matador (1986), a more conceptual ilm, offers a new aesthetic quality provided by Andrés Vicente Gómez’ production. The construction of the ilm is wholly organized towards the almost ‘announced’ double death of the protagonists. This new turn by Almodóvar was more to the liking of the public than the critics. Matador was the last production that he did not fully control himself; shortly thereafter, the director, with his brother Agustín, founded El Deseo studio, that has since allowed him to control all stages of production of their works, facilitating also the emergence of new directors like Alex de la Iglesia. With a title as evocative as La Ley del deseo/Law of Desire (1987), Pedro Almodóvar announced that from now on the ‘law’ will be imposed by El Deseo studio, in addition to it being one of the most personal ilms, and the irst to gain recognition outside Spain – particularly in the new york gay world. Constructed as an unrequited love chronicle, Law of Desire is a male ilm with well-rounded characters such as Pablo, director of erotic ilms, and Antonio – a splendid role for Antonio Banderas. For the irst time in Spanish cinema, a gay-themed ilm takes it as absolutely normal, offering, irst of all, human loveand-disappointment stories. The director does not reject powerful, controversial scenes (at the beginning of the ilm, a hustler masturbating; male love scenes) or ambiguous characters (transsexuals, etc). All this just reinforces the narrative, and Law of Desire becomes one of the strongest and most personal Almodóvar’s works. From this arises, in part, the idea of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) – a smash hit, and not only in Spain. In line with American high comedy, the director weaves a near-perfect script with a number of excellent female leads: Carmen Maura, María Barranco, Julieta Serrano, rossy de Palma and Chus Lampreave. rarely has there been such brilliant directing. Pepa’s room becomes the place where all intersect with great skill. Moreover, from an artistic point of view, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a real palette of colours, often saturated with pictorial reference (Liechtenstein, Delaunay, Warhol, Pop Art). This ilm, very remote from the concerns of La Movida, is a fully postmodern ilm that marks a new turn in the director’s career, with a double break: one with Carmen Maura – he will only work again with her on Volver – and with his favourite musician, Bernardo Bonezzi. With ¡Átame!/Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), which had absurd problems of censorship in the Berlin Film Festival and the United States, Almodóvar is still working along the lines of Women..., with chromatic games and spatial unity: everything revolves around the bed where ricki (Antonio Banderas) kidnaps Marina (Victoria Abril). We ind again the character full of drives already seen in Law of Desire. The structure of the script is a journey that ricki describes as an underground line and coincides with the obsession of the protagonist. In a way, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! can be considered as a summary of his previous career, as it picks a series of speciic themes, such as interiors and balconies and includes false advertising. However, renewal is noticeable in the casting of actresses who had seldom or never before worked with him: Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, Veronica Forqué, Cecilia roth and Penélope Cruz. The last stage of Almodovar’s professional advance is Tacones lejanos/High Heels (1991). For the irst time it is an international co-production (El Deseo and Ciby 2000) with a high budget of 500 million pesetas (about 3 million euros). Focused on the relationship between a mother and daughter – rather like Bergman’s Höstsonaten/ Autumn Sonata (1978) – the director gives one of his best roles to Marisa Paredes. All the ingredients of one of Almodovar’s favourite genres are present: the abducted girl, crossed loves, the force of passion, etc. Many scenes in the ilm are memorable gems: Becky’s performance; the choreography in the women’s prison; rebecca’s confession during the newscast, a return to a childhood room. no doubt that in the background are all the great masters of American melodrama, but with a touch of sophistication rarely as accomplished as in this work. Pedro Almodóvar’s reputation had never been so high – public success not only in Spain but abroad, particularly in France. 64 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

In about ten years, Pedro Almodóvar had mounted all the steps that have led to recognition as a major international ilm-maker. Since then, his work has further deepened, marking a pronounced form of introspection. Kika (1993), the next ilm, is less successful but very revealing of the director’s creative and artistic changes. While Madrid is still the scene of his work, Kika does not have the density of earlier works such as What Have I Done to Deserve This? In a complex scenario, the characters are less deined than in the past, mixing genders as he had seldom done before. The critique of trash-TV does not appear entirely convincing, though, with Victoria Abril little at ease in the character of Andrea Scarface. The open-ended plot with Kika needing ‘to focus’ says a lot about the director’s own doubts. Pedro Almodóvar’s introspection becomes evident in The Flower of My Secret, with the central igure of a writer, Leo, abandoned by her husband. The script shows the stages of moral and emotional decay. It is a ilm about doubt, pain, but, above all, the need to return to forgotten values in the turmoil of the city – the importance of friendship, mother, family and people – with a beautiful sequence orchestrated by Chus Lampreave. The Flower of My Secret is a ilm about the roots that must be returned to from the frantic pace of city life: a kind of pause to look at the essentials. Without attempting to systematize a career full of nuances, it could be said that the director’s mature works range from a tendency towards the concrete, the visible, and with another trend towards the abstract. The taste for geometry indicates the tendency to abstraction, which was already present in his earlier work, such as Matador and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, although in a more diffuse way. As his writing steadies itself, this dichotomy is most present. Carne trémula/Live Flesh (1998), inspired by a story by English crime-writer ruth rendell, is a tribute to the shape of the circle: buses, watches, rings, balls, oranges, etc. Even the characters and relationships are not the same lesh, despite the title and the fact that the director seems more interested in the game of interconnections between the shapes than in the characters themselves. Almodóvar follows this line in Hable con ella/Talk to Her (2001) in which, apart from the intense relations between Benigno and Marco, the director takes still further those games of abstract similarities, parallels, doubles, etc., marking a rarely-achieved deepening in his ilms, obtaining a perfect balance in a male movie. In La mala educación/Bad Education (2004), very controversial at the time, the director wrote a script that converts complex narrative into a maze, not always understandable, and that does not even hesitate to play on different types of ilm format. A highly conceptual work, Bad Education is an ambiguous ilm about paedophilia, between reporting and self-consciousness, which leaves many questions open and which belongs entirely to the director’s creation of the abstract and the male. Like a rolling game, other works are open to the female, the tactile, the too human. Todo sobre mi madre/All About My Mother (1999) is a reconquest of death – from Esteban’s accident until the birth of rosa’s son. The journey from Madrid to Barcelona is, at the same time, a trip to the past and a projection of hope. In this new women’s ensemble ilm, the characters show a depth and density rarely achieved in the work of Almodóvar. Manuela, Huma rojo, ‘la Agrado’ (‘Pleasant’) and rosa formed a splendid quartet and make the play one of the director’s masterpieces. To Return is also deeply feminine and carnal and refers directly back to What Have I Done to Deserve This? and partly to The Flower of My Secret. raimunda, brilliantly played by Penélope Cruz, is in line with the great Almodóvar female igures that combine excitement and vitality; characters that can survive everything and everyone. Between village and suburb, there develops a story tinged with fantasy and marks a director’s return to the genre of comedy of which he is a master. His latest ilm, Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces (2009), made with a high-budget, has not had the popular and critical success of his earlier works. This kind of thriller combines, in some ways, two trends in Almodóvar’s cinema, and Penélope Cruz’ presence – with a splendid dubbing scene – does not disguise the complex script and that the casting is not always convincing. La piel que habito/The Skin That I Inhabit inspired by Thierry Jonquet’s Tarantula (2003), was well received by critic and public in the oficial Section of Festival de Cannes, and is expected to be released in September 2011.

Jean-Claude Seguin Directors 65

MELODRAMA DE AUTOR

AUTEUR MELODRAMA

Directory of World Cinema

In the seventeenth century we begin to hear about ‘melodrama’, mainly in theatre and opera, areas from which will spring works marked by deined characters of a remarkably sentimental temperament, all of it underscored by a similar emotive style of music. But one aspect that is often forgotten, and that is important to note, is that they were eminently artistic expressions of a popular nature. We note this in particular in connection to the opera, because it is a medium that has gradually become elitist: Thus, this marks the path to explain why we can write ‘auteur’ juxtaposed with a popular genre. Later, by extension, the term ‘melodrama’ has become commonly used to refer to all types of texts dominated by more-or-less pathetic and tearful emotions; to emerge in the viewer in a range of emotions of which, perhaps, they would be ashamed of if externalized in their daily lives. normally, the target audience of the melodrama is mostly female. But despite this aura of exalted emotion, melodramatic genre ilms tend to be realistic. If among the classical masters of the genre you can name Douglas Sirk, Kenji Mizoguchi, Frank Borzage, Satyajit ray, Max ophüls or Vincent Minnelli, in the twenty-irst century we can state that some of the greatest directors in this genre are Spanish: Isabel Coixet or Pedro Almodóvar are the best examples, with ilms such as Todo sobre mi madre/All About My Mother (Almodóvar, 1999), Mi vida sin mí/My Life With Out Me (Coixet, 2003), the second being a joint venture with Almodovar’s studio, ‘El Deseo’. Based on the aforementioned masters’ classic ilms, it is absurd to maintain a pejorative stance before this genre, which has been done many times from left-wing ideological positions; even more so if you look at other international contemporary examples (Won Kar-wai, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, M night Shyamalan, Anthony Minghella, Takeshi Kitano or roberto Benigni), whose ilms in this genre have had huge public and critical success and are already part of the world’s collective imaginary. returning to our case, we believe there is a highly-original, Spanish vein whose origin stems from its popular culture since the post-Civil War period, making it the genre in which were crystallized the most intense audience emotions of this unsophisticated period – and whose most representative example is Mur oti’s Cielo negro (Black Sky) (1951). This ilm follows the unwritten rule of having a woman as protagonist, but already begins to point to the descriptor we have added: auteur, in the sense that the ilm-makers, while basing it on the foundations, structure and stereotyped characters of melodrama (the female protagonist depressed, repressed, exploited, full of fear, a mother courage, abandoned wife, and so on, with problems with family, lovers, community, etc.), add elements of popular culture in which their stories are immersed (and not only Spanish, as, for example, My Life Without Me is set in Canada) and help, precisely, to provide an additional level of truth that is normally derived from the traditional auteur. All this, moreover, as stated by González requena (2007: 281–83), is through ilm-writing that begins to differentiate from the classical mode, with, for example, the kitsch image (so close to Almodóvar

Left: The Secret Life of Words/La vida secreta de las palabras, El Deseo.

Auteur Melodrama

67

Directory of World Cinema

and Bigas Luna). With this type of image there begins to appear a distance between the viewer and what they observe (as a voyeuristic structure): they participate in the suffering of the heroine, but not completely. The melodramatic hero loses his love object, but is not up to regaining it; this causes hurt through mourning and, above all, by immersing him in a state of melancholy, evident in ilms such as La vida secreta de las palabras/The Secret Life of Words (Coixet, 2005), Las voces de la noche/Voices in the Night (Salvador García ruiz, 2003) or La vida mancha/Life Marks (Enrique Urbizu, 2003). That is how the melodrama audience looks: through a gaze no longer classic, but Mannerist. So far, what do we mean by ‘melodrama’, and is it appropriate to juxtapose this genre with the term ‘auteur’? Anticipating the objection, we will say this contradiction is only apparent. As is known, auteur cinema escapes, by deinition, any attempt to categorize its texts because it aspires to be an individual artistic expression from a director or author, whose signature dictates the personality, appearance and meaning of each ilm. But if we make a little effort to recount the history, we see that it is not until the 1970s that ilm theory begins to stabilize the characteristics of each ilm genre, because, until then, ilm’s role was commercial and pragmatic. It is precisely in the previous decade, the 1960s, when a group of French critics, through the Cahiers du Cinéma, started talking about the role of the auteur as describing those who express themselves in a unique and individual way, the trails of their style prevailing over respect for reality. For his part, since the 1950s, the neorealist ilm-maker, with equally-marked stylistic features, proposed a kind of author who would himself be able to relect reality as it is, without manipulation, allowing the viewers to interpret it in their own way. Thus, to this genre, auteur melodrama, we attribute the work of several directors that somehow exemplify this theoretical debate in a series of ilms that appeal to a broad and global audience (another director in this regard would be Alejandro González Iñárritu), and in which the authorial individual expression is synthesized with a relection about how far idelity to the representation of reality should be respected. In any case, our best argument is the movies themselves: we have already cited those of Coixet and Almodóvar. other essential representatives are Julio Médem’s La ardilla roja/The Red Squirrel (1993), in which we witness melodramatic suicide attempts and memory loss, psychological adventure and a blend of popular expression (the whole story ends up in the eponymous camp site), and the more recent Caótica Ana/Chaotic Ana (2007), again a perfect example of auteur melodrama, since it opens a dialogue with the stereotype of women living in complex psychologic situations, in places deeply rooted in popular culture, and which become characters in their own right: Ibiza and Madrid. Another ilm-maker who can certainly it into this genre is the aforementioned Bigas Luna, for example, in Jamón, Jamón/A Tale of Ham and Passion (1992), and whose work, like Almodóvar’s, can be understood almost completely as auteur melodrama: Bulls, Spanish tortilla, the bars at gas stations, sexist attitudes… But it is a ilm with a clear authorial intention; with branches off Buñuel’s surrealist path. This is the ilm in which Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem appeared for the irst time as a couple. Javier Bardem’s grandfather, Juan Antonio Bardem, should also certainly be included in this genre with Cómicos/Comedians (1954) or Calle Mayor/Main Street (1956).

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

68 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

A Tale of Ham and Passion Jamón, Jamón Director:

Synopsis The development of the ilm turns around the relationship that, José Luis, the son of a businessman, has with lower class Silvia, who works for the company, and with the emergence of a youngster aspiring to become a bullighter, who is contracted by José Luis’s mother to seduce the girl in order to break up the relationship with her son.

Juan José Bigas Luna Screenwriters:

Juan José Bigas Luna Cuca Canals Quim Monzó Composer:

Incola Piovani Cinematographer:

José Luis Alcaine Editor:

Teresa Font Duration:

94 minutes Cast:

Penélope Cruz Javier Bardem Jordi Mollá Stefanía Sandrelli Year:

1992

Critique The ilm A Tale of Ham and Passion (1992) directed by Bigas Luna is part of a trilogy of ilms, with Huevos de oro (Golden Balls, 1993) and La teta y la luna (The Tit and the Moon, 1994), which is what the director called his ‘Iberian trilogy’ and in which he used, as elements to link the desire and perversion of the characters, a certain bestiality in the features of the protagonists and the breaking of the rules and conditions of everyday family life. of these three ilms, A Tale of Ham and Passion is the irst that became popular with the public and gained international recognition. In the year of its release it was awarded the ‘Silver Lion’ at the Venice Film Festival. Although the ilm may appear to sustain the typical patterns of the tragic and the comic, the basis of this ilm provides a range of circumstances that allude to the world of the passion inherited from Buñuel’s cinema: allusions to popular culture, perceived from a contemporary point of view and also from a historical one (such as in a ight sequence in which hams are used as weapons, a reference to the famous painting by Francisco de Goya Duelo a garrotazos, belonging to his so-called ‘Black Paintings’). During the ilm there are a number of references to symbols, rituals and identity in popular culture; for example, there is a memorable scene below the sign of the famous ‘Toro de osborne’ that for many years has been very prominent in the landscape near Spanish roads to announce the brand of a liquor (the icon has become the symbol of Spanish identity since the late twentieth century and further underlined by this ilm; nowadays it is easy to ind this type of image in marketing for tourism and identity objects). A Tale of Ham and Passion not only plays with a number of fetishes of everyday contemporary Iberian culture but it also pays tribute to the cinema, by means of metacine, through certain surrealist resources under the copyright mark of Bigas Luna, such as the nods to the surreal world of Salvador Dali’s iconography and the work of Buñuel. Allusions to the world of nightmares, dreams and unconscious thoughts ill the ilmic universe of most of Bigas Lunas’ ilms: iconography which refers to damaged objects, or a state of putrefaction, or faces and bodies that are covered with insects, are what the director’s uses at certain moments of his ilms to increase the sense of unease. This mixture of the popular with the surrealist unconscious stops being just a tribute to the painting, photography and cinematography in the context of the 1920s and 1930s,

Auteur Melodrama

69

Directory of World Cinema

and comes dressed in terms of the end of the twentieth century. For the preparation of the iconography of the characters he uses the feminine stereotype rooted in twentieth-century paintings by Julio romero de Torres and zuloaga. And, in the case of the male, he uses an inluence of cinematographic representation reminiscent of some masculine icons of Visconti’s neorealist cinema like Rocco and His Brothers (1960), although in the case of the Bigas Luna’s ilm, they become the stereotype of ‘Iberian macho’. Finally, we can highlight the existential circumstances of life and the traditional pressures that surround the character of the protagonists of the ilm, adorned with touches of humour that make the ilm in an interesting relection of the relationship and the love of the everyday and the deepest of popular roots at a time in which Spanish society was committed to the transformation of modernity.

Rafael Gómez Alonso

All About my Mother Todo sobre mi madre Countries of origin:

Spain France Studio:

El Deseo SA Director

Pedro Almodóvar Producer

Agustín Almodóvar Screenwriter:

Pedro Almodóvar Cinematographer:

Affonso Beato

Synopsis After attending a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, teenager Esteban gets run over by a car and killed while chasing the actress who plays Blanche, Huma rojo, to ask for her autograph. His grief-stricken mother, Manuela, a nurse specialized in organ transplants, donates her son’s heart and decides to leave Madrid for Barcelona to look for his father, also Esteban, from whom she separated from while still pregnant and who is now a transvestite under the name of Lola. on arrival she meets fellow transvestite Agrado, who updates her about Lola’s disappearance and tries to help Manuela out by introducing her to a young nun, rosa. The latter knows her mother, a forger of Chagall paintings, could do with some assistance for her aged father, but Manuela is rejected for reasons of morality. Ironically, it will soon be found out that rosa is pregnant by Lola. In the meantime, Manuela goes to a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, now in Barcelona; after the show she meets Huma and ends up driving her in search of fellow actress and lover nina, who is trying to buy heroin in the city suburbs. Manuela tells Huma that she played Blanche twenty years ago to her partner’s Kowalski, and also everything about their son’s ordeal. The different plot threads are eventually brought together for a dramatic, yet hopeful, climax.

Art Director:

Antxón Gómez

Critique

Composer:

Almodóvar’s multiple award-winning ilm plays very well into the hands of international audiences, with cinematic intertextual references to Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950, including ilm excerpts) or John Cassavettes’ Opening Night (1977, where the car accident scene is evoked shot by shot), but also to other arts such as literature (Capote’s Music for Chameleons) theatre (the above mentioned Williams’ play) and painting (Chagall), while focusing as well on Spanish universal artists such as playwright

Alberto Iglesias Editor:

Agustín Salcedo Duration:

101 minutes

70 Spain

All About My Mother/Todo sobre mi madre, El Deseo.

Cast:

Cecilia roth Marisa Paredes Penélope Cruz Candela Peña Filming locations:

A Coruña Barcelona Madrid Year:

1999

García Lorca with a scene from Blood Wedding, architect Gaudí’s buildings or even Almodovar’s self-quotation from the opening hospital scene of La flor de mi secreto/The Flower of my Secret (1995). The most remarkable visual issue is the setting of Barcelona, which Almodóvar discovers hand in hand with his recentlyappointed art director, Antxón Gómez (the previous Live Flesh, 1997, had been their irst ilm together), who lives there and led him around the curved modernist shapes of the city, far more relaxing than straight-lined Madrid. Chromatically there is also a sudden change from the red and blue settings of the irst twenty minutes in Madrid to the more soothing Catalan brown and beige of the rest of the ilm, even though emotions will run high all the way. In a ilm about female performers, metadrama converges in Manuela, a nurse who, in a medical, educational video, initially plays the part of a mother who has lost a son, before becoming one herself, and who will eventually go on stage as Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire replacing actress nina, who accuses her of behaving like Eve Carrington in All About Eve. This multiple role confusion goes beyond stage and screen, though, with transvestite prostitute Agrado turned into a stand-up comedian; with Esteban’s father, who is now Lola; with pregnant nun rosa, and with her father, who, because of Alzheimer’s disease, cannot remember who he is. In one inal twist, Manuela will become rosa’s son’s surrogate

Auteur Melodrama

71

Directory of World Cinema

mother; he is also called Esteban, so even he is playing a dual part from a very early age. other recurrent features recognizable in Almodóvar’s work are, here, the use as settings of hospitals (for Manuela’s job, Esteban’s death and rosa’s pregnancy) and cemeteries (rosa’s funeral and Lola’s reappearance), as is the presence of mirrors (especially in the multi-relection of the multi-role players in Huma’s dressing room). And the unavoidable circularity of this female role-playing could be visually suggested with the rounds of customers’ cars in the suburban area where Agrado works, and in the train tunnel through which Manuela travels to and from Barcelona. Almodovar’s career, however, is revealed in this ilm as anything but circular: it is a constant work-in-progress whose uniqueness was and still is universally praised.

John D Sanderson

Black Sky Cielo Negro Studio:

Intercontinental Films Director:

Manuel Mur oti Producers:

Joaquín romero-Marchent rafael Durán Eduardo Benzo Cano Screenwriter:

Manuel Mur oti Cinematographer:

Manuel Berenguer Art Director:

Enrique Salvá Composer:

Jesús García Leoz Editor:

Sara ontañón Antonio Gimeno Duration/Format:

113 minutes/B/W

Synopsis Emilia, daughter and orphan of a military father, lives with her mother, Doña Clara, in a modest house near the well-known Madrid viaduct where people use to commit suicide. Emilia works in a women’s fashion design house and occasionally translates business letters into French to augment her personal inances, but also because she is in love with the accountant, ricardo Fortún. Fortún invites her to an evening festival and Emilia sneaks one of the inest dresses out of the store. Fortún only manages to reveal his plan to leave the company where both work before an inopportune storm ends the festival. Due to her delay in returning the dress, Emilia is found out and Madame Dorin, the director of the fashion house, ires her. Lola, a cruel co-worker and old girlfriend of Fortún, gives Emilia what is supposedly the mailing address for Fortún’s new job. In reality Lola decides to contract the services of an indifferent poet, Ángel López Veiga, to help with responding to Ángel’s love letters. Meanwhile, Emilia takes a laboratory job that damages her vision. López Veiga, repentant, decides to tell her the truth and as penitence, Emilia forces him to dress up as Fortún. A little later, the optometrist warns Emilia that she is about to go blind. The unfortunate events continue to go downhill when she arrives home and learns that her mother has died. During the funeral, the skies of Madrid begin pouring rain and, desperate as a result of her tragic situation, she heads to the viaduct with the intention of killing herself, but the ringing of the bells causes her to change her mind and in the midst of her emotional turmoil she goes to the altar of the Basilica of San Francisco del Grande to pray for comfort and forgiveness.

Critique Black Sky is, without a doubt, one of the best ilms of the 1950s, not only because it manages to articulate a solid narrative

72 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Susana Canales Luis Prendes Fernando rey Inés Pérez Indarte Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1951

structure based on melodrama while simultaneously preparing to undermine it, but, as the story evolves with folkloric notes intermingled with the realistic nature of farce, it also possesses an eloquent emphasis on style. This manifests itself through set design and the skilful combination of visual and sound aspects shaped by expressive elements through a similar number of staged semantic gestures. The unrelenting progressive blindness the protagonist suffers is brought out in dramatic terms through a process of distancing which allows the unmasking of the violent and pernicious shock suffered between dreams and reality. Mur oti’s camera maintains a distant perspective and, thereby, puts into question Emilia’s infatuation in the irst part of the ilm, while in the last part a vital, hidden horizon opens up. As a result, there is no coinciding of viewpoints between the implicit narrator and Emilia, but there is sympathy for her from the moment the poor woman realizes that, in reality, her destiny is to end up in the most absolute loneliness and boredom. It is a situation whose objective is an attempt to transcend the emotional and social condition of Madrid’s lower classes at the narrative level but also, through discursive strategies, seeks to deconstruct the romantic imagination and illusory expectations based on the idealized perspective of false imaginings. only in this way can one comprehend the two extremely extended, vivid tracking shots which, at the ilm’s end, follow a feverish and desperate Emilia in the middle of an intense morning rainfall as the bells ring. Through the process of internalizing her tragic destiny and by means of magniicent expressionist cinematography, the camera accompanies the young woman in a spirit of solidarity to the point of adopting a neutral and divine perspective at the altar of the basilica which she visits while the bells peal in the background. The immediate association between the inal images and the diegetic sounds force us to predict a truly disturbing future since all that remains to Emilia is the embrace of religious faith as a way to calm her anguish.

Pablo Ferrando García

Chaotic Ana Caótica Ana Language:

Spanish Arabic French English

Synopsis The ilm tells the story of Ana, a young painter brought up by her hippy father after the mother abandons the family. Ana, too, will soon leave her home – a cave in Ibiza – after being discovered by a French head-hunter who invites her to go to Madrid to live with a group of young artists and explore in greater depth what makes her so special. once in Madrid, Ana meets and falls in love with Said. Through hypnosis, she discovers some of her past lives, but especially her past deaths.

Auteur Melodrama

73

Directory of World Cinema

Studio:

Alicia produce SoGECInE Volcano Internacional Productions Director:

Julio Médem Producers:

Koldo zuazua Simón de Santiago Enrique López Lavigne Julio Médem Screenplay:

Julio Médem Cinematographer:

Mario Montero Composer:

Jocelyn Pook Editor:

Julio Médem Duration:

113 minutes Starring/Cast:

Manuela Vellés Charlotte rampling Bebe Asier newman Filming locations:

Arizona Canary Islands Ibiza Madrid new york Year:

2007

74 Spain

Critique The ilm begins with a close-up of a beautiful dove crossing the skies. Meanwhile, a falcon is waiting to be freed so it can trap its prey: the fragile dove. Just then something unexpected happens: while in full light, the dove’s droppings fall on its predator. When the scene is about to come to an end, a sequence takes us once again to Ana, the protagonist, who calls the action a ‘poetic gesture’. The bird of peace, however, will not get off free, becoming trapped in the claws of death while the camera pauses to show the dove’s agony. From this moment onwards, the ilm contains a series of metaphors around the central theme of reincarnation. yet reincarnation turns out to be merely an excuse for many other underlying topics the Basque ilm-maker Julio Médem has often revealed in an allegorical manner throughout his professional career: Basque mythology, philosophy and art. A shot then pans out to reveal the books in Said’s library; Said, a young refugee from the town of Tindouf in the Hamada desert, in this story symbolizes knowledge. Ana, however, does not want to delve any deeper; she has no thirst for knowledge. Like the goddess Mary, she prefers to stay in her underground quarters connected to the surface through wells, deep abysses, rivers of milk and caverns full of doors that, when opened, reveal only pain and death and the impossibility of union between man and woman, because man destroys woman. But Ana will not remain for long in the dark shadows, and just as Plato describes in the Myth of the Cavern, she will be guided by the madame or patron (as she calls herself) towards the world of ideas and knowledge. Standing on the edge of the abyss, Ana contemplates this halfway point between myth and philosophy incarnated in images of the sun, moon, the Earth and water. The images represent what a Presocratic philosopher called the Theory of the four roots in which the four roots forming the cosmos are dominated by two forces that explain all movement (generation and corruption) in the world: Love, which unites them, and Strife, which sets them in opposition. nonetheless, Ana decides to take the leap. Linda, who will guide her to the other world – the world of knowledge – does so through an eye: the eye of her video camera to show Ana the reality and pain of freeing oneself from the chains and bonds of ignorance. Colourful naive paintings link Ana to her past lives, contrasting with the lives that can be seen through the eye of Linda’s camera and which represent the most immediate present. Fleeing from her pain, Ana arrives at the land of freedom to reunite with her ancestors and rediscover her origins. To do so, she must cross the mythical Fordian landscape of the Arizona desert, with Monument Valley in the background. In her quest she is guided by Anglo, her hypnotizer, who takes her to the Hopi reserve where she will inally encounter her reason for being. At the end of the ilm, Ana defends those who sacriice their lives because others have decided they must. She will be badly hurt in her particular venture, but also victorious like the image of the Winged Victory of Samothrace that appears briely at the end of

Directory of World Cinema

the ilm to highlight triumph in war and the triumphant involvement in life: the victory of the dove over the falcon; in short, the victory of life over death.

Ana Melendo

Life Marks La vida mancha Studio:

Berrota Films Tornasol Films Director:

Enrique Urbizu Producers:

Gerardo Herrero Fernando Victoria de Lecea Screenwriter:

Michel Gaztambide Cinematographer:

Carles Gusi Art Director:

Carlos Bordelón Composer:

Mario de Benito Editor:

Pablo Blanco Duration:

127 minutes Cast:

José Coronado Juan Sanz zay nuba Filming locations:

Madrid Year:

2003

Synopsis Fito, a truck driver, and Juana, an administrative assistant, live under the heavy pressure of the debts he has to pay off. After ten years of absence, during which he has remained silent, Pedro, his elder brother, shows up in Madrid, freshly arrived from England and eager to spend some time there with the excuse of reestablishing the brotherly ties and settling an account from the past. However, we assume he has more down-to-earth and darker motives, like erasing his own footsteps to prevent being tracked down by the police and by his accomplices in the diamond-dealing business. While Fito muddles through life and tries to make money outside the household, Pedro gracefully takes on his role by looking after his son, Jon, while a powerful attraction appears between him and Juana.

Critique Life Marks appears passionately divided between genre and melancholy. The recognized taste of its director, Enrique Urbizu, for Hollywood genres, and in particular for the generation of violence, is translated into a well-crafted script by Michel Gaztambide with a true crime-genre lavour and a good ear for popular speech, also based on hard-hitting dialogues spoken by credible characters. But at the same time it also wants to be a relection about the passage of time, giving off a whiff of zen. In this respect, the conversation about the dead and headstones in the oriental restaurant or the meeting in the park between the leading character and Charo, a former girlfriend from the neighbourhood and now a mother, are illustrative. The story, scrupulously linear and at the same time circular – from the time Pedro lands to when he takes off – approaches the identity of two men who are brothers less through blood – in fact they are so only through their mother – than through mutual envy. It is made with an essential, direct, stripped-down style, although it does not turn up its nose at dreamscapes: that epilogue with Juana walking on the water showing a vision of Fito to identify Pedro as its dreamer. There is a symbolic, fetishist subplot exemplifying the subtlety with which these two a priori antagonistic dimensions are woven together: involving the underslip that Pedro, not knowing that Fito is married, sends him from abroad to give to ‘his favourite girl’. The little brother gives it to his wife, who does not put it on for her husband, but does for her brother-in-law, reserving it for him. Later, he clandestinely exchanges the cheap jewellery decorating the slip for real diamonds. When he leaves, instead of taking

Auteur Melodrama

75

Directory of World Cinema

it with him as he had planned, he tells Fito it conceals precious stones and that he is giving it to them ‘as a wedding present’. In exchange, his brother promises not to exchange them for paper money. The way the ilm works is, therefore, both traditional and elliptical; it is no coincidence that it is a onCE lottery ticket that makes it possible to date the action to the early days of July 2002. Life Marks is irmly anchored in the peripheral urban Spain of the turn of the millennium, showing a very uncomfortable picture of unemployment queues, requests for advances, lorries transporting fruit to the other side of the French border being overturned, and so on. rooted to this clear reality, it gives a poetic treatment to a dark truth hidden beneath the blanket of appearances: the ox-like Fito and the laconic, angelic Pedro are not so different. This can be seen because the younger man has imbibed the passion for cards from his much-admired older brother, who is no more than a master cheat, whose security and untainted appearance are down to training in repression. Exchanges of roles and life histories on planes and on the road – a correlation of the frustrations, internal bankruptcies and gestures of nobility concealing great betrayals – ultimately weave the structure of a ilm with a strong story including a deep meditation about second chances and loss.

Agustín Rubio Alcover

My Life Without Me Mi vida sin mí Countries of origin:

Spain Canada Language:

English Spanish Studio:

El Deseo Milestone Productions Director:

Isabel Coixet Producers:

Esther García Gordon McLennan

76 Spain

Synopsis My Life Without Me is the story about a 23-year-old woman, Ann, who is soon going to die of ovarian cancer. She decides not to tell anybody and to plan for life without herself. She writes a list with all her wishes and things she still wants to do, such as inding a woman – her neighbour Ann – who would be a good wife for her husband Don and a good mother to her two daughters Patsy and Penny. Her life seems to have been a lucky one, full of love, but her illness reveals to her that she has never really lived, that she only ever lived for others. This changes with her diagnosis, and when she meets Lee.

Critique This movie was produced by Pedro Almodóvar’s production company, El Deseo, whose style or stamp can be perceived in the generic code used, as the ilm is classiied as a drama and romance. In fact, the plot looks like a trivial melodrama, but it slowly becomes an intimate journey into a young woman’s mind. But it also can be seen as a generic and auterist aesthetic transgression, as a witty mix between a melodrama – with hard-hitting music – and a tragicomedy with a lot of humour. In this sense, viewers are often caught between laughter and tears. However, it is

Directory of World Cinema

Screenwriter:

Isabel Coixet (based on Pretending the Bed Is a Raft by nanci Kinkaid) Cinematographer:

Jean Claude Larrieu Art Director:

Shelley Bolton Composer:

Alfonso Villalonga Editor:

Lisa Jane robison Duration:

106 min Cast:

Sarah Polley Laurie Amanda Plummer Don Scott Speedman Leonor Watling Filming locations:

new Westminster and Vancouver (Canada) Year:

2003

a melodrama without corny sentimentalism – something that is not easily available to any director. Ann’s list of wishes is also bittersweet: she wants to tell her daughters several times that she loves them; ind Don a new wife whom the girls will like; record birthday messages for the girls for every year until they are 18; go to Whalebay Beach together and have a big picnic, smoke and drink as much as she wants; say what she is thinking; make love with other men to see what it is like; make someone fall in love with her; go and see her dad in jail; get fake nails and do something with her hair. Viewers are presented with a paradoxical situation: the expectation of death seems to liberate Ann from moral and social taboos, from the routine duties of a mother, housewife and night-time janitor living in a caravan outside of Vancouver. At last, she will enjoy what is left of her life. The aesthetics of the movie are memorable: an unseen mixture of reality and hyperrealist photography, which inds its sense at the starting point of the movie – someone who knows that they are going to die must feel that their reality becomes something else. In this sense, Coixet’s camera is sometimes jumpy, in contrast with other moments, where the frame is fully ixed, again playing between two worlds. on the narrative level, the use of ellipses, fades and breakings of time through slow motion or accelerations, contributes, equally, to create this mixture of reality and reverie which Ann has begun to taste in what remains of her life. This beautiful ilm contains a subversive critique against social injustice, against a supericial, stereotyped life which appears, at irst glance, to be happy and harmonious, but consists of going without transition from kisses to dirty plates. This surface of existences is revealed to be a social masquerade and a mask of feminine subordination. This revelation leads to the praise of the unusual and the capacity to savour the smallest things in life, as Ann’s mother does (played by Deborah Harry, rock’n roll-star Blondie). The ilm is homage to liberty, to acting alone, to fantasy and a little bit of craziness. Ann liberates herself from the corset of a society full of clichés, and taboos lose their amorality and taste of prohibition in the face of imminent death. Finally, while in Cosas que nunca te dije/Things I Never Told You (1995) the main theme is communication in its different forms, in My Life Without Me Coixet plays with non-communication, with the silence that always invites a deeper relection. Finally, this dramatic poem is not escapist, but a movie that can helps us to experience and understand this reality that, sometimes, comes hard and is dificult to go through.

Isabel Maurer Queipo and Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

Auteur Melodrama

77

Directory of World Cinema

The Red Squirrel

Synopsis

Producers:

Jota, a onetime musician whose girlfriend has just left him, is about to commit suicide when he witnesses an accident involving a girl on a motorcycle. Finding her physically uninjured but suffering from memory loss, he escorts her to hospital and begins to make up aspects of her life, identity and personality, even giving her a name, Lisa. He tells her that he is her boyfriend, and takes her out of the hospital and on holiday to a camp site called ‘The red Squirrel’. once there, they befriend a family, and Jota continues to invent aspects of Lisa’s life with him, something that results in a harmonious relationship. However, Lisa’s husband tracks her down, and reality threatens to invade the couple’s hitherto fantasy existence.

Fernando de Garcillán Enrique López Lavigne

Critique

La ardilla roja Studio:

Sogetel Director:

Julio Médem

Screenwriter:

Julio Médem

A weary, troubled-looking man stares pensively out over a sheer drop down onto a beach in the dead of night. He is clearly contemplating taking his own life, but is soon halted in his tracks as a

The Red Squirrel/La ardilla roja, SoGETEL.

78 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Gonzalo F Berridi Art Director:

Álvaro Machimberrena Composers:

Txetxo Bengoetxea Alberto Iglesias Editor:

María Eleni Sáinz de rozas Duration:

111 Minutes Cast:

Emma Suárez nancho novo Karra Elejalde Carmelo Gómez Filming locations:

El Pardo (Madrid) San Sebastián (Basque Country) Year:

1993

woman literally falls from the sky in front of him. She in fact falls as the result of a motorcycle accident but, to all intents and purposes, plummets to Earth as though from another planet: an intergalactic traveller on a mission from a distant world or perhaps a guardian angel sent to demonstrate a wonderful life to the man whose prospective suicide she interrupts. Maybe she even represents a vision of original sin: the fallen woman who draws the man into a potentially self-destructive and threatening tryst. or, conversely, given that she loses her memory completely and is literally made up by her newfound partner (as Lisa), she could also be said to offer a symbol of woman in patriarchal culture and society. All this is contained within the opening moments of The Red Squirrel, the inexhaustibly-rich second ilm by Julio Médem, and one of the key ilms in the prevalent mode of postmodernism that deines much contemporary Spanish cinema. Like many Médem ilms, it offers a potent narrative hook that immediately throws the viewer into a maelstrom of emotion; and like numerous subsequent Médem ilms its focus rests squarely on an intense, heightened relationship, one based largely on a physical craving and that appears to deine the horizons of the protagonists’ lives and identities. From this perspective, Médem’s cinema can be said to begin proper with this ilm. Elsewhere, there is a distinct feeling that the director is attempting something of a discourse on microcosmic modern Spain – on what festers beneath the surface, as the underwater credits sequence (reminiscent of Sex and Lucia, 1995) seems to imply. The titular red Squirrel is a camping resort within which the central couple is juxtaposed with a family whom they befriend. In particular, there is a contrast between the respective men, and this extends to the family’s young teenage son, perennially called ‘dad’ by his younger sisters in a troublingly intimate manner that seems openly to mock the idea of the family. This character blatantly challenges Jota as to the validity of his machismo, and seems to be a facsimile of the older men in the ofing, beside which the comparative portraits of both his mother on one side and Lisa on the other are similarly offered as mirror images: the former married and the second in light from a marriage but both in a sense constructed by their relationships and deined by their connection to their men. There is a sense in which The Red Squirrel is at least potentially too busy a ilm, bursting as it is with narrative ideas, tonal switches and visual tricks. However, as in a ilm like Bigas Luna’s A Tale of Ham and Passion (1992), the animating theme of selfhood and the extent to which identity and interiority are ixed or amorphous, deined by oneself or determined by exterior precepts, gives some weight to Médem’s asides and lights of fancy. That is, it can be approached as an objective correlative to the story and characters in that it feels very much like the work of a director inding his own voice and identity as regards his style and authorial vision. There is an authentically exploratory sensibility to The Red Squirrel – and, glib dénouement aside, it is a largely organic narrative, one that served to catapult its director to the forefront of Spanish cinema, where he has remained ever since.

Adam Bingham

Auteur Melodrama

79

Directory of World Cinema

The Secret Life of Words La vida secreta de las palabras Language:

English Danish Director:

Isabel Coixet Studio:

El Deseo Mediapro Producer

Esther García Screenwriter:

Isabel Coixet Cinematographer:

Jean Claude Larrieu Art Director:

Pierre-François Limbosch Editor:

Irene Blecua Duration:

118 minutes Cast:

Sarah Polley Tim robbins Javier Cámara Sverre Anker ousdal Filming locations:

Belfast (northen Ireland) Bilbao Madrid Year:

2005

80 Spain

Synopsis The Secret Life of Words begins as a masculine microcosm on an Irish oilrig in the middle of the sea. The men are a motley crew of various ethnicities. Among them is the young engineer, Martín, who spends his days counting the number of waves that violently clash against the rig; the Spanish cook, Simón, who creates international thematic dinners for the crew; and Josef, who was seriously wounded and temporarily blinded after jumping into a ire to rescue a colleague that committed suicide. Hanna, a solitary and mysterious nurse trying to forget her past, is brought to the platform to stabilize Joseph’s condition. Slowly, a strong intimacy and love develops between them, and Hanna opens her heart to Josef by sharing her traumatic experience during the Bosnian war. But Josef is transferred to a hospital and Hanna disappears. He inally recovers and goes to Copenhagen, where her torture was documented by Inge, to ind her and propose they change their lives together.

Critique The Secret Life of Words starts with a voice-over that poetically compares the human life experience to an ocean loor wounded by the immense body of an oilrig. As a defense mechanism to deal with pain, the mysterious voice-over focuses the spectator’s attention on the silence that surrounds words, while the opening credits that follow connect to the characters of Hanna and Josef. The dialectic between silence and words structure this ilm, which reaches its climatic point when Hanna reveals the dramatic events she suffered during the yugoslav War while showing the scars that remain on her body. Coixet’s dramatic choice of a Serbian woman who is raped by Serbian men translates the Balkan conlict from an ethnic- to a gender issue: the woman’s body loses its national identity in order to be transformed into a prized ‘war territory’. She is not the target of violence or rape because she is Serbian or Croat, Christian or Muslim, but because she is a woman. nevertheless, the director does not use the camera to invite the spectator to witness the horror of the image, but to feel the emotion through the power of words. Coixet does not reveal on the screen any images of the torture and the rape aflicted on Hanna’s body because she is not interested in the ilmic representation of violence, but rather in its lasting effects: the inner death of the protagonist. Although not completely developed in the ilm, Josef’s story has many similarities to Hanna’s. To create this parallelism, Coixet uses a literary source: Mariana Alcoforado’s Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1669). The lyrical eloquence contained in these letters is expressed in the ilm as poetic telephone messages left by the character played by Leonor Waitling, which Hanna listens to secretly. Josef and that woman love each other, but her husband is his best friend. When he confesses the love he feels for his friend’s wife, the husband commits suicide, throwing himself into a ire on the oilrig. Josef unsuccessfully tries to rescue him and is badly injured. Josef feels responsible for the death of his friend and it is

Directory of World Cinema

this guilt that unites him with Hanna. Like her, he feels ashamed for having survived and, like her, he yearns to be dead inside. The ilm possesses an existentialist tone and the sensibility to human suffering that characterizes Coixet’s ilmography. Like her other ilms, the ending also opens towards a future that is not tragic or pessimistic but full of hope. When Hanna tells Josef she cannot love him because she is afraid that one day she will drown in her tears, his humorous response is that he will learn how to swim. A close-up of Hanna’s tears over a smiling face followed by a poetic kiss from Josef contrasts with the isolated landscape that surrounds them, while the soundtrack plays the emotional song by Anthony and the Johnsons band ‘Hope There’s Someone’, which is also the theme song for the ilm’s trailer. It is at that moment that the possibility of a new life emerges, and the diegetic use of music reinforces the hopeful ending.

María Camí Vela

Things I Never Told You Cosas que nunca te dije Countries of origin:

Spain US Language:

English Studio:

Wanda Films Director:

Isabel Coixet Producer:

Luis Miñarro Screenwriter:

Isabel Coixet Cinematographer:

Teresa Medina Composer:

Alfonso Villalonga Art Director:

Marc rosenblatt

Synopsis Ann and Don are among the alienated townsfolk of a small village in oregon. Ann’s world comes apart when her partner, a foreign correspondent, calls from Europe to break up with her over the telephone. Ann starts obsessing about her boyfriend’s deserting her and inds that confessing to him her deepest thoughts and feelings through videotapes is a good way of putting herself back together. Don, in turn, would rather be a listener of strangers’ problems through a ‘Help Line’. Chance makes their paths cross twice in a short period of time, which leads to an intimate encounter between them. However, the different personal crises they are undergoing mean that their meeting has a very different effect on each one’s life. While Don feels drawn towards Ann, she realizes she is forgetting about her ex-boyfriend and feels like starting over again in a different place. In the meantime, their town neighbours live similar stories of isolation, repressed need and desire, encounter and overcoming.

Critique The independent spirit that was immediately identiied in Things I Never Told You when the ilm premiered remains one of its distinctive characteristics. With this movie (her second, after her debut Too old to die young, shot eight years before) Isabel Coixet began showing a group of recurrent themes and manners that today can be identiied as her authorial imprint. The weight of the ilm is supported by very smart dialogues written in a naturalistic fashion. In the lines spoken by Ann, Don, and the rest, the audience may ind that rare quality of indie ilmmaking by virtue of which the characters’ conversations are both domestic and recognizable while somewhat original and unique. Visually, Things I Never Told You is characterized by long sustained shots and a relatively slow-paced editing. With this planning,

Auteur Melodrama

81

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Alfonso Villalonga Editor:

Kathryn Himoff Duration:

93 minutes Cast:

Lili Taylor Andrew McCarthy Leslie Mann Alexis Arquette Filming locations:

oregon region (USA) Year:

1996

the director lets the tensions of the frame low with a considerable freedom, and also causes a feeling of anticipation in the audience. Sequences like the supermarket encounter between Ann and the ice-cream woman happen in a single shot, giving back to the dialogue (both verbal and bodily) a leading role in the story-telling, while stressing the illusion that the audience is in front of a live scene, watching from a set location. Coixet’s subtle style is perfected in highly emotional passages, such as the one in which Ann’s partner calls from Prague to break up their relationship. In the nearly four-minute-long sequence the camera steps back and forth along three positions (general, closer and close-up), coinciding with the level of intimacy of the couple’s conversation. As the energy of the room changes in this dramatic moment, with the leading woman passing from being lattered to heartbroken, the framing of the action accompanies the dramatic peaks and valleys, and contributes to illing up a telephonic scene where we only actually see and hear one end. The narration of the story is punctuated by different elements. Some of those are written words, such as the religious posters of a local church that periodically announce semi-spiritual mottos such as ‘Jesus said: how many tails can a lizard grow?’. other text fragments which state the characters’ names divide chapter-like fragments of the ilm. These elements contribute to the audience’s gaining consciousness over the very act of storytelling that they are presented with. Some scenes of the movie resemble an advertising style and are revelatory of the director’s working expertise. Indeed, Isabel Coixet already had a wide experience as an advertising directive creator for television when she was directing Things I Never Told You. The inluence of the very advertising-style language is plausible in the more subjective fragments of the movie, like the puzzle-like opening sequence. Here, while listening to a voice-over discourse of Don about the ininite possibilities of existence, the audience is presented with short fragments of evocative images: a cup of coffee falling into a bed of white papers; a travelling, upside-down image of someone lying on the loor with his clothes on; beautiful images of waves on a river’s surface; etc. Altogether the ilm is a statement about communication: the dificulties, shortcuts, originality and conventions in the acts of expressing human emotions. Both in the story and its shape, Isabel Coixet gets the message across, and shows subtlety, humour, talent and personality.

Xiana Gómez-Díaz

Voices in the Night Las voces de la noche

82 Spain

Synopsis George and Elisa are conducting a secret love affair. Both live with their families in a village marked by the story of a factory. Jorge is the son of the founder and Elisa is the daughter of an accountant. They put up with the monotony of the village and their life because, twice a week, they ind each other in a city hotel. The

Directory of World Cinema

Countries of origin:

Spain Italy Studio:

ESICMA DeAPlaneta Mikado Film Director:

Salvador García ruiz Producer:

Pau Calpe rufat Screenwriter:

Salvador García ruiz (based on the novel Las palabras de la noche by natalia Ginzburg) Cinematographer:

Teo Delgado Art Directors:

Mónica Bernuy Federico García Cambero Composer:

Pascal Gaigne Editor:

Carmen Frías Duration:

98 minutes Cast:

Laia Marull Tristán Ulloa Vicky Peña Guillermo Toledo Filming Locations:

Girona (Catalonia) Madrid Year:

2003

secret life they lead is the incentive to be themselves and to pursue their dreams in this room where they have built their isolated world. Both are aware of what they have created and do not demand more. Until Elisa wants to become George’s wife.

Critique Salvador García ruiz carries out the adaptation of natalia Ginzburg’s novel Las voces de la noche, moving the action from an Italian village to a Spanish one, recreating its provincial environment. In appearance it is a simple love story in which the adaptation has tried to keep the point of view of the writer while placing the action in Spain; but, in the end, time and place is not important because of the force, purity and simplicity of Ginzburg’s writing. Throughout the whole ilm the story is intertwined with the characters. The apparently-inane action immerses the viewer in the realm of pure feelings, moving the world of the characters to places of contradictorily claustrophobic open spaces, with the crowded environment of the city becoming spaces of freedom. The structure of lashbacks and the ‘now’ links the past and present against the backdrop of the Civil War, in such a way as to inform the view of Elisa and Jorge as they listen to accounts of times past. In contrast, the images give another point of view: the viewer becomes a distant observer with his own vision of the situations. García ruiz creates a psychological portrait of well-deined characters, with many contradictions and doubts, struggling to break the cycle of their life. Elisa wants to step out of convention and take charge of her life. But the pressure is too strong. She is a complex woman and out of her time. Jorge has had it easy. He wants to leave the family circle and yet knows he is caught. So the secret getaway with Elisa has become the only place where both can ight the monotony of their existence. The families of each one have ways of looking at life in which people live within the commentary of others, and of misrepresenting the different roles they have to assume. In this sense, Voices in the Night takes place between two eras and is a portrait of social conventions where the horizons are small, and the characters are torn between the inner commitment to build a life together and cowardice – the desire to break with the past and existential inertia. The director has produced a period ilm with careful and meticulous photography, where deliberate staging helps to create the frame and compose the world of the characters throughout, with a rhythm that tries to provoke a gaze of relection from the viewer on a hard and grim reality. There is a twist in the aesthetic of García ruiz in his idea of making the visual narrate the story itself, and inding the inner time within each shot; ideas already relected in the aesthetic and narrative bet of El otro barrio/The Other Side (2000).

Alfonzo Palazón

Auteur Melodrama

83

ESPERPENTO

GROTESQUE COMEDY

Directory of World Cinema

Esperpento is a literary style created by ramón María del ValleInclán (and the Generation of ‘98), characterized by the grotesque distortion of reality, with an intent of a critique of society. As Valle-Inclán said, ‘el sentido trágico de la vida española sólo puede ofrecerse con una estética sistemáticamente deformada’ (‘the tragic sense of Spanish life can only be provided with a systematically distorted aesthetics’). one of the kings of Spanish esperpentic (grotesque) comedy, Alex de la Iglesia, released his last feature, Balada triste de trompeta/A Sad Trumpet Ballad at the end of 2010. It focuses on the rivalry between two clowns: one violent, sharpwitted and ingenious; the other mournful, a melancholic foil to his rival’s vicious frivolity. Set in the context of the Francoist dictatorship, the ilm unmasks the monstrous nature of the regime, the underlying perversion of its enterprise, but it also illustrates the profound division in Spanish civil society. Although not strictly speaking a comedy – humour determines the parameters of this ilm not its form – it points up the non-discursive quality of clownishness, in which the properties of comedy in its raw state prove disruptive and from which the comic mode derives its social force. Comedy has always been a staple ingredient of ilm. It is imperative to cinema to entertain. From ilm’s fairground origins – that which Tom Gunning famously dubbed ‘the cinema of attractions’ – to the sophisticated choreographies of Jacques Tati; from the silent heroes of early physical comedy like Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin, to the ironies of Woody Allen or roberto Benigni. Whether slapstick or screwball, comedy has consistently been both a box-ofice draw and a ield for political manipulation; it can be satirical and critical but also escapist. In this regard, the history of Spanish ilm comedy is no different from that of any other national cinema. However, two things about comedy tend to complicate the question of national cinema: irst, comedy is often held – in a peculiar form of cultural nationalism – to be Spain’s distinguishing national genre, from the picaresque novel or the sainete genre to the ilms of Pedro Almodóvar; and, second, there is no consensus regarding its political nature: whether it is subversive or conservative (Marsh 2006: 2). Complex relations between politics, Spain, and ilm, on the one hand, and between national speciicity and transnational inluence, on the other, converge in the question of comedy. Today’s Spanish ilmic comedy derives, in large part, from the Second republic (1931–1939). Film-makers such as Florian rey, Benito Perojo and Luis Buñuel sought to create a cinema based on popular culture that exploited national, often folkloric traits. Indeed, Buñuel would forge a kind of national-popular cinema as executive producer and supervisor of the production outit Filmófono, a secular attempt to counter the ideological potency of the right-wing Catholic Cifesa, the dominant ilm company of the age. Contemporaneous to these ilm-makers was Edgar neville, whose adaptation of Carlos Arniches’s play La señorita de Trevélez/Miss Trevélez (1935), and scriptwriting work on Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast’s La traviesa molinera/It Happened in Spain (1934) and Benito Perojo’s Rumbo al Cairo/Bound for Cairo (1935) established him in the

Left: Plácido, Jet Films.

Grotesque Comedy

85

Directory of World Cinema

1930s as a pioneer of Spanish ilm comedy. neville would emerge as the most talented ilm-maker of his generation and, in the following decade, offered a costumbrista trilogy of central Madrid (Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1944), Domingo de Carnaval (1945), and El crimen de la Calle Bordadores (1946) and the delicious comedy La vida en un hilo (1945). His engagement with Spanish popular culture would leave its mark upon not only on his immediate successors – Luis García Berlanga, Fernando Fernán-Gómez and screenwriter rafael Azcona – but also on later ilm-makers such as the La Cuadrilla team of the 1990s or Almodóvar. Berlanga and Fernán Gómez, Azcona and the Italian director Marco Ferreri, whose career began in Spain in 1958, were responsible for some of the greatest ilms in Spanish cinema history. Building on the groundwork of their predecessors of the 1930s and 1940s, this group is responsible for comedies such as Bienvenido Míster Marshall!/Welcome Mr. Marshall! (1952), The Little Apartment (1958), The Executioner (1963), Plácido (1961) or El cochecito/The Little Coach (1960). It is a tradition that both connects to the liberal and critical antecedents of the Second republic while offering up a searing social commentary on contemporary life and society. These ilm-makers drew upon the popular legacy of the grotesque – termed esperpento by playwright ramón María Valle-Inclán –, urban sketches known as sainete and their musical counterpart, the popular operetta known as zarzuela. As Mikhail Bakhtin has observed in his now classical study of medieval popular culture, these forms are common to all popular cultures the world over, only the taxonomy is distinctive to Spain. one of Bakhtin’s most signiicant insights lies in his identiication of the comic possibilities of the physical, the malleability of the human body. Bakhtin maps a popular cosmology that links the people to their surroundings; that establishes a link between the human body and society. It is no coincidence that Berlanga’s social comedies often hinge on bodily function and dysfunction. Likewise, Almodóvar’s work – and its comic incongruities – frequently turns on the luidity of the human body: sex-changes, cloning, organ transplants etc. The 1960s’ Spain witnessed the country’s tourist boom, the inlux of foreign currency, an increase in the availability of consumer goods and the commencement of a hithertounknown economic prosperity. This so-called period of ‘desarrollo’ or development, brought with it not only new material forms but sexual ones as well. The opening up of the economy led to a concomitant – albeit temporary – relaxation of the censorship laws and consequently the rise of a new form of popular ilm comedy. Labelled Landismo (owing to the frequent presence popular comic actor Alfredo Landa) these much-derided ilms saw Landa and company as Spanish juergistas preying upon foreign females with an improbable degree of success. Comedy goes some way towards undoing the critical claims that are often made for it. Classical comedy (Attic or Shakespearean) traditionally ends in harmony, in togetherness and often in marriage. It ends, that is, in the reafirmation of the established order (the family, the community or the nation). Contrastingly – in characteristically jarring form – the humour most closely associated with the comic genealogy that Berlanga represents – together with his predecessors and his cultural heirs – invariably ends in solitude. This is a comedy of loneliness, of loss and of losers. If comedy is the most socially sensitive of ilmic modes then it is no coincidence that the most powerful comedies in the history of Spanish cinema have been produced by those who lost the Civil War.

Steven Marsh

86 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Amanece, que no es poco Studio:

Compañía de Aventuras Comerciales Director:

José Luis Cuerda Producers:

Jaime Borrell, José Miguel Juárez, Antonio oliver Screenwriter:

José Luis Cuerda Cinematographer:

Poririo Enríquez Composer:

José nieto Editor:

Juan Ignacio San Mateo Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Antonio resines Luis Ciges José Sazatornil ‘Saza’ Carmen de Lirio Filming locations:

Ayna, Liétor and Molinicos (Albacete) Year:

1988

Synopsis Teodoro, an engineer who teaches at the University of oklahoma, returns to Spain to enjoy a sabbatical year. His father Jimmy has bought a sidecar motorcycle so that the two of them can take off on an adventure together. The road trip takes them to an unknown village where they observe, with initial amazement, the peculiar inhabitants’ way of life. Unusual things happen there: the Civil Guard oficers try to get the local alcoholics drunk with their favourite liquor in an orderly manner and the schoolteacher teaches his lessons directing a gospel choir. Absurd things also occur, such as the annual election for the positions of mayor, schoolteacher, priest, prostitute and adulteresses, among others, or the mass, which is a spectacle that attracts both the villagers and the foreign visitors. All this senselessness mingles with magical and supernatural elements making up a daily reality in which men sprout like plants from the soil in garden plots, the verger levitates, and the sun rises where it should not.

Critique To enter into the delirious world of Amanece, que no es poco (Day is Breaking, and That’s No Mean Feat) requires the viewer to strip away prejudices and to surrender resolutely to the low of absurdity. This is, at least, what this comedy proposes by parodying the clichés of the Spanish rural world. Cuerda, who had already started down this road in the short subject Total (1985), used this more-recent ilm to hone the basic traits of his proposal, which he employed later with less impressive results in his 1995 feature Así en el cielo cómo en la tierra/On Earth as It Is in Heaven. The imaginary place where the story takes place, although suspended in time and space, is an allegory of the traditional Spanish Francoist village, or of the period shortly after the end of the dictatorship. Thus, Cuerda connects with the spirit of the more sardonic cinema of Berlanga and Azcona, to which he pays homage in some scenes. The main innovation offered here is the shift from simple satire to pure absurdity, where the writer-director is entirely free to play with the most hackneyed stereotypes until he its them into a harmonious reality which would otherwise be impossible. Cuerda imagines a cultured population that admires Faulkner, where the forces of public order make everything function properly, even giving advice to furtive lovers; the priest arouses the village’s applause with his liturgical stagecraft; the schoolteacher’s strict pedagogy entails making his pupils sing to the point of exhaustion; the mayor is a ‘necessary’ civil authority, and the attitudes condemned by the typically conservative morality become elected ofices to be proud of. Such jocular sublimation of the cliché is conducted in a kind and less-irreverent tone than might be expected. Still, this treatment does not exclude the scathing criticism that surfaces in dialogues and at certain moments that are clearly linked to a past reality, such as the constricting surveillance of academic freedom.

Grotesque Comedy

87

Directory of World Cinema

Directed without shrillness and with a simple staging, the weight of the story falls on the ilm’s choral acting and the series of daft situations in a dramatic structure dominated by surprise. Here absurdity is wielded as an instrument of humour, which, together with the magical elements, rounds off this vision of rural ethos as an extraordinary space where anything is possible – literally – and where its inhabitants live that ethos with normality. There are echoes, then, of Miguel Mihura and Jardiel Poncela in that comic absurdity, disconnected from the existentialist overtones of European theatre. These echoes resound under the hovering presence of the magical universe of Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, successfully explored by Cuerda two years earlier in his adaptation of El bosque animado/The Living Forest (1987). There is no doubt that the ilm’s riches lie in letting the imagination invade and break through the more trite costumbrista portrait that an author devoted to describing local customs would offer, in a way that differs from the approach that the critical parody had taken until then. And in the intensity of that effort lies the explanation of the disparate audience response, depending on whether the viewers focus the intrinsic ilmic values or the ingenuity of the proposal. In fact, the ilm had a discreet reception by the public at the time of release, but over time has become in a cult ilm for many viewers.

Araceli Rodríguez Mateos

Atraco a las tres Studio:

Hesperia Films Director:

José María Forqué Producer:

Pedro Masó

Synopsis Atraco a las tres (Robbery at Three) tells the story of a group of Bank employees that one day, tired of the injustices of their superiors, decide to organize a robbery in their own branch in Madrid in the manner of the American ilms gangsters. To do this, they design a meticulous plan that will inally go wrong, because they try to do it at the same time as other real and professional gangsters. So, when the real gangsters try to rob the Bank, the employees react and manage to stop the criminals, receiving a reward from the Bank managers as if they were real heroes.

Screenwriters:

Pedro Masó Vicente Coello rafael J Salvia Cinematographer:

Alejandro Ulloa Editor:

Pedro del rey Composer:

Adolfo Waitzman

88 Spain

Critique Atraco a las tres is considered one of the best comedies of Spanish cinema. José María Forqué had directed many ilms since his debut in 1951 with Maria Morena, co-directed with Pedro Lazaga. These include Maribel y la extraña familia/Maribel and the Strange Family (1960), Usted puede ser un asesino (You may be a Murderer) (1961), Un millón en la basura (One Million in the Trash) (1966) and Las que tienen que servir (Which must serve) (1967). In 1994, the Spanish Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográicas awarded Forqué with the Goya Award of Honour and, in a sense, he could be considered a cinema craftsman without great pre-

Directory of World Cinema

Duration/ Format:

92 minutes/B/W Cast:

José Luis López Vázquez Manuel Alexandre Agustín González Alfredo Landa Filming locations:

Madrid Year

1962

tensions, but with enough talent and resources to make good entertainment. Atraco a las tres is a parody of noir ilms such as The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950); The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956); or The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), which bases its eficacy on the distortion of the reference codes, exaggeration, ridiculous situations and the using of topics such as jazz music, suspense, chiaroscuro lighting, stereotypical characters and themes like the femme fatale. The ilm-maker has been able to portray a small world inhabited by characters that have impossible dreams, who dream of making their wishes come true: to buy a Mercedes car, a mink coat, a villa in Torremolinos, a yacht to explore the coast, a farmhouse with bulls, etc. Characters that also dream of a better future without social injustice. In fact, the original idea to rob their own Bank emerged from the injustice done to the honest Don Felipe, who was dismissed without the slightest regard for being too concerned with customers: a character who has behaved like a true father during forty years of service to the state. Employees consider themselves as a very close family that wants to show solidarity with Don Felipe, carrying out a dangerous act which could also have the meaning of transgression, since one of the characters in the ilm – Don Prudencio Delgado – said: ‘El dinero del banco es sagrado’ (‘Bank money is sacred’). The ilm is also loaded with a number of allusions and ironic comments intended to criticize the capitalist system, which may Atraco a las tres, Hesperia Films.

Grotesque Comedy

89

Directory of World Cinema

have had problems with censorship of the time. For example, employees are unable to rob the neighbour, but they all believe that a Bank is different. They even say, with some ingenuity, that anything goes when you are rich, and that no one would ever discover the robbery and nothing bad could ever happen. At the end, our humble employees yield to temptation and make the decision to carry out a robbery, an act of rebellion which unfortunately leads to nothing at all: to nothing more than to neutralize, by chance, the real robbery that real criminals had planned for the same date. After that, everything returns to its place and the everyday order is restored. Employees will be recognized for their ‘heroic’ effort with a bonus and with a mention in the Bank’s Bulletin, coming once again under the power of money and social order represented by a inancial institution that seems to stand on a rigid military structure.

Manuel Canga

Belle Époque Countries of origin:

Spain Portugal France Studios:

Fernando Trueba PC Lola Films Animatógrafo French Production Director:

Fernando Trueba Producers:

Fernando Trueba Manuel Lombardero Andrés Vicente Gómez Screenwriters:

rafael Azcona José Luis García Sánchez Fernando Trueba Cinematographer:

José Luis Alcaine Art Director:

Juan Botella Composer:

Antoine Duhamel

90 Spain

Synopsis In 1931, Fernando, a young army deserter, befriends Manolo, an old man living in a small village in rural Spain. Fernando is on the point of leaving the village when he is witness to the arrival of Manolo’s four daughters: Clara, Violeta, rocío, and Luz. The ex-soldier subsequently falls in love with the girls one by one but discovers that he will have to choose – or be chosen by – only one of them.

Critique The camera approaches a suitcase sitting in the middle of a road lined by palm trees. Within moments we discover that the suitcase is illed with the garments that allow a soldier to change sides, an illustration of the fact that Spain in 1931, just before the advent of the Second republic, is a country that is changing rapidly. The suitcase is the property of Fernando, a young man who has just deserted the army, and unfortunately it is discovered by two police oficers. They form a parodic couple: one of them kills the other and eventually himself, in a tragic beginning anticipating the forthcoming Civil War. Belle Époque, however, is, in reality, homage to friendship and love. Leaving the political turmoil of the ilm’s historical setting to one side, the fate of Fernando is clear from very early on in the ilm, due to the use of hypersubjective shots when Manolo’s daughters greet their father as they leave the train that Fernando was going to take to Madrid. The spectator cannot but fall in love with each of Manolo’s daughters, or at the very least with the relationships that are established between Fernando and each of the girls: Clara, Violeta, rocío, and Luz. These girls represent four different attitudes towards life: Violeta is a lesbian who searches for a dominant position in her relationships; rocío takes pleasure in having men

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

Carmen Frías Duration:

108 minutes Cast:

Penélope Cruz Jorge Sanz Gabino Diego Fernando Fernán-Gómez Filming locations:

Arruda dos vinos, Estremoz, rios and Sobral de Monte Agraço (Portugal) Year:

1992

worship at her feet, as is the case with her sometime boyfriend Juanito; Clara is a young widow whose husband died in the river; and Luz is the youngest sister, who is prevented from sharing the sexual advances to the three older girls. The ilm is about love, and also about freedom in life and sex, in politics and religion. one of the outstanding moments in the ilm is Violeta’s seduction of Fernando, during which both of them wear garments linked to the opposite gender, taking advantage of the fact that it is Carnival. Thus, Fernando’s irst encounter with one of the four sisters leads to a reversal of roles between the feminine and the masculine. From this moment onwards it is dificult to say whether Fernando seduces or is seduced by the four sisters. yet perhaps the shot that summarizes this ilm best occurs when Amalia arrives in the village and stops in front of the house where her estranged husband Manolo is living with their daughters and Fernando. The design of the house is close to those of pre-Civil War Spain, but lit by the light of Portugal and the eye of José Luis Alcaine. The windows that each character opens become a metaphor for the many ways in which reality and life can be interpreted, in a world capable of accepting everyone, including Amalia’s lover. Each room in the house lodges someone with his or her own interpretation of life, and the whole house is open to whoever chooses to live there as a result of its owner’s free-thinking. Thus the house becomes yet another character in the story, and each person who views Belle Époque will feel compelled to say that they have passed one and a half very enjoyable hours there. Many people have enjoyed spending time in that house since the ilm was irst released. The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film allowed the ilm to be seen by a larger audience. Both critics and audiences have agreed that the ilm acts as a vehicle for understanding Spain from a more modern point of view than the one that had been exported up until this period. The ilm examines a gap in the history of Spain, a gap that may have not existed in exactly the way that it is portrayed in this ilm, but which can be re-inventend, re-told and re-lived, creating an escape route in a world that leaves so little space for freedom, love and friendship.

José Díaz-Cuesta

The Executioner El Verdugo Country of origin:

Spain Italy

Synopsis José Luis rodríguez’s job in a funeral parlour leads him to meet Amadeo, the state executioner, and subsequently his daughter Carmen, who he is then browbeaten into marrying. on reluctantly inheriting his father-in-law’s position as a means of obtaining public housing, José Luis is summoned to Mallorca to perform his irst execution. The executioner, thus, becomes the condemned man.

Grotesque Comedy

91

Directory of World Cinema

Studio:

Inter Lagar naga Films zebra Film Director:

Luis García Berlanga Producer:

nazario Belmar Screenwriters:

Luis García Berlanga rafael Azcona Ennio Flaiano Cinematographer:

Tonino delli Colli Art Director:

Luis Argüello Composer:

Miguel Asins Arbó Editor:

Alfonso Santacana Duration/Format:

87 minutes/B/W Cast:

nino Manfredi Emma Penella José Isbert Filming locations:

Madrid Year:

1963

92 Spain

Critique The Executioner is Luis García Berlanga’s bleakest and arguably inest ilm. This tragicomedy not only offers a powerful indictment of the death penalty but also provides a searing dissection of Francoist Spain of the early 1960s. Signiicantly, The Executioner was shot in the aftermath of the 1959 Stabilization Plan that sought to address the catastrophic economic effects of autarky and was, in part, responsible for the subsequent boom in tourism, and the advent of the so-called period of desarrollismo or ‘development’. Hapless José Luis is trapped in a life of drudgery in his job at a funeral parlour and forced to live in cramped conditions with his brother and family. He dreams of joining the mass exodus of Spanish workers to Germany to work as a mechanic. The thwarting of his ambitions is the hallmark of José Luis’s sorry fate. Indeed, it is a ilm that turns on the entwined elements of personal frustration and the corresponding violence of the state. Pivotal to this relation is José Luis’s meeting with Amadeo, whose genial bonhomie, his ‘normality’ is undermined by the sinister, ubiquitous presence of his briefcase, containing the garrotte and all its accouterments, which accompanies him like a fetish object. Spain’s construction boom of the 1960s was a consequence of the inlux of new workers into the city from rural areas, and the expanding state’s need to house them. This led in turn to contradictions: the consequences of the intense rhythm of modernization co-existing with traditional modes, which proved rich in comic implications. Exemplary of this is the sequence in The Executioner when José Luis, a heavily pregnant Carmen and Amadeo visit the site where they believe their future apartment is being built. José Luis abuses a man squatting suspiciously on the fringes of the land below in a clear re-enactment of the popular igure of the caganer from the Catalan nativity scene, who defecates in a corner of the Christian birth scenario. This kind of parody – the presence of ancient custom employed to colour and disrupt a contemporary event – further complicates Francoist notions of the family, a key institution in the ideology of the regime. The Executioner is a response to the attempts by Francoism to monopolize civil society. It is a ilm in which the concept of the family encounters the state in parodic form. State bureaucracy – one of Berlanga’s favourite targets – is lampooned mercilessly throughout the ilm: the fact, for example, that access to decent housing is dependent on José Luis’s acceptance of the position of executioner as inherited from his father-in-law; the monstrous intransigence (at times menacing, at times benign) of the state functionaries – members of the civil guard, prison wardens, housing oficials, ofice administrators, who conspire to dash José Luis’s hopes. These diverse elements of the ilm come together when José Luis is summoned to Mallorca to carry out his irst execution. The success of Spain’s new economic policy in promoting tourism is stressed in the abundance of foreign tourists. Carmen – to reinforce the ilm’s parody of the model family – remarks breezily on

Directory of World Cinema

receiving the news: ‘Finalmente, nunca tuvimos una luna de miel’ (‘At the end of the day we never had a honeymoon’). The reactions to The Executioner upon its screening at the 1963 Venice Film Festival testify to the strength of Berlanga’s comedy. Politically, the ilm satisied nobody. While Italian anarchists denounced the ilm as an apology for Francoism, Spain’s ambassador to Italy at the time attacked The Executioner as a slander against Spain. Finally, one of the most devastating effective sequences in the history of Spanish cinema occurs near the end of The Executioner. A long take, marked not only by technical dexterity or aesthetic quality but also by its ethics, captures the two groups in its frame – that of the executioner and that of the condemned man – in powerful comic reversal. In a whitewashed courtyard shot in silence, except for the mufled sounds of resistance, we witness the culmination of José Luis’s moral crisis as he is dragged, struggling and vomiting, his desperation palpable, cajoled by oficials of state and Church, inexorably towards the scaffold.

Steven Marsh

The Miracle of P Tinto El milagro de P Tinto Studio:

Películas Pendelton Sociedad General de Televisión (Sogetel) Director:

Javier Fesser Producers:

Gustavo Ferrada Luis Manso Javier Fesser Guillermo Fesser José Luis Garci Screenwriters:

Guillermo Fesser Javier Fesser Cinematographer:

Javier Aguirresarobe Art Director:

César Macarrón

Synopsis The owner of a Vatican-certiied host factory, P Tinto, and his wife olivia always dreamed of having a big family, without results. Trying to solve their lack of offspring – caused by their unawareness about sexual activity – the elderly couple decides to adopt an African child through a charity organization. While waiting for the child, they temporarily take in a pair of extraterrestrial dwarfs, whose spaceship broke down in the couple’s garden. The extraterrestrials’ rather easy living becomes threatened when Joselito, a tall, overweight (and Caucasian) escaped mental-institution patient knocks on P Tinto’s door. Carrying an adoption letter, found on the ground, the couple, convinced that he is the long-awaited African adoptee, gladly accepts him. With this sudden household increase, P Tinto contracts Usillos, a construction worker with career aspirations in the study of UFos, to transform his personal library into another bedroom. The odd but peaceful family life of P Tinto becomes threatened when the amateur UFo researcher starts investigating the family. Increasing the family problems, P Tinto receives the Vatican’s ‘red letter’, breaking its host-contract supply if some particular conditions are not met in a short time.

Critique Javier Fesser’s irst feature ilm, the unreal and mirthful The Miracle of P Tinto, can be included in a group of ‘excessive’ comedies that became successful among younger Spanish audiences. The ilm balances between a transnational eclecticism, appropriating and parodying different Hollywood ilm languages and genres but

Grotesque Comedy

93

Directory of World Cinema

The Miracle of P. Tinto/El milagro de P Tinto, Sociedad General del Cine / Películas Pendelton.

Composer:

Suso Sáiz Editor:

Guillermo represa Duration:

106 minutes Cast:

Luis Ciges Silvia Casanova Javier Aller Emilio Gavira Filming Locations:

La revilla (Castilla y León) Year:

1998

94 Spain

also keeping its comedy within a familiar national tone, at times untranslatable for global audiences. Following some of Fesser’s unique visual marks, already present in his two previous shorts, Aquel ritmillo (That Little Rhythm) (1995) and El Sedcleto de la Tlompeta (1996), The Miracle of P Tinto is a patchwork of national visual references, from the 1940s’ no-Do cinema reels (successful Franco propaganda ‘news and Documentaries’ screened in cinemas until the 1970s) or 1960s’ Spanish pop tunes. The Miracle of P Tinto places the family and peripheral characters in a secluded Spain in the past. However Fesser’s is not a period ilm but a rather anachronistic comedy, deploying dated references without much concern for coherency. Simultaneously, the numerous parody moments of Hollywood ilms such as ET: The Extraterrestrial (1982) or Back to the Future (1985), brings this ilm closer to the genre-parody commonly found in comedies from the late 1990s onwards. Fesser’s previous professional background in advertising seems to be revealed throughout the ilm. The glossy visual exaggeration and the fast rhythm of the scenes, marked by an impressive succession of gags, make it closer to such immediate forms of narrative. It reveals more attention to show, rather than making sense of the unpredictable unreal narrative. Such exaggeration is also present in the character typage, as it centres much of the comedy on grotesque-looking and inlated characters. Such hyperbole is also overstated in the screenplay, written in partnership with Javier’s

Directory of World Cinema

brother Guillermo – collaborator on the successful Spanish comedy radio show Gomaespuma, where it is combined with numerous slapstick moments, particularly centred in special effects and visual enhancements. As mentioned, another characteristic of The Miracle of P Tinto is constant anachronisms, a mix between national-popular typicality, so used in popular cinema under Francoism, and local-garish pop from the 1960s. The presence of the outdated narrated style or the musical sequences, for example, reinforces greatly the secluded unreal universe inhabited by the ilm characters, giving it a non-sense tone. However, such anachronisms do not transmit any serious nostalgia. Instead, the ilm becomes an absurd parody of the parental igures of authority and of the typicality that marked Spain’s irst-half of the twentieth century. This anachronistic tone becomes more centred in incoherent parody, rather than any kind of idealized relection of the past. The Miracle of P Tinto successfully transposes to the screen an exaggerated universe closer to a comic-book visual language and slapstick comedy, here taken to extremes. Perhaps such achievements allowed Fesser the chance to direct the irst instalment of the box-ofice hit Mortadelo y Filemón (2003), based on the alltime audience-favourite Spanish comic book series and cartoon of the same name.

Nuno Jorge

The National Shotgun La escopeta nacional Studio:

In-cine Director:

Luis García Berlanga

Synopsis A Catalan industrialist named Jaime Canivell, wanting to expand a business idea with the sale of his entry phone, organises a hunting trip, paid for by himself, hiring the estate of an old Spanish Marquis. There, he will have the opportunity to meet well-placed people that could use their positions to help him to succeed in business and obtain, at the same time, huge proits. Canivell will face an unknown world, dominated by vertical relationships, exchanging of favours and inluence peddling, and he will end up taking an unexpected role as a mediator between his new friends, to see his hopes of making fortune fading away.

Producer:

Alfredo Matas

Critique

Screenwriters:

Luis Garcia Berlanga (Valencia, 1921–Madrid 2010) began his career in 1951, performing alongside Juan Antonio Bardem Esa pareja feliz/That Happy Couple. Since then, he made several ilms that helped to renew Spanish ilm production, following the paths opened by the post-war Italian ilm-makers. The National Shotgun was ilmed during the Spanish political Transition, following the death in 1975 of Dictator Francisco Franco, as the irst part of a trilogy that would continue with Patrimonio Nacional/National Heritage (1980) and Nacional III/National

rafael Azcona Luis García Berlanga Cinematographer:

Carlos Suárez Art Director:

rafael Palmero

Grotesque Comedy

95

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

José Luis Matesanz Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

rafael Alonso José Sazatornil Luis Escobar José Luis López Vázquez Filming locations:

Madrid region Year:

1978

III (1982). His work is characterized by the use of an assembled company and the sequence shot: a ilming technique that tends to keep the space-time unity and attaches particular importance to long-term shots, without intermediate cuts, and that can sometimes be enhanced by the use of short focal length lenses that provide a greater visual depth. Berlanga could be considered an auteur, in the sense that French critics of the sixties gave to this term: he used to write the scripts, has maintained some stylistic continuity over time and has shown a particular view, in which the sense of humour plays an important role – a corrosive humour that shows what might be described as a sarcastic and pessimistic vision of reality. The National Shotgun could be consider as a burlesque portrait of the Spanish upper class during the last days of Franco, and it has a cast of characters dominated by ambition and desire to thrive: a Catalan industrialist who only thinks of doing business; a minister who loses his wallet and wants to please his young lover with false promises; a fascist aristocracy-serving priest; a perverted marquis who, in the past, had hurt his wife’s left eye with a bad shot; South America exiled politicians; and even a member of opus Dei who has gained a new position in the Spanish government. These are characters played by a group of wonderful actors, able to combine the most varied experiences and their talents to succeed in the most dificult ilm genre: comedy. The National Shotgun/La escopeta nacional, In-Cine.

Directory of World Cinema

The ilm-maker gives us a caricature portrait of high society, which is seen as a class without the virtues that you would expect, exposing the double standards practised by those who are close to establishment power: a fallen world, full of old glories and powerless characters who cannot satisfy their desires. The theme of ‘hunting’ could be understood as a metaphor for the bullying and greed that dominates social relationships, which are often conditioned by lattery and servility. This is a ilm whose story unfolds in little more than a day and maintains a simple linear structure, since the story shows chronological time, the logical sequence of events, without excessive disturbance of space-time relations. From the standpoint of staging, is must be said that Berlanga has carefully designed the so-called internal assembly, understood as a calculated combination of camera movements and the movement of characters through the changing space, which promotes a sense of verisimilitude and realism. In this connection, we should also point out the value of dialogues written by rafael Azcona, who wrote some of the best Spanish movie scripts with irony, double entendres and expressions taken from slang and colloquial language that bring freshness and spontaneity. These are open dialogues, which cross and disrupt each other, thus giving the appearance that we are dealing with uninished speeches that go adrift, without beginning or end, trying to adjust to circumstances. In fact, the coniguration of the dialogue its perfectly with the narrative logic of a ilm text with no action or suspense. A ilm that, at a certain point, could be described as a great parody of the canonical structure of the traditional tales.

Manuel Canga

Plácido Studio:

Jet Films, SA Director:

Luis García Berlanga Producer:

Alfredo Matas Screenwriters:

rafael Azcona Luis García Berlanga José Luis Colina José Luis Font Cinematographer:

Synopsis on Christmas Eve, a provincial town holds the procession for the campaign ‘Siente un pobre a su mesa’ (‘Seat a Poor Man at your Table’). This charitable initiative was launched by some wellmeaning ladies, sponsored by a pressure-cooker manufacturer and smartened up by movie stars from Madrid. Plácido takes part in the event with his loat, where a rich man and a poor man are sharing their food. However, Plácido’s wife, who works in a public urinal, has given him some distracting news: this is the day he has to pay the irst instalment on his three-wheeled van to avoid foreclosure. This simple step turns into an odyssey, due to bureaucracy, and particularly because Plácido cannot get away from the campaign supervisor, who entangles him in the happenings. As if this were not bad enough, an old man dies during one of the charity dinners and ends up in the van with his widow and Plácido’s family, who is longing to go home to warmth and food.

Francisco Sempere

Grotesque Comedy

97

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Manuel Asins Arbo Editor:

José Antonio rojo Duration/Format:

85 minutes/B/W Cast:

Casto Sendra ‘Cassen’ José Luis López Vázquez Elvira Quintillá Manuel Alexandre Year

1961

Critique García Berlanga’s ilmography reaches its peak in the early 1960s when he meets the screenwriter rafael Azcona. Together, they made Plácido (1961) and The Executioner (1963), milestones in Spanish movie history that offended Franco’s government and were admired abroad. Plácido is a sad comedy. By showing the deformed morals of the characters, the movie gives us a demystifying description of Spain at that time, and, by extension, a shattering image of the human condition. Up and down, back and forth, Plácido undergoes his via crucis on the hills of his town, moved by the ambition of not having his van impounded. Plácido’s prosaic exploits are used to show the wretchedness of his fellow-citizens. Selishness, hypocrisy and thoughtlessness are the characters’ main attributes. noteworthy is this provincial bourgeoisie striving to keep up appearances for their neighbours and superiors. on the day for charity par excellence, their hypocrisy extends to their puritanical practice of Catholicism with no true content, made up of mere outward forms. There is no better example than the great sham – suitably ampliied by the radio – that the Christmas Eve dinner turns into when the rich accept the underprivileged into their homes. But if the middle class makes use of the poor to seem better than they are, the other social classes do not have more noble intentions. The show-business players join in for pecuniary reasons, and, at the other extreme, the poor accept the humiliation of being like the exotica in a rafle in exchange for the promise of a lavish meal. In Plácido, personal relations depend on the dominance of the strong characters over the weak, a good example of which can be seen in the labour sphere: the bank manager rules his employees despotically, and they, in turn, show no respect for a customer – Plácido – who needs their help. The same schema is noticeable in the relationships between the main characters. Quintanilla, the supervisor of the farce, is obliging to the powerful, but constantly manipulates Plácido out of self-interest. Then again, Plácido pressurizes his brother, whose lameness is proof of his inferior position. This dark, sceptical rendering, with no moralistic or didactic pretension, is a characteristic feature of the movie. Another is its ensemble style, expertly expressed through a mise-en-scène rich in sequence shots with crowds of characters – brilliantly played by a large cast – which trigger a hullabaloo of simultaneous conversations and actions. Also prominent is the presence of death, which tinges the story with black humour. This pessimism and sadness are bearable due to the empathy and compassion we feel for Plácido, a kind if not lawless paterfamilias, played by Castro Senda ‘Cassen’. The audience feels fond of this man who is incapable of carrying out what he intends, incapable of making himself heard, always trapped by other people’s wishes. An ordinary man, whose Calvary procession is caused by his meekness in a world where charity is simply a word.

Pablo Echart

98 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Skyline La línea del cielo Studio:

Salamandra Producciones Cinematográicas Director:

Fernando Colomo Producer:

José Esteban Lasala Screenwriter:

Fernando Colomo Cinematographer:

Ángel Luis Fernández Composer:

Manzanita Editor:

Miguel Ángel Santamaría Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Antonio resines Beatriz Pérez Porro Jaime nos roy Hoffman Filming locations:

new york Year:

1983

Synopsis Looking for new opportunities and more far-reaching recognition in his ield, a Spanish photographer named Gustavo moves from Madrid to Manhattan and tries to get assignments from major American magazines such as Life and Newsweek. His only friend in new york is Jaime, a psychoanalyst who emigrated from Spain many years earlier and has settled comfortably there with his family. Gustavo’s biggest problem is his poor grasp of English, which makes it hard for him to ind useful contacts in the journalism and publishing worlds. To develop his language skills he enrolls in an adult-education class, but his progress is slow and his English is not much better at the end of the movie. To meet people who might be able to help his career he makes appointments with photography professionals, attends parties held by Jaime’s friends, and gives out samples of his work, although he is so insecure that he always leaves before anyone has time to offer an opinion. He also goes on dates with a couple of women he likes, making little progress in this area as well. Gustavo has limited time to accomplish his goals because his rented apartment is available for only a month. In the ironic inal scene he scores a major professional success that does not bring the happy ending he wanted.

Critique Although its setting is a bustling district in America’s biggest city, Skyline is an intimate ilm in many ways, viewing the urban scene through the eyes of a character that is simultaneously awed, excited, and perplexed by the things he sees and the situations he encounters. Gustavo is obviously an intelligent, sensitive, goodnatured man, and there is no reason to doubt him when he tells acquaintances that back in Spain he is a well-known and highlyregarded photographer. But lack of conidence leads him to keep a certain distance between himself and the people, places, and things that surround him. Even potentially rewarding job interviews and relationships with women are hampered by his indecisive nature and his reluctance to get emotionally close to someone who might eventually let him down. The intimate tone and subtle psychology of Skyline does not prevent it from being a thoroughly cosmopolitan ilm, however, presenting a multifaceted portrait of new york as well as the shy photographer who strolls around it. Although photos of buildings are his specialty, Gustavo is so preoccupied with making contacts that he neglects to take pictures of Manhattan’s architecture; but director Fernando Colomo makes up for it, ilming both the enormous scale and the leeting, eccentric details that give a great city much of its colour and personality – three men twirling batons on an empty street, a music lesson unexpectedly illing the air with song, a doorman who insists on giving Gustavo books from Colombia that he will never read. Telephones are another theme in Skyline, posing a steady stream of challenges to Gustavo’s limited English, as when he misunderstands his landlady’s message that

Grotesque Comedy

99

Directory of World Cinema

she is coming back to town and he has to vacate the premises for several days. The charm of Skyline comes less from its narrative events than from its gently-satirical portrait of a man who could probably spend a year in new york without mastering the language or the folkways, much less the small talk and dating rituals. one of the most memorable scenes takes place at a small party designed to make Gustavo feel more at home; someone tells an excruciatingly-dull anecdote about a chance encounter with Jacqueline Kennedy onassis, and when it is inally over we realize that Gustavo has not understood a thing, which made it twice as boring for him as for us. other amusing moments arise during the language lessons he religiously attends. He is delighted when a teacher says ‘Perfecto’ after he speaks in English, but it turns out Perfecto is the name of the student she is calling on next. From another teacher he learns that while Spanish is luid and smooth, English is a language of ‘little explosions’ from the lips – not much help to Gustavo, whose trouble is with comprehension, not pronunciation. Wry, understated episodes like these would fall completely lat if they were not acted with a precision and inesse so subtle that the effect is as down-to-earth and natural as everyday behaviour in real life. Skyline excels in its performances, thanks largely to Antonio resines as Gustavo and to supporting actors Jaime nos as the psychiatrist and roy Hoffman as a Spanish-speaking writer who befriends the protagonist. Full-bodied Flamenco music sung by Manzanita on the soundtrack adds to the atmosphere as well. Skyline was well received by American critics. The New York Times called it ‘a witty, low-keyed Spanish comedy’ and The Christian Science Monitor deemed it ‘modest, charming, and deftly made’. Colomo has directed many subsequent ilms, but Skyline remains his best-known achievement in the country it satirizes so deliciously.

David Sterrit

Strange Journey El extraño viaje Studio:

Impala Izaro Films Pro Artis Ibérica Director:

Fernando Fernán-Gómez

Synopsis In a small town not far from Madrid lives the dominating Ignacia with her two siblings Venancio and Paquita. Every weekend Fernando and his band go to the local social club to play. While Beatriz, his iancée is waiting for just the right moment to marry him, the young Fernando is having a secret affair with Ignacia, not forgetting the young and attractive Angelines, who hopes to become an actress and leave the village for good. All these dreams and dark passions will entangle each and every one of our characters.

Critique ‘Vivimos asediados’ (‘We live besieged’), remarks Ignacia to her siblings, Venancio and Paquita. The oppression of a small town

100 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

José López Moreno Francisco Molero Screenwriter:

Pedro Beltrán Cinematographer:

José F Aguayo Art Director:

Tomás Fernández Composer:

Cristóbal Halffter Editor:

rosa G Salgado Duration/Format:

92 minutes/B/W Cast:

Carlos Larrañaga Lina Canalejas Tota Alba rafaela Year:

1964

played off against the freedom of the stranger’s city is at the forefront of the ilm’s plot. Its opening scenes establish this conlict by showing us various newspapers and magazines with photos of famous actresses, followed by the hand of a woman carrying a corset similar to one which she claims was stolen from her shop. The eroticism and modernity present in this piece of lingerie and the glamour of the magazines are contrasted with the chorus of women scandalized by the theft. The local dance hall ‘El Progreso’ also dramatically reproduces this conlict between old and new. The attractive Angelines, free of prejudice, brazenly dances while the men lewdly stare and the women quietly express their disapproval. And thus is the universe of this small town on the outskirts of Madrid, where certain conventions are to blame for those who live out an oppressed life. The journey which the title suggests is the necessity to escape the choking atmosphere of oppression in search of cleaner, fresher air. In what way, however, is this journey strange? In fact, Angelines abandons the town in search of her dream of becoming an actress without causing any surprise whatsoever. However, the main characters of The Strange Journey are Ignacia, together with her brother and sister, and Fernando, who far from facing up to the conlict between tradition and modernity, choose to ‘let things lie’; assuming such a role essentially breaks their relationships down to perversion and deceit. It is this struggle between law and compulsion which marks what is to come in Strange Journey. The law is represented by this town in which Ignacia, as much as Venancio and Paquita, who in turn fear their domineering sister, live captive inside a home where it seems Strange Journey/El extraño viaje, Impala.

Directory of World Cinema

we can see a sign saying, ‘Deja la lujuria un mes, y ella te dejará tres’, (‘Ignore lust for a month and she’ll ignore you for three’). not forgetting the law of marriage, personiied by Beatriz, which Fernando evades, Ignacia’s money being his principle interest. on one side, then, law is the besieger; on the other, impulse, mainly in the form of lust and wealth, represents liberation. The town’s ‘backward’ inhabitants personify this law which Ignacia scorns while, at the same time, unleashing her own severe authority over her brother and sister, thus by her own hand adding to this law which she so despises. Lust, in its sexually-unrequited form, will be Ignacia’s escape valve. Fernando will also see himself caught up in all this lust, although in his case it is a lust for money. First he creates the story of the paralysed brother and, if that is not enough, he also manages to get himself tangled up in the plan of his capricious lover to escape abroad. Ignacia will ind herself victim to her own brother and sister, representatives of the ‘backwardness’ of the town in which she is besieged; the same is true of Fernando’s imaginary paralysed brother, made up to quench his economic thirst. By the time he ‘kills’ him, in order to do away with the lie which kept him from marrying, it is already too late: impulse has been set free. Lust, and the money with which it is associated, condemns Ignacia, Paquita and Venancio to a one-way journey; in Fernando’s case, it will be journey to prison.

Salva Torres Martínez

The Swindlers Los tramposos Studio:

Agata Films Director:

Pedro Lazaga

Synopsis Paco and Virgilio are two amiable con men, barely managing to scrape together a living on the streets of Madrid. Their shady dealings and scams often imply having to spend some time in jail. However, their lives change when Virgilio falls in love with Julita, Paco’s sister. Unlike them, she is decent and hardworking and in no way wants a delinquent boyfriend. The two friends decide to go straight and, along with a third friend, ‘El canijo’ (‘The puny one’), they create a travel agency, though with an unclear future.

Producer:

José Luis Dibildos

Critique

Screenwriters:

Premiered in 1959, The Swindlers is one of the most popular ilms in Spanish cinema. This comedy, representative of the Franco regime’s developmental stage, represents the typical picaresque characters found in sainetes, traditional one-act comedies, but modernizing them to the point that the protagonists try to make money through the incipient tourism industry. The stars of The Swindlers are fun, common criminals that manage to maintain some sort of decency which leads to their scams never being completely successful. At times, their victims

José Luis Dibildos Miguel Martín Art director:

Manuel Merino Composer:

Antonio García Abril

102 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

Alfonso Santacana Duration:

88 minutes Cast:

Tony Leblanc Antonio ozores Concha Velasco Laura Valenzuela Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1959

are also portrayed as more heartless and cruel than the protagonists themselves, whose only dream is to survive without having to work. However, this also implies having to spend several months’ stints in jail, which the three friends refer to as spending time in the city of Ávila to keep Julita from inding out. Though not included in the ilm’s credits, Luis García Berlanga also contributed to the screenplay: his inluence can be seen in the fact that The Swindlers is not based on a single plot, rather, a series of more-or-less-comical gags which make up the majority of the ilm. The role of the male protagonists in the ilm is clearly established and similar to that of clowns. Virgilio is the brains while Paco is less than bright. ‘El canijo’, however, is the one who always receives the blows. The female characters have a clear mission in this ilm: to attempt to redeem the criminals, reintroducing them into society through honest hard work. As occurred in many of the so-called ‘developmental comedies’ in Spain at the time, it was ilmed in colour and very few interiors are seen, the streets of Madrid becoming another protagonist. one of the most famous scenes takes place at the Atocha train station, involving the famous estampita (literally, ‘stamps’, small religious picture cards) scam in which a greedy man from the countryside, newly arrived in Madrid, is ‘freed’ of his money. There are three essential roles in this scam: a con man pretending to be mentally retarded who throws money on to the street saying that they’re printed religious cards; the greedy victim who thinks he can make money from the irst (referred to as ‘el meningítico’, that is, suffering from meningitis); and the accomplice who allies himself with the ‘bumpkin’ and convinces the latter to give the mentally-handicapped individual some real money in exchange for the estampitas. When the greedy man from the countryside opens the bag which he thought would include a sizeable wad of bills, he realizes that, just as the ‘Meningítico’ said, it was full of nothing more than simple religious pictures. After numerous unsuccessful scams, Paco and Virgilio decide to create a travel agency. Though the famous slogan, ‘Spain is different’, would not be coined for several years, this ilm is clearly representative of the slogan. It does not matter that foreigners live better lives and have greater freedom. Deep down, all Spaniards know (as is afirmed in this and other ilms from this period) that they are in fact the envy of others for having been born in Spain. other countries do not have as much sunshine, their food and drinks are not as good and, especially, they lack the joy and humour with which Spaniards are endowed. once again, as occurs in the other period comedies, love is what seems to redeem the protagonists. Julita not only succeeds in Virgilio giving up his criminal ways, she also inds him a job in the company where she works. The picaresque characters thus become ofice workers. Their dreams of luxury cars end up materializing as small, utilitarian vehicles with which to get behind the wheel and prance around.

Fátima Gil Grotesque Comedy 103

IBERIAN DRAMA

Directory of World Cinema

Iberian drama in Spanish cinema could be deined by a series of recurrent themes whose priority has varied with the socio-cultural evolution of the country. A new wave of national ilm-makers that has emerged since the early nineties is managing to leave behind many (though not all) of the burdensome obsessions which have haunted their predecessors under the strict censorship of the fascist regime, but also far beyond the long dark night of Francoism. They have been replaced by other, more contemporary concerns, and by a different way of expressing them, though, at core, a few themes have remained intergenerational, proving how culturally-rooted they are. The fact that the list of ilm entries in this section is headed by Viridiana (1961) gives evidence of the importance of the irst Spanish ilm ever to become an international critical success. After John Huston had famously championed Nazarín (1959) two years earlier, the Western world was eager to see the result of Buñuel’s brief return to shoot a ilm in Spain, and rewarded it deservingly. Viridiana won the Palme d’or at Cannes, France willingly re-adopted its director almost four decades after his surrealistic outburst, and its two lead actors, Paco rabal and Fernando rey, began to work with major international ilm-makers. religion and sexual repression, so intimately linked, and the smothering effects of family relationships are issues that converge here in the igure of Uncle Jaime, who personiies the struggle of the patriarchal system, a theme that is also present in the ilm adaptation of Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba/The House of Bernarda Alba and in more modern productions such as Ulloa’s Alas de mariposa/Butterfly Wings (1991). However, in these two ilms, the mother igure, herself the irst victim of this system, is paradoxically willing to extend it beyond the patriarch’s death with the ierce treatment of her daughters, whose only possibility of survival is to lee the family home. Another recurrent issue is the devastating Spanish Civil War, which Carlos Saura, the only national cinematic legend still directing in top form, metaphorically presented in The Hunt (1966) with crude realism, not a contradiction in terms considering the gagging conditions of ilm-making at the time of production. Its consequences have loomed over generations of Spaniards, and will still turn up in twenty-irst-century ilms such as La ciudad sin límites/The City of no Limits (2002), where this time it will be the son who will battle his oppressive mother in order to ind out more about his father’s hidden past. The claustrophobic, open landscape representative of Franco’s isolated Spain where three friends gather to hunt those mute and helpless rabbits (Saura ironically cast actor Alfredo Mayo, one of the leading actors of the fascist regime, as Paco, an abbreviation of the dictator’s irst name), and which has a continuity in Mario Camus’ claustrophobic The House of Bernarda Alba (1987), where the surrounding landscape is only an extension of its imprisoning four walls (together with Yerma and Bodas de sangre/Blood Wedding, the latter adapted for the screen by Saura himself, the three original plays make up what is actually known as Lorca’s rural trilogy). The striking symbolism of both Viridiana and The Hunt was inevitable, given the strict Francoist censorship imposed, which allowed

Left: Viridiana. Films 59 / José Esteban Alenda.

Iberian Drama

105

Directory of World Cinema

for only a highly-encrypted cinematic language to deal with issues made oficially invisible by a dictatorial regime. In The House of Bernarda Alba, however, its symbolism is mainly due to the poetic nature of the literary text it is based on. In any case, the themes presented by Buñuel, Saura and Lorca (via Camus) appeal to timeless national socio-cultural assets. It was only in the 1990s when Spanish cinema, as a whole, started dealing with more contemporary concerns, and with a far more straightforward, realistic presentation. Unemployment, for instance, was foregrounded in a major production with Los lunes al sol/Mondays in the Sun as late as 2002, even though the country’s post-war shortage of jobs had resulted in a massive emigration of Spanish unskilled labour to other Western European countries since the 1950s, a fact that had been muted by Francoist censorship, but also by subsequent democratic governments. David Sterrit mentions John Cassavettes as a cinematic reference for director León de Aranoa, to which we could add, thematically, the popularity in Spain of Ken Loach’s ilms concerning the British working class in the early 1990s (eventually, two of his Hispanic context productions had a strong Spanish inancial backing) or even the comical portrayal of redundancy in Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) at a time when, in Spain, only En la puta calle!/Hitting Bottom (Enrique Gabriel, 1997) had dealt with this theme. León de Aranoa and Gabriel also included the issue of foreign immigration, present in Mondays in the Sun in the igure of russian Serguei, because, since the turn of the century, Spain has become a destination for foreign unskilled workers rather than an exporter. This theme is also presented in Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World, but from a different perspective: that of Latin-American women trying to settle down in Spain with their local partners in an initially-hostile rural environment; here, Damián will confront his own mother in order to have his Dominican girlfriend and her children stay with him. Its director, Iciar Bollaín, and her colleague Isabel Coixet are deinitely not illing in any kind of female quota; they are highly praised directors in Spain regardless of their gender. They have both drawn out, in any case, remarkable female characters facing contemporary concerns which transcend national borders. In La vida secreta de las palabras/The Secret Life of Words, a Serbian woman victim of the civil war in former yugoslavia arrives at an oilrig in the middle of nowhere with an all-male population of various nationalities, bringing together several contemporary issues mentioned above such as ethnical co-existence, employment, the role of women, etc. Jaime rosales also tackles family conlicts in La soledad/Solitary Fragments (2007), in this case the relationship among three sisters, but it is his presentation of indiscriminate terrorism and how it affects anonymous citizens that makes it remarkable, especially in the formal composition of the cinematic frame throughout the ilm, divided into two shots of the same scene without, apparently, any syntactic priority. on the whole, while family conlicts have remained as a thematic source for Iberian drama in Spanish cinema under different forms, religion and the sexual repression associated with it have all but vanished, being replaced by everyday realities such as unemployment, terrorism or the socio-cultural position of women in twenty-irst-century Spain. It is yet to be seen, however, if the Spanish Civil War and, specially, its cruel aftermath, will inally be documented by national ilm-makers or deinitely discarded as a subject; The City of No Limits is an interesting attempt, but surprisingly, it is Ken Loach who has come the closest so far with Tierra y libertad/Land and Freedom.

John D Sanderson

106 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Alone Solas Studio:

Maestranza Films Director:

Benito zambrano Producer:

Antonio P Pérez Screenwriter:

Benito zambrano Cinematographer:

Tote Trenas Art Director:

Lala obrero Composer:

Antonio Meliveo Editor:

Synopsis Seville, late 1990s. An elderly woman arrives in the city to take care of her husband, who is in hospital. She stays in a dingy apartment with her estranged daughter, María, a 35-year-old woman with an alcohol problem who works as a cleaner. María discovers she is pregnant by her abusive boyfriend, who irst refuses to accompany her to the abortion clinic and, later, sneers at the idea of María raising the child. Meanwhile her mother has forged a friendship with the lonely elderly neighbour downstairs, who invites her to dinner in his lat. Circumstances force her to stay at the hospital and she misses the date. She compensates for this by cooking for him and, later, nursing him through a mild sickness. She also tends María after she suffers a fall when heavily drunk. Guilt-ridden, the daughter takes her mother’s place at the hospital caring for her brutish father, who refuses to even talk to her. When the father is discharged from the hospital, the mother returns to the countryside after an emotional farewell from the neighbour. Later that night María cooks dinner for the neighbour and tells him about her abusive father. When she reveals her pregnancy, the neighbour offers to become an ‘adoptive grandfather’ if she keeps the child. The ilm closes with a happier María, the neighbour and her child visiting the cemetery where both her parents are now buried.

Fernando Pardo Duration:

Critique

101 minutes

Opera prima of the Andalusian writer and director Benito zambrano, Alone is a modestly shot ilm with a cast of almost unknown actors that managed to conquer audiences with its slowpaced exploration of a mother-daughter relationship. Given the subject, it is not surprising that most settings in the ilm are domestic; places where zambrano – a self-confessed theatre lover – can capture human intimacy and conlict. External locations feel stilted and contrived in comparison and are ilmed as mere illustrations of the characters’ social status. The action moves forward in a succession of one-to-one conversations where the characters verbalize the cause of their inner dramas. But, in Alone, silence is almost as expressive as dialogue, and it is at those moments when zambrano focuses on one actor alone that a real connection between the character and the audience is born. The dramatic tension of these long-held close-ups is supported by the melancholic notes of Antonio Meliveo’s score, urging the viewer to approach these characters with tenderness and respect. Architectonic elements are also central to the characterization process. The blank stare of the walled-up window in María’s house symbolizes her aggressiveness, whilst the glass pane at the ICU standing between her mother and her father speaks volumes of the older woman’s passive resistance and isolation. The men are equally deined by the spaces they inhabit: the hospital bed to

Cast:

María Galiana Ana Fernández Carlos Alvarez-novoa Antonio Dechent Paco de osca Juan Fernández Film Locations:

Carmona (Seville) Year:

1999

Iberian Drama

107

Directory of World Cinema

Alone, Maestranza Films.

which he is consigned for the duration of the ilm represents the patriarchal immobility of the father, whereas the constant perambulations of the neighbour mirror his open-mindedness; he is also associated with stairs and open windows, locations that echo his desire for companionship. Alone is a prime example of the best kind of socio-realist cinema, one that manages to escape local issues to address more universal concerns, particularly how to survive in this world whilst keeping our dignity. on irst impressions, the professional men in the ilm are the only ones who can achieve this. The doctor and María’s boyfriend are certain of their position in society, although in the case the boyfriend this is only temporary; he is a younger version of María’s father who will, in his old age, also search for reassurance about ‘being a good man’. Ultimately this is a ilm about women and about the weapons they have acquired and the armours they have woven through generations in order to survive. Some of these, like humour or endurance, are shared by the other unseen members of society, old people, to whom this ilm pays a moving homage. The ending has been criticized because it casts María in the traditional role of mother and carer, although the notion is subverted by the atypical family unit she forms with the elderly neighbour.

108 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Finally, this rather unrealistic coda also highlights by contrast the austerity of the acting, the measured directorial style and the strengths of an emotive but honest narrative.

Victoria Pastor-González

Butterfly Wings Alas de mariposa

Synopsis

Cinematographers:

Carmen’s irstborn child is a girl, Ami, and her father-in-law, Alejandro, is extremely disappointed. Carmen then becomes obsessed with giving a son to her husband, Gabriel, a garbage collector, who tries to calm her down since he is extremely happy with their now 6-year-old daughter. When Carmen does inally get pregnant, Ami progressively feels left aside. Alejandro is seriously ill and dies before his daughter-in-law gives birth to a son, and the tension and incomprehension increase within Ami until everything explodes when she suffocates her baby brother. Fifteen years later mother and daughter still do not talk to each other even though they are living under the same roof, and it is Gabriel who is unsuccessfully trying to build bridges between them. When Ami brings him a sandwich to him on night-shift, one of her father’s colleagues, Gorka, rapes her, and in the ensuing ight Gabriel is beaten up and left paralysed and unable to talk, as was his father before him. And, as her mother was before her, it is Ami who is now pregnant.

Aitor Mantxola Enric Davi

Critique

Studio:

Gasteizko zinema Fernando Trueba Director:

Juanma Bajo Ulloa Producers:

Juanma Bajo Ulloa Joseba nafarrate Screenwriters:

Juanma and Eduardo Bajo Ulloa

Art Director:

Satur Idarreta Composer:

Bingen Mendizábal Editor:

Pablo Blanco Duration:

109 minutes Cast:

Silvia Munt Fernando Valverde Laura Vaquero Susana García Filming Locations:

Vitoria (Basque Country) Year:

1991

When Butterfly Wings was released in 1991, there had never been a portrayal of tormented childhood like it in Spanish cinema. The observant confusion in Laura Vaquero (Ami’s) gaze can only ind a precedent in Ana Torrent’s eyes in The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Cría! (1976) but, here, Ami is not an unbiased witness of adult misdoings under Franco’s dictatorship, she is an active victim of oppressive family circumstances which will lead her, unknowingly, to murder. With its dark expressionistic cinematography, Bajo Ulloa’s opera prima can actually be considered a precedent to a number of ilms by Spanish-based directors linked to a genre, horror, which was very popular at the turn of the century and beyond. We can ind traces of it in Jaume Balagueró’s The Nameless (1999), Darkness (2002) and Fragile (2005), and in Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006); even in Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others (2001) and the more recent Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage (2007). It should come as no surprise then that this 24-year-old ilm director from Vitoria won the Concha de Oro for Best Film at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, where he was conveniently hailed as a landmark of Basque cinema, a nationalistic project that never materialized. not that Bajo Ulloa seems to be sympathetic to local tradition. Issues such as patriarchal values by which a irstborn son is

Iberian Drama

109

Directory of World Cinema

Butterfly Wings/Alas de mariposa, Fernando Trueba.

expected in order to prolong the family name, the misogynist contempt with which Gabriel is met by his colleagues because of his daughter, or the religious iconography that terriies young Ami, reveal a willingness to expose a culture of submission. As a matter of fact, the young girl will develop her own imagery – puerile, colourful butterlies drawn on paper that, in her late adolescence, will become dark metallic sculptures resembling gothic cruciixions – as a result of the traumatic circumstances she has been through. The soundtrack is also an important element, with the sinister four knocks of the grandfather’s walking-stick in order to draw attention towards him, or the late-night thunder that terriies Ami, supported by the dramatic musical score of Bingen Mendizábal. But it is the interior shots, with low lighting coming in through the windows, the long corridors and even the black-and-white television showing Bajo Ulloa’s short El reino de Víctor (Victor’s Kingdom) (he wanted to use the smothering scene in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a source of inspiration for Ami, but never got the permission) which mainly provide the gloomy atmosphere. When half way through the ilm, immediately after the baby’s death, the action moves ifteen years forward, things can

110 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

only get worse for Ami, who regularly cuts herself on her arms, and whose irst sexual experience is rape. Everything is even darker than before, except when she steals bottles of milk in the broad daylight in order to save enough money to escape from home, her only hope for survival. In spite of Butterfly Wings’ critical approval, his also-remarkable following ilm, The Dead Mother, and the huge box-ofice success of Airbag, a comedy which had no connection with his two previous ilms, Bajo Ulloa remained an outsider for the Spanish ilm industry. He still is.

John D Sanderson

The City of No Limits En la ciudad sin límites Studio:

Icónica Patagonik Film Group zebra Producciones Director:

Antonio Hernández Producers:

José nolla Antonio Saura Screenwriters:

Enrique Brasó Antonio Hernández Cinematographer:

Unax Mendía Art Director:

Gabriel Carrascal Composer:

Víctor reyes Editor:

Patricia Enis Javier Laffaille Duration:

125 minutes

Synopsis Víctor, a young astrophysicist, returns to Europe from Argentina, where he is currently living with his girlfriend. In fact, he goes to Paris to meet up with his mother, his brothers and their wives and children (and also the lover of one of them). There, they should face up to the imminent death of their father, Max, who is dying of cancer. Since he is convinced that his father’s odd behaviour is not only a sign that he may be losing his mind, the main character obsessively tries to dig out the remote secret from the past that haunts the old man. His investigation leads up to a lood of ugly revelations; among them Max’s homosexuality; the ight between his two oldest sons to control the pharmaceutical company he set up; and also the episode in which rancel, who was his partner and his comrade in a cell of the Communist Party during Max’s exile in the French capital, was betrayed by his mother, Marie, in order to prevent him from leaving. not even Víctor is immune to this catharsis, because the adulterous relationship he once had with Carmen, his brother Alberto’s wife, is also disclosed.

Critique With one of the most erratic and stimulating careers in Spanish ilm-making of the last 30 years (consisting of barely a dozen titles, including feature ilms for the big screen, TV ilms and other hybrid formats), Antonio Hernández only managed to leave behind the making of television shows and establish himself in the industry, devoting himself entirely to directing iction, on the basis of the critical and relative commercial impact of Lisboa (1999). Free, perhaps because of his long small-screen experience, from some very widespread prejudices in the Spanish creative world about whether it is appropriate to respect public taste and seduce audiences, Hernández always makes a virtue of a careful audiovisual technique, forging a modern, attractive style. He also has well-deined favourite themes (the tense universe of family sagas, relationships between sex and power, the weight of inheritances on children, all the more so when they are revealed

Iberian Drama

111

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Leonardo Sbaraglia Fernando Fernán-Gómez Geraldine Chaplin Filming locations:

París (France) Year:

2002

to be stained with blood) and a clear desire to take risks, in the form of mixtures of genres and imbalances of tone that are not always well resolved. In writing the script for The City of No Limits, the ilm-maker collaborated with the veteran critic, scriptwriter and occasional director Enrique Brasó. The idea of the ilm goes back to the beginning of the 1980s. This explains its thematic continuity with certain narratives, appearance and discourses fundamental to the Spanish cinema of late Francoism and the Transition: on one hand what was known as metaphorical cinema, exempliied by Carlos Saura – hence the contribution of Brasó, author of the irst important monograph on this director, and the presence of Geraldine Chaplin; on the other, the coded (more hermetic) story with a pattern instituted by the Víctor Erice/Elías Querejeta duo in The Spirit of the Beehive (1973). The result is as curious as it is stimulating, moving between eras. In accordance with his eclectic spirit, Hernández opts for a bold, risky plan verging on fantasy, and for comic moments, but this is effective in as far as it puts across to the spectator the leading character’s feeling of adventure in identifying with his father and submerging himself in his crazy mental universe. The ilm opens with a memorable prologue in which Max’s pronunciation of his lover’s name while allowing a button to fall establishes the enigma (in a clear nod to Citizen Kane’s ‘rosebud’) and it closes with an ambiguous ending. In between it keeps up a reckless pace marked by a majestic melody (courtesy of Víctor reyes) as it develops its tangled, melodramatic and intriguing plot. Under all this, and between the lines, beats the pulse of an emotional process of a father’s discovery and rehabilitation through his son, in the last great performance by Fernando Fernán-Gómez. The City of No Limits is, ultimately, the irst text entirely imbued with the ethic of that controversial concept so central to contemporary Spain that has come to be called Historical Memory.

Agustín Rubio Alcover

Flowers from Another World Flores de otro mundo Director:

Icíar Bollaín Studio:

Producciones La Iguana Alta Films

112 Spain

Synopsis Flowers from Another World starts with a bus full of Spanish and South American women going to Santa Eulalia, a village in Spain, for a special festival that the men in town organize every year. on this day, women interested in meeting men to start a relationship may go to the town and try their best at love. This year’s festivities will forever change the lives of two local men. Damián is a farmer who lives alone with his mother. He is enthralled by Patricia, a Dominican immigrant looking to get legal residential status in Spain so that she can offer a better future to her two children. The second man, Alfonso, has a greenhouse in which he cultivates exotic lowers. He is deeply moved by and enamored of Marirrosi,

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Santiago García de Leániz Enrique González Macho Screenwriters:

Icíar Bollaín Julio Llamazares

a nurse from Bilbao who is divorced and looking for love again in life. But there is also a third couple. Carmelo is a building contractor who met a young Milady while on ‘sexual tourism’ in Cuba. After visiting her in Cuba several times, he decides to bring her back to Spain to live with him. But despite the ease with which they all seem to meet, the ilm ironically reveals how much more dificult it is for people to stay together.

Cinematographer:

Teo Delgado

Critique

Art Director:

Since the late 1980s and particularly in the 1990s there was an inlux of female directors into the ilm industry in Spain, contributing to the development of what some critics named the renaissance or the rejuvenation of Spanish Cinema. Icíar Bollaín belongs to this new generation of directors. After a long career as an actress, her debut behind the camera was the female road movie Hola, ¿estás sola?/ Hi, Are You Alone? (1995). With every consecutive ilm, she gained increasing recognition for her documentary style and her use of the camera as a tool for the observation of social reality. Te doy mis ojos/ Take My Eyes (2003), a brave and honest exploration into the subject of domestic violence, won ive Goya Awards. In Flowers from Another World, Bollaín’s almost anthropological gaze avoids stereotypical views of Spanish rural life or the representation of immigration. Instead of opting for the spectacular aspect of cinema, the director searches for an authentic form of representation that brings to the big screen a marginalized collective: women immigrants. The discreet and transparent gaze of the camera observes them without intervention, allowing us more insight into the characters and the spaces their daily lives inhabit while showing an enormous respect for their desires and aspirations. This focus on authenticity does not mean that Bollaín does not have a point of view. As in Greek theatre, the director uses the voice of the elderly men of Santa Eulalia as the Chorus in order to expose, with irony, and humour, the ancestral racist and patriarchal ghost of Spanish society in the sequence when Carmelo, returning from Cuba, shows the exotic ‘merchandise’ he brought back from the old Spanish colony: the elderly estimate the high value of the black girl by the good condition of her teeth and the big size of her lips, both pre-requisites for a great and good sexual service. In another sequence, when they observe how she walks freely by herself along the town streets, the men’s advice to Carmelo, if he does not want to lose his ‘wild’ Cuban possession, is to ‘tame’ her fast. The rapid economic and social changes that Spain has experienced in the past 20 years have created new realities and. with them, new fear that the increasing presence of women in the public arena and the increasing number of immigrants can be perceived as a danger to old patriarchal structures, not used to negotiating with the new agencies from the other gender or other cultures. Flowers from Another World exposes many of the conlicts that derive from these new realities – men/woman, Spaniard/foreigner – through the eyes of these female immigrants, especially Patricia. But the

Manuel Martín Cuenca Editor:

Ángel Hernández zoido Music:

Pascal Gaigne Duration:

106 minutes Cast:

José Sancho Lissette Mejía Luis Tosar Marilín Torres Filming locations:

Guadalajara region (Castilla-La Mancha). Year:

1999

Iberian Drama

113

Directory of World Cinema

director offers a solution: the mixing of races. The photo-shoot that ends the ilm is a good example: the newly-formed couple, Damián-Patricia, her children, female friends and his mother. It is the director’s invitation to the spectator: the formation of an extended interracial family of national and foreigners as a new model of Spanish family.

María Camí-Vela

The House of Bernarda Alba La casa de Bernarda Alba Studio:

Paraíso Films Director:

Mario Camus Producers:

Jaime Borrell José Miguel Juárez Antonio oliver Screenwriter:

Mario Camus Antonio Larreta (Based on Federico García Lorca's play) Cinematographer:

Fernando Arribas Art Director:

rafael Palmero Editor:

José María Biurrún Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Irene Gutiérrez Caba Ana Belén Florinda Chico Enriqueta Carballeira Year:

1987

114 Spain

Synopsis After the death of her second husband, widow Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning on her ive daughters, who will have to stay indoors at the family home embroidering and fulilling other household chores, accompanied by housekeeper Poncia, maid Prudencia and Bernarda’s insane mother, who is locked up in the attic. only the eldest daughter, Angustias, who inherited a large sum of money from her father, Bernarda’s irst husband, is allowed to be wooed by one Pepe el romano. When Adela, the youngest, confronts the strict mourning rules, it is revealed that Pepe is wooing her as well, conirming the assumption that he was only interested in Angustias’ money. The secret dates Adela and Pepe have at night are disrupted by another daughter, Martirio, also in love with him and, as a result, the repressed sexual tension explodes and will eventually lead to tragic consequences.

Critique Together with Bodas de Sangre (Carlos Saura, 1981), The House of Bernarda Alba is the most effective cinematic adaptation of a García Lorca play. Its director, Mario Camus, knows very well how to transfer the playwright’s symbolism to the screen, and theatre buffs will recognize several canonical visual features. The original play is located entirely within the family home, though the ilm starts with the funeral at church, where mother, daughters and acquaintances pray while the maids prepare a reception. The typical Andalusian white plastered walls are the claustrophobic background for the young female igures dressed in black, under the oppression of their tyrannical mother, who is determined to prolong the patriarchal regime of her deceased husband. Tragedy ensues when the youngest daughter, Adela (played by Spanish star singer and actress Ana Belén) does not fulill her duty of ilial obedience; she stands out among the rest of the mainly interchangeable sisters by wearing a pale green dress, which makes an impact against the grim interior setting. She seduces Pepe el romano, who we shall never see clearly: in a play with no male characters, all men are faceless igures in extreme long shots. The repressed sexual tension involves an audience who, as the daughters, are not allowed to see much of what is happening beyond the walls. The darkness they live in is emphasized by the

Directory of World Cinema

backlighting of the windows; freedom is outside, they are shut away inside. They take baths in their clothes in order to prevent any impure feelings, they must not talk to strangers and they dare not talk to one another for fear of being betrayed; but they hear a lot, and so does the audience. Their ageing grand-mother screams from the attic that she wants to get married and warns against bearing white-haired (i.e. dead) babies; the wedding dress she wears portrays her as the id of her repressed grand-daughters. There is a stallion that kicks against the walls of the stable next door as a loud reminder of the virility the sisters are missing in their lives of reclusion. And we can hear harvestmen singing at the local women to open up their doors and windows, while the Alba household listens quietly behind drawn curtains; only the hens in their own backyard cackle and rustle at any hint of life, voicing their owners’ repression. We do see, through the eyes of Martirio, how Adela and Pepe passionately embrace in the bluish nights that evoke the melodramatic canon, and we also see later on in the broad daylight how an unwedded local female is lynched in the street after she has got rid of her unborn child; Adela’s shocked reaction makes us suspect that she is pregnant by Pepe. Bernarda produces various weapons to impose order, and even though the housekeeper Poncia (like Pontius Pilatus, she is a traitor, here, to the patriarchal system) takes away from her the whip with which Bernarda beats up Angustias and, later on, Adela breaks her walking stick in two pieces, nobody can get hold of the rile with which Bernarda shoots at Pepe. The recurrent surrendering silence of the ilm is restored in the end.

John D Sanderson

The Hunt La caza Studio:

Elías Querejeta PC Director:

Carlos Saura Producer

Elías Querejeta Screenwriters:

Carlos Saura Angelino Fons Cinematographer:

Luis Cuadrado Teo Escamilla

Synopsis Three former friends (José, Paco and Luis) get together to hold a hunt on the farm of one of them. As the day progresses, they reveal details of their lives and, above all, the ties that bind, through interior monologues. José is in the process of separation from his wife and has a lover; Paco has managed to grow thanks to an advantageous marriage; and Luis, who works for José, is shown drunk and hypersensitive. They are accompanied by young Quique, Paco’s brother and representative of another generation. The hunt starts in a sun-baked landscape that was the scene of heavy ighting during the Civil War. Guardian of the estate, Juan, sought in vain for a small loan from José to care for his poor family; and for his part, José asks Paco for a lot of money to solve a complicated inancial situation, citing an old favor. Paco’s cold negation makes the atmosphere tense. After lunch and a heavy nap, the tension is increasing: José slaps Luis mercilessly by playing dangerously with a telescopic rile; Quique shoots, without any reason, an infested rabbit, and Paco does the same with a

Iberian Drama

115

Directory of World Cinema

The Hunt/La caza, Elías Querejeta.

Art Director:

Carlos ochoa Composer:

Luis de Pablo Editor:

Pablo G del Amo Duration/Format:

93 minutes/B/W Cast:

Ismael Merlo Alfredo Mayo José María Prada Emilio Gutiérrez Caba Filming Locations:

Aranjuez (Madrid) Esquivias and Seseña (Toledo) Year:

1965

116 Spain

helpless ferret. Pressure erupts and violence then moves to the three friends, who simply kill each other, to Quique’s horror and amazement.

Critique With The Hunt (the original title, censored by the sexual implications, was Hunt of the Rabbit) starts the fruitful collaboration between the producer Elías Querejeta and Carlos Saura. The ilm begins a deep analysis of a Spanish generation that returns again and again in Saura’s work, namely that of Civil War survivors, marred by frustrations and failures. Except for Paco, an upstart who spares no effort to rise, José and Luis are two human remnants of the past: the latter, abandoned by his wife and reduced to morbid apocalyptic passion, is a prisoner of compulsive medication and large doses of alcohol; the former, separated from his wife for an affair with a young lover, is on the brink of ruin. The picture is completed with an absence, Arturo, the fourth friend of the group who committed suicide long ago in strange circumstances after the discovery of their involvement in embezzlement. Quique becomes the stunned witness to this tragic day, the result of years of deterioration, resentment and frustration.

Directory of World Cinema

The hunt, in its theme and style, is part of a realistic current Saura had explored in his previous ilm, The Delinquents (1959) and recalls rafael Sanchez Ferlosio’s novel El Jarama (1955), whose action is set in one day and which also confronts the present with the wartime past. Thus, there is a rare concentration of drama set in only one day and limited to a single stage. However, this landscape while realistic is also imbued with a symbolism through several measures: Luis Cuadrado’s black and white photograph, deliberately burned, overexposed, gives an almost surreal atmosphere, enhanced by the wide screen. However, the harshness of the environment leads to an overwhelming materiality: the sweat from their bodies and faces; the crude skinning of a lamb in the town to which Luis and Quique come to buy bread; the death throes of the animals falling to the guns of eager hunters (which echoes Jean renoir’s La règle du jeu, 1939) and, inally, the blood of the human victims. However, Saura uses an experimental procedure which overlaps and contrasts with the realism: the interior monologues of the characters. They reveal their doubts, complex thoughts and the passions that move them – the combination of their old friendship, resentment, envy – and it ills the silences, ellipses and insinuations of his dialogues until the inal slaughter. Saura incorporates into cinematic introspection mechanisms that were being explored in contemporary literature (Luis Martín-Santos, Juan Goytisolo, Juan Marsé, Juan Benet, etc.). This symbolism is what has allowed Saura to talk about his own ilm as an allegory of the Spanish Civil War. The scene of the killing was a witness to the heavy ighting that was talked of in the dialogues, and the same main characters were present in some of them. Thus, the metaphor of the manhunt condenses the meaning of this sort of epic anti-western that is about some victors – Saura dixit – that have never won.

Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

Mondays in the Sun Los lunes al sol Studios:

Antena 3 Televisión Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográicas Eyescreen Mediapro Quo Vadis Cinéma Sogepaq Televisión de Galicia Via Digital

Synopsis Laid off at the shipyard where they used to work, several jobless men spend their time at a bar owned by their friend rico, who bought it with money he received as a settlement when he lost his job. The group’s dominant member is Santa Santamaría, a former welder whose quarrelsome personality gets him into trouble at times. The somewhat older Lino wants badly to ind new employment but his applications are always rejected, perhaps due to his aging face and graying hair. José is resentful that his wife has a job when he does not, even though her work requires her to stand all day and this is causing damage to her legs. Amador drinks too much while waiting for his wife to return from a trip that may not be as innocent as she claims. reina has a new position as security guard at a soccer stadium, but it is less fun than he expected it to be. Serguei, a russian, passes the time by boasting about

Iberian Drama

117

Directory of World Cinema

Director:

Fernando León de Aranoa Producers:

Elías Querejeta Jaume roures

how he could have been a cosmonaut if the Soviet Union had not collapsed. The female characters include a supermarket ‘cheese woman’ befriended by Santa as well as José’s wife and rico’s daughter nata, a teenager who lirts with Santa while listening patiently to the men’s jokes, complaints, and disagreements, which recur with depressing monotony day after day.

Screenwriters:

Fernando León de Aranoa Ignacio del Moral Cinematographer:

Alfredo Mayo Art Director:

Julio Esteban Composer:

Lucio Godoy Editor:

nacho ruiz Capillas Duration:

113 minutes Cast:

Javier Bardem Luis Tosar José Ángel Egido nieve de Medina Year:

2002

118 Spain

Critique Mondays in the Sun starts with documentary footage of an impassioned labour demonstration that the same director, Fernando León de Aranoa, had shot a few years earlier. The narrative then begins with shots of a ferryboat landing, crowded with passengers, including the men who will be the main characters of the story. By opening the ilm this way, Aranoa signals that it will view life from a democratic perspective, relecting the idea that ordinary lives take on extraordinary interest when one observes them carefully and sympathetically. The movie’s promotional tagline carries the same message: ‘This ilm is not based on a real story. It is based on thousands.’ In keeping with this philosophy, the ilm centres on everyday characters and mundane events. Desperate to ind work, Lino dyes his hair so he will look a little younger, then becomes so nervous that perspiration makes the colouring run down his neck. José and his wife Ana apply for a loan, only to be refused when José erupts in anger at the inancial system, which he believes is stacked against him. reina sneaks his friends into the stadium where he works so they can watch a game, but the view is so bad that it is impossible to tell what is going on. Amador drinks more and more; Sergei talks more and more; and everyone grows increasingly bored and frustrated. Although the ilm’s main focus is psychological, it also has clear political implications, conveyed through details of the story as well as its overarching theme of economic inequality. Working as a babysitter, for example, Santa reads the fable of ‘The Grasshopper and the Ant’ to a little boy and gets humorously upset about the treatment of the underemployed grasshopper, launching into a lecture about sociopolitical issues that the youngster cannot possibly understand. The atmosphere of Mondays in the Sun is so natural and spontaneous that one might think the ilm was partly improvised. In fact, however, it was meticulously planned in advance and the blueprint was closely followed; a supplementary feature on the Lionsgate DVD edition uses a horizontally-split screen to show particular shots along with their corresponding storyboards, and there is little to suggest that the cast or crew signiicantly deviated from the original design. In this respect, Aranoa’s ilm recalls the methodology of John Cassavetes, whose carefully-scripted movies often seem improvised to audiences not familiar with his techniques. Mondays in the Sun is also reminiscent of ilms by Italian neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica and roberto rossellini who lourished in the irst decade after World War II, creating richly-emotional stories with the same basic elements found here: minimal plots, ordinary characters, and carefully-detailed settings, costumes, and props. Despite the poignancy of the story, Aranoa

Directory of World Cinema

rarely lets it lapse into melodrama, and when this does occur the blame usually falls on Lucio Godoy’s music, which does not always sustain the necessary blend of sweetness and sadness.

David Sterrit

Poniente Studio:

olmo Films Amboto Audiovisual Director:

Chus Gutiérrez Producers:

Ana Huete Iñaki núñez Screenwriter:

Chus Gutiérrez (with the collaboration of Icíar Bollaín) Cinematographer:

Álvaro de Armiñan Art Director:

Víctor Molero Composers:

Tao Gutiérrez Ángel Luis Samos Editor:

Synopsis Lucía, a teacher currently living in Madrid, goes back to the place where she grew up: a small town of the western Andalusia called La Isla. Since she left, seven years ago, the situation has visibly changed. nowadays, the industrial plastic greenhouses block out the landscape and give shelter to hundreds of workers of different nationalities. In view of this, the locals have got their new situation back on track and many of them have become businessmen and have gained, to all appearances, a ‘healthy’ footing. All this wealth is in contrast to the precarious working terms of the African immigrants, who are demanding more equitable salaries and regularized contracts of employment. Lucía, who has borne the traumatic experience of the death one of her daughters (drowned), and the desertion of her husband, has, as usual in this small town, decided to remain in La Isla with her young daughter Clara. What started as a return trip for her father’s funeral changes into a situation of deciding to stay. Miguel, her cousin, does not agree with Lucia’s decision to take charge of her father’s tomato farm as Miguel was in dispute over a matter of some pieces of land. In the midst of all this, Lucía meets Curro, an emigrant returning to his roots. Both are looking for somewhere to belong; their approach starts from the meeting and recognition of the other. They are both alone and, inevitably, they fall in love.

Fernando Pardo

Critique

Duration:

Poniente (Westerly) focuses its story on a failed return to origins and on the archetype of the stranger. Chus Gutiérrez knows well what emigration is: she left her native Granada to go to live in Madrid, London and new york. The shooting of this ilm has also been for her the return to her land. The ilm is closely related to what happened in El Ejido in 2000. Chus Gutiérrez takes these acts as a source of inspiration to tackle these problems in a more comprehensive way. We are faced with a story of emigration but also of uprooting. The deinition of what to be an immigrant means is ever-present in the ilm, due to the fact that all its characters, in one or another sense, are so. Lucía left her small town for the big city, and Curro was born in Switzerland of Spanish migrants. They all are taking part in a shared situation: that of being not only a stranger but also a child of uprooting; some of them being far from their countries, and others having failed in the attempt to regain their supposed

95 minutes Cast:

Cuca Escribano José Coronado Antonio Dechent Mariola Fuentes Filming Location:

Motril (Granada) Year:

2002

Iberian Drama

119

Directory of World Cinema

lost identity. Lucía is not accepted by her family and Curro feels as much a stranger as he did in Switzerland. This will be the link to underpin the other theme in the ilm: the historical memory. This, for some of us, is sensitive memory of a recent past when the emigrants were the Spaniards: those who left Spain with their cardboard suitcase. Curro and a friend look at black-and-white images of his father with the help of a Super 8 projector: images of an inner history to appeal to the audience’s memory in order to properly visualize two similar and coinciding routes. racism prevails in everyday life – renting a home, work exploitation or in relationships with girls. Finally, this racism becomes worse, and violent, and just at this very moment, and as a sort of metaphor, the projector and the old, wrecked ilms appear as poignant contrast to all the havoc. Poniente is, in addition, a history of wasted illusions where everybody loses: Miguel sets ire to his cousin’s greenhouses, killing his own son; Lucía loses all her crops; Curro almost dies when inding out what Miguel is attempting; the immigrants lose their work. Through the saturation of the colours of some of the shots, this ilm seems to show an intercultural approach. nevertheless, the camera does not focus there but in the reality of the non-understanding.

Nekane Parejo

Solitary Fragments La soledad

Studio:

Wanda Visión SA Fresdeval Films In Vitro Films Director:

Jaime Rosales

Synopsis Adela, a young single mother, leaves her home in León for the turbulent and noisy life of Madrid. Antonia is a middle-aged woman who runs a neighbourhood grocery store and lives with her boyfriend, Manolo, and her three daughters, Inés, nieves and Helena. All three are independent and have their own lives. Her own existence seems calm and conventional until destiny intervenes in her happiness. Certain ambitions and self-centred desires bring to light dificulties and conlicts. Meanwhile, Adela is settling into her new life, but just when she seems to have found her place, a terrible terrorist attack (ETA) brings everything crashing down around her. They must all live confronting the solitude that deines human beings.

Producer:

Critique

María José Díez

Solitary Fragments is the second ilm in the still brief ilmography of Jaime rosales. In his irst feature, The Hours of the Day (2003), a small trader from the outskirts of Barcelona alternates serene daily life with violent murders undertaken for no apparent reason. In a less-explicit way, Solitary Fragments continues with an examination of hidden aggression that emerges in everyday situations and is manifested in the calculation of selish interests, in the

Screenwriter:

Enric rufas Jaime rosales Cinematographer:

oscar Durán

120 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Art Director:

Ion Arretxe Editor:

Nino Martínez Duration:

135 minutes Filming locations:

Cistierna and Sabero (León) Madrid Duration:

135 minutes Cast:

Sonia Almarcha Petra Martínez Miriam Correa nuria Mencía Year:

2007

multiplication of recriminations between loved ones and, above all, in the threatening appearance of one’s own and alien death. The presence of this hidden violence also determines the relationship between town and country, both transferred by the logic of individualism between the initial and the inal image. the latter now without meadows and cows. The viewer is invited to imagine relationships, to plan routes between images and people and to weigh the losses that occur, all of this knowing that there is no sweetening to mitigate the solitude that constitutes us. on the other hand, the fact that this intimate portrayal of life is of two middle-class women, Adela and Antonia, deliberately placed at the beginning and end of adulthood, is also worth considering. Thus, through an active contemplation of anonymous lives, rosales is able to direct the viewer’s gaze toward the existential concerns of an average citizen in a cold and menacing environment. But the novelty introduced by Solitary Fragments does not lie in the shrewdness of his diagnosis, but in the suggestion that the loneliness that lives in us is to be found both in the solitude in which the characters ind themselves and in the relationship we have with the images. We are alone because we live between images, rosales seems to suggest. For that reason formal experimentation becomes very important. Working the composition plane or exploring the possibilities of the frame, the director wants to compromise the order of the classic representation, which creates a magical effect in which the viewer accepts the cost of losing critical distance. The most surprising element that rosales uses, polyvision, relects the extraordinary complexity of this challenge. The picture is divided into two parts without any hierarchy, offering two views of the same reality. However, his insistent use not

Solitary Fragments/La soledad, Fresdeval.

Iberian Drama

121

Directory of World Cinema

only reveals a set of perspectives, it is a way to break the actions, movements and characters in order to get an emotional distance that highlights the constructed nature of any narrative and, thus, to warn of the problems we have in creating ourselves as subjects. Far from offering an order, the narrative returns us to our own strangeness; relects how far we are from ourselves. That is why the inal lesson is a desperate song: there is no narration or testimony that eases the loneliness to which we are assigned with the exception of one that portrays the image in which we are alone and guilty.

José Miguel Burgos Mazas

Viridiana Country of origin:

Spain Mexico Studio:

Unión Industrial Cinematográica, SL Films 59 Producciones Gustavo Alatriste Director:

Luis Buñuel Producers:

Gustavo Alatriste Pere Portabella ricardo Muñoz Suay Screenwriters:

Luis Buñuel Julio Alejandro Cinematographer:

José F Aguayo Composer:

Gustavo Pittaluga Editor:

Pedro del rey Duration/Format:

90 minutes/B/W Cast:

Silvia Pinal Francisco rabal Fernando rey Margarita Lozano

122 Spain

Synopsis About to take her vows, the novice nun Viridiana pays a visit to her uncle, Don Jaime. Don Jaime tries to persuade Viridiana to live with him, but she refuses. In reprisal, he decides to drug and rape her. In the end he cannot bring himself to molest her and hangs himself in remorse. Following his death, Viridiana brings a motley group of paupers to live on the estate, which she shares with Don Jaime’s son, Jorge. one night the beggars indulge in an orgy and one of them, the lame beggar, tries to rape Viridiana. Despondent, Viridiana goes to her cousin Jorge’s room where she gladly accepts his invitation to play cards with him and ramona, the maid.

Critique ‘Viridiana c´est moi’. Buñuel’s own words sum up Viridiana as the paradigm of a cinematographic form construed upon images – what Gilles Deleuze called the impulse-image; images which resound with surrealist echoes. The naked thighs of the novitiate Viridiana, which emerge when she is stripped of the black stockings of her nun’s habit; Don Jaime’s foot clad with his long-dead wife’s bridal shoe; the ivory breasts of the novice, who lies dead on the bed dressed in a bridal gown; the dangling slippered feet of Don Jaime, who has hanged himself; or the obscene face of the leprous beggar as he looks on while Viridiana is being raped, are images of many other body parts. This is the aim of the close-ups and the frame that severs the body part trapped in its interior; body parts that are torn off by the Buñuelian gaze: a gaze which, like a bird of prey, falls upon its victim, trapping it in images where fetishism, eroticism, sex and death are intertwined. Like the ilm’s forms, many of the motifs in Viridiana, such as the rope or the bridal gown, are recurrent in Buñuel’s work; motifs that circulate within the ilm, giving cohesion to its structure. Thus, the rope, which not by chance resembles a serpent in a still shot, winds through the story intertwining sex – in images that show rita skipping rope under Don Jaime’s attentive gaze or when Viridiana tries to grab onto the skipping rope while she is being raped by the lame beggar, who uses the rope as a belt – and death – in the

Directory of World Cinema

Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1961

images of Don Jaime hanging himself with the rope. These are two themes which, as we have seen, also merge in the impulse-image. And like the rope, the bridal gown also appears throughout the ilm, albeit to be used for all types of perverse purposes such as a disguise and shroud by Viridiana or as a costume by the leprous beggar, who transforms the wedding dress into a grotesque mask. Viridiana, like Nazarín (1959) – the ilm’s predecessor in some ways – is the story of the existential transformations experienced by its protagonist, who, from a life consecrated to God, eventually devotes herself to mankind. At the beginning of the ilm, the novice nun Viridiana leaves the convent to visit her uncle, Don Jaime. When Don Jaime dies, she abandons the convent for good to care for a band of beggars that she invites to live in the mansion inherited from her uncle. Viridiana’s failure to redeem this gang of scoundrels eventually leads her to an encounter with her cousin, Don Jaime’s son and, like her, heir to the mansion. But the most interesting aspect of the ilm is that these mutations are revealed through images marked by the enunciative search for a God; a search that encounters only a void, a vacuum. This empty search is demonstrated in a scene mimicking Jesus’ last supper with his disciples when, in a visual allusion to Da Vinci’s Last Supper, the blind beggar occupies the place of Christ. A mockery of the god-symbol, it is also the essence of his absence. Mockery and the absence of God: two elements which had appeared previously in a sequence where the singing of the Angelus is juxtaposed with images of masons working, who in addition to interrupting the prayers – cutting the montage violently like the blow of an axe –, ill the scene with sonorous and visual noise. Here, the word of God is revealed to be a farce. There is no Word, and therefore there is no God. For this reason, when the Buñuelian narrative invokes God and the Word, the sinister appears in their place in the form of the blind beggar in the last supper mentioned above.

Pedro Poyato

Iberian Drama

123

(BUT NOT ONLY FLAMENCO)

MUSICAL

Directory of World Cinema

Spanish musical ilm played a very important role in the history of Spanish cinema, and its characters and songs had great signiicance in inluencing public memory. Among the musicals produced in Spain there are some examples of the avant-garde variety. For instance, in the ilm Embrujo (Spell) (Carlos Serrano de osma, 1947) flamenco style has been staged with Surrealist features. However Carlos Saura, more than any other ilm-maker, has contributed to the innovation of the Spanish musical genre since Bodas de sangre (1981). Since then, Saura has directed several musical ilms, with his characteristic use of light and space on stage and the way of using the camera. However the standards of the classical Spanish musical ilm genre have been dictated by commercial interests. Since they irst appeared in Spain, as early as the 1920s, musical ilms were produced frequently. During the 1930s, the term españolada was used to refer to these kinds of productions. Music plays a key role and contains the essence of Spain commonly identiied with Andalusia. Juan Quintero, rafael de León and Manuel Quiroga are, among others, the composers who contributed most to the success of the folk musical. Together and separately, they appear on the credits of 25 musicals produced between 1940 and 1952. But apart from the frequency with which they appear, it is very important to take into account the adequacy of their coplas (popular songs or ballads) in relation to the style of the ilms in which they appear. Because of the passion and the intensity of her performance, it is impossible to forget, for example, Concha Piquer performing the song ‘ojos verdes’ (‘Green Eyes’) in Filigrana (Filigree) (Luis Marquina, 1949). The ideological nuances in many folk songs make for a rich discussion. one interesting example is the pasodoble song ‘Capote de grana y oro’ performed by Juanita reina in Gloria Mairena (Luis Lucía, 1952). The cape mentioned in the pasodoble is a very deep cochineal red: red was the colour employed by Franco to refer to his enemies during the Spanish Civil War. Even in ilms that were not taking the greatest artistic risks, the songs performed by many of the most admired singers in Spain garnered the attention of a popular audience during Franco’s regime. As a result of its commercial viability, Andalusian music (lamenco, copla, etc.) played an important function in Spanish ilm-making for several decades. In addition to the frequency with which they appeared, musical numbers played a signiicant role in the plots of many of these ilms. The songs in these folk musicals were often diegetically motivated, and sung by stars that were portraying characters afiliated with the world of show business. A few examples are Torbellino (Whirl) (Luis Marquina, 1941) or Welcome Mr Marshall (Luis García Berlanga, 1953). While certainly not unique to Spanish musicals, the songs that were performed functioned to highlight the characters’ attitudes as well as their psychological state. However these Spanish ilm musicals also established patterns that are familiar to the classical Hollywood musical, but they relect the cultural and national sensibilities of a Spanish audience. For instance, one of the most commercially-viable formulas during

Left: The Other Side of the Bed, Impala / Telespan 2000.

Musical

125

Directory of World Cinema

Franco’s regime incorporates a mixture of Andalusian folk music and themes involving children as main characters. Examples include the famous child star Joselito’s irst ilm El pequeño ruiseñor/The Little Nightingale (Antonio del Amo, 1956) and Marisol, a blonde and blue eyed girl that starred in her irst ilm, Un rayo de luz (A Ray of Light) (Luis Lucía, 1960), and enjoyed enormous success as a child star in a new Spain that saw the little singer as a symbol of modernity. Similar to Elvis Presley’s ilms, the Spanish ilm industry also produced vehicles for Spanish pop stars in the mid-1960s. The continuous contribution of composers like Augusto Algueró – who composed for seven of the Marisol’s ilms – and the non-imaginative staging characterize this kind of musicals. However, the singularity of the two ilms starring ‘Los Bravos’ should be emphasized. Their incursions into the cinema are Los chicos con las chicas (The Boys with the Girls) (Javier Aguirre, 1967) and Dame un poco de amor (Bring a Little Loving) (José María Forqué, 1968). Both titles recall the workings of A Hard Day’s Night (richard Lester, 1964), with their surrealistic humour and psychedelic aesthetics, as well as the incorporation of musical numbers into the narrative. Since the 1960s – the decade that saw the greatest number of musicals in Spain – fewer and fewer ilms of the genre have been produced. In 2002, Emilio Martínez Lázaro directed El otro lado de la cama/The Other Side of the Bed, a ilm about a group of people in their thirties. They sing in order to express their sentimental disillusionments. Unlike On connaît la chanson/Same Old Song (Alain resnais, 1997), in which actors lipsync to original ballads, its Spanish equivalent involves actors themselves dancing and singing famous Spanish songs from the 1980s. ¿Por qué se frotan las patitas?/Scandalous (Álvaro Begines, 2006), one of the most recent Spanish examples of this genre, could be deined as a postmodern musical that revisits the Andalusian folk musical that had its most popular period from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s. In Begines’ ilm, the actors lip-sync to recordings of modern Andalusian songs. The main female character, María (Lola Herrera), is a former Andalusian folk singer who is having a secret love affair with her son’s father in law: this unconventional re-elaboration of a traditionally conservative female character says a lot about the postmodernism of this ilm. However this ironical reconstruction is an exception in Andalusian ilm musicals. Since the 1980s, other musicals have engaged with the formula. one way to explain this engagement is the rise in production of the copla between the 1980s and 1990s, although the presence of folk elements in these musicals is also diegetically motivated. Examples include Las cosas del querer/The things of love (Jaime Chávarri, 1989) or La niña de tus ojos/The Girl of Your Dreams (Fernando Trueba, 1998), all of which depend on the memory of folk cinema to describe Franco’s Spain.

Inmaculada Sánchez Alarcón

126 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Ay, Carmela! ¡Ay, Carmela! Country of origin:

Spain Italy Studio:

X y z Desarrollos Ellepi Films Director:

Carlos Saura Producer:

Andrés Vicente Gómez Screenwriter:

rafael Azcona Carlos Saura Based on the play ¡Ay, Carmela! by José Sanchis Sinisterra (1987) Cinematographer:

José Luis Alcaine Composer:

Alejandro Massó Editor:

Pablo G. del Amo Duration:

102 minutes Cast:

Andrés Pajares Carmen Maura Gabino Diego José Sancho Filming Locations:

Boadilla del Monte (Madrid) El Cubillo de Uceda (Castilla-La Mancha) Madrid Talamanca del Jarama (Madrid) Year:

1990

Synopsis A group of drama artists – Paulino, Carmela and Gustavete – are on tour entertaining republican troops on the Aragonese front during the Spanish Civil War. one night, on returning to Valencia, they are captured by the nationalists, which puts the three actors in peril as republican loyalists are being arrested with the advance of General Franco’s troops. However, in exchange for their survival, they agree to entertain rebel troops by performing in a show that offends and ridicules their republican ideals.

Critique The ilm is an adaptation of a play of the same title written by José Sanchis Sinisterra (1987) and constitutes one of the most signiicant contributions of Spanish cinema on the Civil War. Ay, Carmela! is impeccably produced, both from the point of view of the historical setting and props, and the props (in spite of a limited budget) are generally restrained and purist in style, without excessive camera movement, and it explores in Saura’s style the importance of music as a symbol of Spanish popular culture. The title itself refers to a well-known song that, in the ilm, completely changes tone and register when the lyrics are altered to favour the Francoist cause. Saura opts for a subtle and deceptively-simple theatrical style by combining scenes that ooze fraternal humour amongst the characters and events with dramatic ones. Some excellent performances by Carmen Maura (‘Carmela’, winner of the Best Actress Award at the European Film Awards, 1990), Andrés Pajares (‘Paulino’, winner of the Best Actor award at the Montreal Film Festival), and Gabino Diego (‘Gustavete’) contribute to the quality of the ilm. The story of these three artists against the dramatic backdrop of the war explores the world of winners and losers – though in a somewhat biased context as the idealism of the republic is uncritically presented – without losing touch with a realistic and very human perspective, thanks to a sober narrative tone that is maintained up to the very last moment when the explosion of rage and violence ills the entire screen. Some commonplaces about the Civil War are evident, in which the populist and righteous republican camp is contrasted with the cold, surly attitude of the nationalist troops, though this is kept within bounds by the irm grip of the director. At the beginning of the ilm the main characters are putting on a show for republican troops on the Aragon front. The audience is presented as a group of ordinary working people: militiamen and women, anarchists, old and young, women and children. The inale of the show is not a political discourse but a song made up of latulencies, which delights the audience. The atmosphere is amiable, cordial and straightforward, although the shadow of violence is always present, as when they all fall silent to listen to the sound of enemy bombers passing overhead. All this is contrasted with the inal scene in which, after falling into the hands of the ‘nation-

Musical

127

Directory of World Cinema

alists’, they have to put on a farce in which the republic is denigrated before an audience almost entirely made up of uniformed males. The visual construction of the close-ups, in which lighting effects and high- and low-angle shots are used profusely, infects the viewer with the perversion and stridence that Carmela experiences when she is forced to degrade the republican lag and represent the republic as a common whore. Her situation is made all the more painful as republican prisoners of war, whom she has befriended, are amongst the audience as forced spectators. The simplicity of the narrative style and the dialectic elements represent the past from the point of view of a re-evaluation of historical memory to speak of personal dignity, violence and, above all, a sense of solidarity with the members of the International Brigade who came from abroad to ight for the ideals of the Spanish republic. The ilm allows the spectator to visualize literally the horrors of war in a background of destroyed buildings, repression and famine. The various elements mentioned above were a winning recipe that made the ilm a Spanish blockbuster, with more than 900,000 tickets sold, and it won 13 Goya awards.

Igor Barrenetxea Marañón and Magdalena Garrido Caballero

Dark and Bright Morena Clara Studio:

CIFESA Director:

Florián rey Screenwriter:

Pascual Guillén Antonio Quintero Florián rey Cinematographer:

Heinrich Gärtner (as Enrique Guerner) Composer:

rafael Martínez Juan Mostazo Editor:

Ángel del río Duration/Format:

109 minutes/B/W

128 Spain

Synopsis Trini and regalito are two romany siblings who receive severe sentences for theft. The siblings’ defence counsel accuses the public prosecutor, Enrique, of racism. In order to defend himself, he offers to take Trini and regalito in himself, hoping to make them mend their waywardness. once there, Trini helps resolve some of Enrique´s domestic problems through her integrity and good faith – behaviour quite contrary to the criminal stereotype that ‘gypsies’ had in Spain at the time. Though the relationship between Enrique and Trini continues to be unstable, the sense of growing affection between them is evident. This abundance of feeling, as well as regalito´s friendliness towards him, causes Enrique to question his preconceptions of the romany, and highlights the issues they face in Spain.

Critique This ilm became a statement in the creation of a solid national cinema in Spain, one able to compete with mainstream American cinema. Thus, Florián rey created a new aesthetic, combining elements from American classical cinema (the star system and narrative elements), with traditional Spanish content (music, a popular Andalusian aesthetic, etc.). Imperio Argentina became the main star of the Cifesa studio. Her ilms were created for her and all the cinematographic

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Imperio Argentina Miguel Ligero Manuel Luna José Calle Filming Locations:

Sevilla Year:

1936

language was used to frame her position as the central attraction of the ilm. Furthermore, the merchandising produced by the studio operated in the same way as Hollywood marketing for studio stars, consolidating a mythic aura around her persona. Florián rey utilized a language similar to classic American cinema with extreme close-ups for the main stars (especially during songs and emotive moments), as well as a simple narrative construction where time and space are logically portrayed and therefore easily understood by the audience. These features explain the popularity of Dark and Bright, the most viewed ilm during the Spanish Civil War. However, the signiicance of this production goes further. The importance of the songs in deining the ilm plot and the performance of the main female character would go on to be the key factors in many ilms during Franco’s regime. The ilm has two main subtexts hidden inside this apparentlysimplistic romantic comedy. Firstly, there is a love story constructed by the parallel evolution of the two main characters: on the one hand there is Enrique’s recognition that romanies have their virtues; on the other hand, Trini learns the rules of non-romany society. The interracial love story between Trini and Enrique adds Dark and Bright, CIFESA.

Musical

129

Directory of World Cinema

a melodramatic component to the story. However, the restrained performance of Imperio Argentina moderates the melodrama. There are also entertaining scenes of comedy, starring Trini and her brother regalito. The second subtext offers a portrait of women during the republic in Spain. Besides Teresa, Enrique’s mother, Trini, is the only important woman in the story. Trini is honest, despite the fact that her own race is accustomed to being attributed with characteristics of amorality. She is reluctant to steal the cured hams and she only agrees to keep watch in order to warn regalito. Furthermore, her attitude towards men is respectful. In the scene of the trial, for example, she states that she is a ‘single and young muchacha-lass’ because she is very choosy. Her irm morality is not an obstacle to her happiness: in rafael’s opinion, Trini is the best singer and dancer in Seville. However, her adaptation to the social environment of the man she loves will make her lose part of her identity. Having spent some time in the public prosecutor’s house, Trini no longer appears wearing the costumes, with the typical lounced skirt and embroidered shawl, as she had at the beginning: her appearance is becoming similar to that of other women of her own age. Furthermore, Trini maintains a determined attitude regarding conlict. She shows this attitude, for example, in ‘El embrujo del faraón’ (‘The Pharaoh’s curse’), when she makes up a mixture of a song and a spell. She tries to give a fright to Elías’ illegitimate daughter’s mother and she also makes everyone believe that the money this woman requests has emerged from a spell. In the scene in which Trini feigns powers of witchcraft traditionally attributed to romanies, the script resorts to the stereotype, but in an ironic manner. one of the main reasons for Trini’s behaviour is her attempt to protect Teresa – Enrique’s mother – from any upset. Teresa’s appearance and psychological proile appear subsequently in many other middle-aged female characters – though with less-marked Andalusian features. However, Trini’s features are the most signiicant ones and Macarena Granada in the ilm La niña de tus ojos/The Girl of Your Dreams (Fernando Trueba, 1998) is a character that reproduces many of Trini’s features more than six decades later.

Almudena Escobar López

Flamenco Studio:

Canal Plus/Sogepaq Director:

Carlos Saura

130 Spain

Synopsis We are invited to discover the complexity and artistry of Flamenco dance and music without interruption in this documentary that uses little dialogue. From traditional styles to present-day interpretations of Flamenco style, sheer dance and music captured on camera are a feast for the senses, celebrating the diversity and history of one of Spain’s best-known cultural treasures – that, in 2010, has been granted by UnESCo as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Juan Lebrón José López rodero Screenwriter:

Carlos Saura Cinematographer:

Vittorio Storaro Art director:

rafael Palmero Composers:

Antonio Carmona José Miguel Carmona Juan Carmona Editor:

Pablo González del Amo Duration:

102 minutes Cast:

La Paquera de Jerez Manuela Carrasco José Mercé Enrique Morente Year:

1995

Critique Although technically classiied as a documentary, Carlos Saura’s Flamenco (1995) is not a descriptive teaching tool but, rather, audio-visual poetry without the use of verbal narratives or commentary. In much the same way that Frederick Wiseman’s ballet documentaries choose not to engage in voiceover commentaries, interviews, or even titles that would identify the dancers or performances, Flamenco immediately establishes a link with its viewers through the medium of dance and music, no labels necessary. However, the ilm is not an exercise in cinema-verité. Instead it is a calculated dance ilm in which the movement is plotted through its integral relationship to the camera, mapping out a course for its viewers. There are no interruptions, as music and dance form the only language needed to achieve the ilm’s goal: to portray the diversity of Flamenco as not just a beloved historic form, but a thriving dynamic force in contemporary Spanish culture. Unlike Wiseman, who lets his camera roll during ballet rehearsals and performances without intervention or any notion of what may or may not occur, Saura carefully stages the dance ilmed in Flamenco. While this ilm may not tell a story in the traditional sense, it is important to note that Saura’s other dance ilms consist of ictional narratives expressed through movement: Carmen (1983), Blood Wedding (1981), etc. As a result, Flamenco easily brings viewers a sense of story through Saura’s stylistic production elements and timing. The ilm’s dynamic lighting scheme plays on colour theory to express varying moods and creates a chapter-like structure. Flamenco opens with an overview of architectural components. The building in which the dancing is ilmed is examined irst from the outside and later from the interior. The scaffolding ilmed externally is artfully used as an analogy for the multiple components that make up the art of Flamenco. The scaffolding stretches upwards, implying the form’s continual growth, its present-day interpreters, who do not necessarily keep with tradition but have, instead, built on Flamenco’s foundation to create hybrid and contemporary styles. This architectural sequence is followed by images of the interior: a travelling shot that examines a semi-circle of empty straight-backed chairs that allow us to imagine how each place will be illed – the vastness of Flamenco. The mirrors we see are not typical of the uniform style found in dance studios, but rather a collection of mirrors leaned against the wall haphazardly, challenging any notions of conformity or cultural norms, yet relecting tradition and modernity in an interconnected dimensionality. Shortly thereafter the ilm’s only narrated portion begins. The text reminds us that, as much as Flamenco dance is associated with Spain, it is a cultural melting-pot phenomenon that took hold in Andalusia, originating from various cultural sources including Jewish laments, African rhythms, Gregorian chants and romany (Gypsy) melodies, among others. What follows is a chain of different palos or variations, performed by a variety of solo and group artists. Guitar, voice and dance merge to present the fandaria,

Musical

131

Directory of World Cinema

bulería, petenera, seguiriya, and more. The uninitiated Flamenco viewer need not be concerned with the technical terms of these dances, though. They are unidentiied in the ilm, relying on their artistic power to immerse the viewer in the form rather than its theoretical distinctions. While the same can be said for the unidentiied performers, Flamenco boasts a cast of legendary igures: María Pagés and Manuel Carrasco, among others. Different camera angles, such as travelling shots, close-ups and spatial relationships ilmed from the air, etc., demonstrate how ilm can show us choreography in a way that live theatre cannot. Closeup shots of palmas (hand clapping) and expressionist faces are just one example of the intimate views provided in Flamenco that would be impossible to visualize on stage. other shots directly weave around the dancers as they move, the camera engaging in a subtle pas de deux with the cast that allows viewers the privilege of experiencing the dance from within, not simply observing it frontally. With his camera, Saura has artfully created an architectural terrain for dance and music that illustrates just how vast a form Flamenco can be by tracing its lineage in three dimensions.

Marisa Hayes

The Girl of Your Dreams La niña de tus ojos Studio:

Fernando Trueba Creativos Asociados de radio y Televisión Lola 2002 Director:

Fernando Trueba Producer:

Fernando Trueba Screenwriters:

rafael Azcona Miguel Ángel Egea David Trueba Cinematographer:

Javier Aguirresarobe Art Director:

Gerardo Vera

132 Spain

Synopsis In 1938, thanks to a cooperation agreement between the UFA studios of nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain, a ilm crew is sent to Germany, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, to make a ilm. However, the group of artists will come face to face with a bitter and brutal social reality involving the persecution of Jews and the idiosyncrasies of the new nazi regime.

Critique Fernando Trueba is not especially proliic but he is one of the most outstanding and widely-recognised Spanish directors on the European scene. In Belle Époque (1992), Trueba successfully portrayed the Spain of the beginning of the twentieth century (the ilm ends with the proclamation of the Second republic), and in The Girl of Your Dreams he turns to an examination of the intimate relationship between Franco’s regime and nazi Germany. Various Spanish ilms were made at the UFA studios as a result of this friendship. Thus the historical context (a little-known chapter for the general public) allows Trueba to establish didactic treatment of an aspect of the recent past that the Franco regime subsequently denied. This, however, is subjugated as usual in Trueba’s work to more ambitious artistic objectives, not all of them fully achieved. In this juxtaposition – of history and ilm as a scenic art – Trueba takes advantage of the intelligent composition of a very characteristic (even if not entirely hermetic) cinematographic formula involv-

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Antoine Duhamel Editor:

Carmen Frías Duration:

121 minutes Cast:

Penélope Cruz Antonio resines Miroslav Táborský Jesús Bonilla Filming Locations:

Prague (Czech republic) Year:

1998

ing a multitude of different styles (elements of popular comedy, Andalusian music, tragedy, etc.). In this way he blends comedy and drama as the two leitmotifs which are articulated through the imagery to debunk ingrained social traditions (Belle Époque) or totalitarian presumption (as in the case in hand). The Girl of Your Dreams is also notable for spotlighting the differences between the Spanish and German national characters with the original expedient of stripping away social stereotypes (the brawny German actor is in fact homosexual; the minister of propaganda Goebbels is lame and obsessed with the actresses; the Spanish Latin lover, Torralba, is too short to be a hero, has faked a war wound and has no higher aim in life than to eat a good plate of stew, etc.). The author’s vision juxtaposes certain stereotypes (backdrops of Alpine scenes which must serve to represent the Sierra de ronda; a Bavarian tavern which has to stand in for a Spanish one; a mosque, as if Spain were still occupied by the Moors, which will be reconverted into a church) in an ironic game which is responsible for the most successful moments. When he succeeds in uniting the credibility of the story with his ine irony, the ilm provides Trueba with the formula to make humour into an intelligent interpretation of a cross-section of society. on the one hand he shows the brusque, rude and exaggerated nature of the Spanish character. on the other, there is no doubt that what inally prevails is represented by the character of Macarena: loyalty, solidarity and courage confronting injustice with a very human gallantry. In contrast, each of the group of complexridden men ends up a victim of his own ego, incapable of rebelling against established hypocrisies (Torralba ends up in a concentration camp; Fontiveros, the director, remains at the mercy of the nazis). Thus a Spanish woman is the real heroine of this choral drama, one who refuses to be forced by this mean-spirited and dictatorial society to betraying herself after she learns of the death of her father, a republican sympathiser, in Franco’s political prisons. The technical aspects of the ilm are inely achieved thanks to the excellent photography by Javier Aguirresarobe, whose carefully studied takes provide the ideal solution to the challenges posed by the screenplay. And the actors succeed in communicating the Spanish character in an outstanding way, with sympathy and humour. Some clichés in the portrayal of nazi Germany could be criticized as constituting the least credible part of the whole, the parody often ringing a somewhat false note. It was a box-ofice and critical success alike with ticket sales of over two million.

Igor Barrenetxea and Magdalena Garrido

Musical

133

Directory of World Cinema

Oh Pain, Little Pain, Pain Pena, Penita, Pena Countries of origin:

Spain Mexico Studio:

Suevia Films Diana Films

Synopsis Carmen Heredia is a gypsy from Andalusia who sells lottery tickets. She meets Carlos and Luis, two Mexican brothers without any money. The three of them decide to buy a ticket; winning would mean Carlos and Luis could return to Mexico and that Carmen could search there for her torero boyfriend Antonio, of whom she has no news. The ticket does turn out to be a winner, but when they arrive in Mexico, Carmen is dumped by Antonio. She begins to perform in the ‘Café Cantante España Cañí’ and becomes a great success. Although a conlict develops between the brothers when they both fall in love with Carmen, Carlos inally accepts that Carmen and Luis are in love, and the two of them end up happily together.

Director:

Miguel Morayta

Critique

Producer:

Oh Pain, Little Pain, Pain is the irst of the nine folk musicals made between 1953 and 1964 and starring Lola Flores. All of these ilms were co-funded by different Mexican companies and Suevia Films, the most important production company in Spain from the 1950s throughout the end of the 1960s. The commercial aim of the Spanish company run by Cesáreo González was clear: in an attempt to appeal to the Mexican audience and those of other Spanish speaking countries, Lola Flores and the huge Mexican star Luis Aguilar were recruited for the two leading roles in this ilm. The movie was designed as a star vehicle for Lola Flores. Her character is principally deined by her Andalusian roots, as is often the case with most of the female characters in many folk musicals made during this period. But Carmen is singular for the contradictions that she embodies. on one hand, she conforms to established moral values. However, it would be dificult to name a female character that acts with such freedom in a ilm made during Franco’s regime. She decides to go to Mexico with two unknown men and she makes the decision to leave her boyfriend. As with other titles that constitute Spanish folk cinema, most of musical numbers focus their attention on the central female character. A good example is the recitation that Lola performs with the Andalusian song that shares the title of the ilm. This musical number alternates between low-angle long shots, which enhance the character as it is seen from low down, and close shots that show the moments of most expressivity. Many of the musical numbers are used to convey Carmen’s psychological state. The sequence that coincides with Carmen’s decision to take revenge on her ex-boyfriend is a good example. The lyrics of the typical Andalusian folk song she sings on the stage of the Mexican Café seems to enhance the torero skills but, when Antonio is at the peak of satisfaction, Carmen begins to make fun of him. The importance of the song to solve the conlict between both characters is emphasized by the constant inclusion of Antonio

Fernando de Fuentes Jr Carmelo Santiago Screenwriter:

Miguel Morayta Cinematographer:

Enrique Wallace Art Director:

Javier Torres Torija Editor:

José Bustos Duration/Format:

95 minutes/B/W Cast:

Lola Flores Luis Aguilar Antonio Badú Fernando Soto Year:

1953

134 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

in close shots to show how his face changes from happiness to insult. As in other Spanish folk musicals, dance plays a lesser role in this ilm. Choreographed performances can only be found in three of the musical sequences. The third of such dances centres on Carmen dancing alone, which we view from both the perspective of the cafe patrons, and that of Luis. This example emphasizes the importance of the person watching. It may happen that the spectator is also a main character. This is related to the importance of the songs as means to solve the plot. However, it is more common for these musical sequences to take place before a large audience. In all the cases, there are an abundance of shots which emphasize the collective audience watching a performance which takes place on a stage. In providing such shots, the ilm also encourages identiication between this diegetic audience and the ilm spectator, in a process that is typical of the Hollywood backstage musical.

Inmaculada Sánchez-Alarcón

The Other Side of the Bed El otro lado de la cama Studio:

Telespan 2000 Impala Director:

Emilio Martínez Lázaro Producers:

Tomás Cimadevila José Vicuña Screenwriter:

David Serrano Cinematographer:

Juan Molina Composer:

roque Baños Bernardo Fuster Luis Mendo Art Director:

Julio Torrecilla

Synopsis Javier and Sonia, both in their thirties, have been living together for years. Pedro and Paula are also a couple although they do not live together. The four are friends. Paula tells Pedro that she has fallen in love with another person and leaves him. Javier, Paula’s lover, has to hide his affair from Sonia and Pedro. Paula also puts pressure on Javier to leave Sonia. Pedro tries to ind who Paula’s secret lover is and he hires a private eye. In order to distract his friend, Javier introduces Pedro to Pilar, his ex-girlfriend’s workmate, but he rejects her. Pedro and Sonia have sex after a theatre performance. Pedro makes Javier believe that Sonia went to bed with Lucía, a lesbian actress friend of hers. Pedro inds out that Javier is Paula’s lover from one of the detective’s videos. Both friends ight. At a party, Pilar falls in love with rafa and Lucía falls in love with Jennifer. Jennifer is the person with whom Pedro wanted to make Paula jealous. Pedro, Paula, Javier and Sonia again get into pairs.

Critique The Other Side of the Bed is a comedy about love affairs based on its musical component. Its box-ofice hit facilitated the production of a second part, Los dos lados de la cama/The 2 Sides of the Bed (2005), in which songs are also the key of the plot. With an anachronistic turn, the songs sung by the main characters are the greatest hits from one and two decades before, such as ‘Echo de menos’ by Kiko Veneno or ‘Salta’ by Tequila. Pedro Berdäyes, with a long career in contemporary dance, creates choreography that

Musical

135

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

Ángel Hernández zoido Duration:

109 minutes Filming Locations:

Madrid Cast:

Ernesto Alterio Paz Vega Guillermo Toledo natalia Verbeke Year:

2002

mixes unreality in with the normality of the scenes: in fact, the ilm extras that appear in the sequences are the dancers in the group musical performances. The best example is Javier singing ‘no sé qué hacer’ (‘I don’t know what to do’) in the tennis club, harassed by the situation he has caused. others at the club dance with him, some acting as a kind of Greek chorus and echoing the character’s doubts as they take part in some passages of the lyrics. This song, the only one speciically composed for this ilm, is very deining of the male characters. Javier and Pedro are similar to those men who appeared in comedies during Franco’s regime – having an inferiority complex and being sex-obsessed –, the same male characters who had brought appearance and manners up to date in the Madrid comedies during the transition to democracy. Javier and Pedro are two young and seemingly-modern men absorbed in their personal lives, as happens to many other characters in Spanish cinema from the mid-1990s. However, the sexual desire that makes Javier unfaithful to his girlfriend and his best friend is not new behaviour at all. Pedro’s obsession to discover Paula’s lover reminds us of the obsession with honour that recurs in all the ‘Spanish manly men’ played by Alfredo Landa in comedies during Franco’s regime. Paula and Sonia, apparently liberated and modern women, play the part of almost exclusively sentimental triggers for the male characters’ actions. Their role is therefore as supporting as did the female characters in earlier ilms. The Other Side of the Bed is thus a familiar story embellished with postmodern rhetorical adornments of the songs directly sung by the actors themselves.

Inmaculada Sánchez-Alarcón

Shirley Temple Story Director:

Antoni Padrós Producers:

Antoni Padrós Edmond orts Screenwriter:

Antoni Padrós Fernando Huici Cinematographer:

Josep Gusi Composer:

Jordi Figueras

136 Spain

Synopsis Louella Parsons notiies in her radio show that Judy Garland will inally play the leading role in The Wizard of Oz. Peeing in her toilet, Shirley Temple announces that she will look for the Wizard so that he can convince MGM’s executives to give her the part. Shirley starts her journey along with Mrs Pit, Mrs Pot and Mrs Put, generals’ daughters and defenders of the values of ‘order, Homeland and Family’. on their way to oz, three anarcho-structuralists join them and try to sabotage their trip. on the road, Shirley and her friends meet other strange characters, ranging from the Witch of the East to a folk singer, who compares the Emerald Country (sic) to Spain. The Witch and the anarchists kill Pit, Pot and Put and drug Shirley before reaching oz. once there, the anarcho-structuralists try to explain their views to the Wizard, but are attacked and tied up by the ghosts of Pit, Pot and Put, thus putting down their revolutionary’s version of History. The Wizard, exhausted, leaves the room without talking to Shirley. one of his servants tells Shirley to go home with the silent majority. Shirley, frustrated, takes her wig off and looks in the camera. The curtain falls. Judy Garland sings ‘over the rainbow’.

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

José María Aragonés Lluís José Gibert Duration:

226 minutes Cast:

rosa Morata Dolors Doucastella Montse Fontoya Carmen rambla Year:

1976

Critique Shirley Temple Story is the second feature ilm of director Antoni Padrós. A pop painter during the late 1960s, from 1968 to 1970 Padrós learnt ilm history and production at Escuela Aixelà, a centre in Barcelona directed by Pere Portabella that brought together some of the most interesting personalities of Spanish independent ilm culture of the 1970s. Up until 1972, Padrós directed seven short ilms, all shot in outdated 8 and 16 mm. ilm stock, that already show his transgressive approach towards the main social preoccupations of the period: politics, religion and sex. This ilm is an outrageous parody of The Wizard of Oz. Shot in negative 16 mm sound stock during the weekends and edited in just one night, the ilm is a clear example of what has been labelled as marginal cinema. The ilm functions as a metaphor of the dictatorship’s reality, with characters such as the anarcho-syndicalists and the generals’ daughters who mirror the socio-political situation of the era. Padrós then uses Shirley Temple’s trip to oz as a vehicle to humorously criticize the different collectives and organizations that coexist under Franco’s regime. The almost non-existent budget conditioned Padrós’ aesthetics. From the photographic contrast due to the use of outdated ilm stock, to the amateur tone of the performers, everything adds up to transmit a feeling of improvisation and play, very much in an underground manner. Thus, the actors forget their lines, laugh and look into the camera on different occasions, breaking traditional cinematographic conventions of good acting, lighting and editing. Aesthetic perfection is not among Shirley Temple Story’s aims but, rather, the urge to make the ilm itself, no matter how. Padrós’ long takes are connected more with a way of avoiding different camera angles and simplifying both the shooting and the editing process than with a high-modernist device so beloved by European art cinema of the time. Also, there is a careful selection of sets and a conscious narrativization through the songs chosen for the soundtrack. over 50 tunes are played in their entirety, with the actors sometimes lip-syncing to the songs, as is the case with Shirley Temple’s performance of ‘Early Bird’, and others, with the melodies recreating parts of the story and the history of Spain under the dictatorship. Jorge Sepúlveda’s ‘Cántame un pasodoble español’, Colonel Bogey’s march from The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957), or pieces by Vivaldi and Wagner, are part of the soundscape. Indeed, the anarcho-structuralists call the ilm a ‘terrorist musical’, introducing a high-degree of relexivity, with which the ilm plays constantly to underscore realistic narrative expectations. Padrós’ charade is, then, an acid instrument to unmask political activism’s hypocrisy under Franco, whether it be Pit, Pot and Put’s reactionary fascism or the anarcho-syndicalist’s’ narcissistic idealism. Social archetypes are destroyed through the ilm’s parodic distortion. After all, Shirley Temple Story does not only embody the growing political disappointment that will run through Spain’s transition towards democracy, but is also a paradoxical example of the

Musical

137

Directory of World Cinema

cul-de-sac in which underground cinema ended after the dictator’s death. Though rarely seen and screened, Shirley Temple Story stands as a major example of the cultural interest and political shortcomings of Spanish marginal cinema.

Miguel Fernández Labayen

Songs for After a War Canciones para después de una guerra Studio:

Julio A Pérez Tabernero Director:

Basilio Martín Patino Producer:

Synopsis Patino’s documentary, Canciones para después de una guerra/ Songs for After a War, is a collage combining footage material, press articles, quotes of well-known ilms and popular songs of the period. It shows some characteristics of Francoism, the ideological convictions, and also the misery of the post-war period. Patino creates a contrast in this original compilation, as the songs are full of energy, moral messages, and hope: it demonstrates the importance of popular songs for the post-war period and, at the same time, contrasting it with the reality of the post-war years – by showing the misery. This combination creates new points of view on that period. It was irst presented in 1971, but due to censorship could only be released in 1976, one year after Franco’s death.

Julio A Pérez Tabernero Screenwriters:

Basilio Martín Patino José Luis García Sánchez Cinematographer:

José Luis Alcaine Editor:

José Luis Peláez Composer:

Manuel Parada Duration/Format:

99 minutes/B/W, with fragments in colour Cast:

Imperio Argentina Estrellita Castro Miguel de Molina Lola Flores Filming Locations:

Alicante (Valencian Community) Madrid Murcia Year:

1976

138 Spain

Critique After Franco’s victory, Spanish cinema was severely censored and the Dictator’s vision of the war was the only one that could be shown. Patino creates an important relection on the way images work and can be questioned. The ilm opens with an oficial document declaring the end of the war. We recognize the text from an old typewriter, with an oficial date: the 1st of April 1939, signed by General Franco. We then listen to the song ‘Cara al sol’, a nationalist song to sustain Franco’s army, reinforced by archival images of people deeply moved, following the fascist victory in the Civil War. In several images, we are confronted with the recognizable fascist salute. The irst sequences underscore Franco’s victory: the return of the soldiers; burial of the victims of the so-called ‘Communist invasion’; images of Hitler; and so on. This is combined with press articles and songs that give a convincing melody to this introduction. It is fascinating how even with these images of Francoist victory, Patino knows how to create a new questioning of totalitarian readings by imposing new visions through combining music and image. A revealing example is given after several sequences of the well-known song ‘La bien pagá’ (‘The Well-Paid’), when it resonates over the images showing different people waiting for food. The poverty does not need to be commented upon: the way in which they gaze at food, the fact that they are queuing and the number of children that need to be fed underscores their hunger. This striking sequence illustrates very well Patino’s approach, without ever criticizing directly. The title of the song, sung here by the legend-

Directory of World Cinema

Songs for After War/Canciones para después de una guerra, Julio A. López Pérez Tabernero.

ary Miguel Molina – a homosexual artist that went into exile to Argentina after the Civil War –, means ‘you have been well paid’. The lines of the song, which translate as ‘I paid you well’, refer to a prostitute paid for love. These words echo and resonate over post-war images of children and older people waiting for food. The press articles illustrate that Franco’s children came home while parents waited passionately for them. The song underlines that the supposed promises of a good result (Franco’s conviction that the price was worth it) resulted in poverty, with the victims now starving. Patino never freezes a single feeling or image: the diversity of the messages transmitted are so varied that we can discover sequences about the lottery, about women working accompanied by the song ‘Tatuaje’ – a well-known love song that tells of a woman that dreams of a lover, a foreigner coming along on a

Musical

139

Directory of World Cinema

ship. At the same time, footage of women sewing on a machine is shown. This song certainly makes women dream about true love, keeping in mind the great numbers of men that were killed during the Civil War. Canciones para después de una guerra makes them dream away a little bit from this tragic destiny and from daily reality. At the end, we encounter the current King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, as a young boy, shown here as an exemplary pupil while his teacher looks with pride and satisfaction at the way in which he is working. Patino then creates a new question, zooming in on the last photograph. The Prince has an innocent facial expression, while holding a pencil in his other hand to write as if he is passing a dificult exam. The extreme close-up highlights his thoughtful expression: what will be his position in the future? The swinging Columbian song ‘The caiman is leaving’ then inishes this original ilm with images of marionettes (of the military, of bullighters, etc.). The song refers to the legend of the man who was transformed into a caiman to spy on women bathing. Who was the Spanish caiman? Was it Patino spying on Franco’s marionettes? This ilmmaker certainly knows how to question established visions.

Pietsie Feenstra

Spell Embrujo Studio:

Producciones Boga SA Director:

Carlos Serrano de osma Producer:

Fernando Butragueño Benavente Screenwriter:

Pedro Lazaga Carlos Serrano de osma Cinematographer:

Salvador Torres Art Director:

José G de Ubieta Editor:

Antonio Graciani Duration/Format:

68 minutes/B/W

140 Spain

Synopsis Lola, an acclaimed star of Flamenco dancing, contemplates a tribute to her from the stalls of a theatre in Madrid. on her way home, while talking to a young dancer who follows her, she shares her vital experience and remembers her youth… Lola and partner, singer Manolo, start an artistic collaboration that will bring them much satisfaction. Under the extreme demands of Manolo, and fascinated by him, Lola develops her talent really fast. The nonrequital of his love for her drives Manolo to drink; the artistes break up and Lola achieves success all over the world. However, she cannot forget her former partner and returns to Spain. After long agony, Manolo dies in his bed. While dancing, Lola has foreboding of the tragedy and faints in the middle of her show… Back in the present, Lola and the young artist take lowers to Manolo’s grave.

Critique An unclassiiable ilm, a good example of the so-called Spanish telluric cinema (essential movies that try to reach ‘the darkness of the unconscious through the shiny routes of the folklore’ to use director Serrano de osma’s words), it becomes one of his betterrated works. The director tried to disassociate himself from the Hollywood-inspired movies with his irst ilms shot in Barcelona with his group Los Telúricos: Spell (1946), Abel Sánchez/Abel Sánchez: History of a Passion (1946) and La sirena negra/The Black Siren (1947).

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Lola Flores Manolo ortega Caracol Fernando Fernán-Gómez María Dolores Pradera Year:

1946

The production of Spell was inluenced by the aesthetics of the irst vanguard, such as the metaphoric collages with distorted imagery of landscapes or with futuristic shots devoted to railway machinery in action that refers directly to sequences from ilms of Absolut Film, the German movement, such as Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt/Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (Walter ruttmann, 1927). The abstraction structures many moments in the ilm that resort to multiple inserts, in which speciic and out-of-context actions stand out from a black background: applauding hands, guitars or bottles produce geometric compositions and cubist games. Serrano de osma’s camera inds in the reiteration of travelling an approach to characters, a key resource to emphasize his emotional status, a formula that can be considered a stylistic trace of the director, which is shown in most of his other ilms such as The Black Siren (1947) or Parsifal (The Evil Forest, 1951). The articulation of the ilm is based on two types of sequences – as mandatory for a classical musical. Firstly, the narrative sequences give the spectator the material to build up a minimal storyline. Second, the tendency to display the musical scenes (inspired in the sequences from the Soviet ilm vanguard of the 1920s) through the perspective of the main characters – in this case Lola and Manolo, with interesting examples of audio-visual synchrony and counterpoint. All these build a dense text that gives a wide range of interpretations and meanings, although deeply rooted in the Pygmalion myth (the story of the creator who falls in love with his creation, whom he makes successful). Some other stylistic resources, such as superimposition and fade-ins, that give a metaphorical status to characters and situations, and a precisely-processed set design, create a coherent story with an increasingly-gloomy development. Its ilm references allow connections with Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), both for the use of lashback and the craneand travelling shots, which allow entry to the unconscious level of the main characters’ desires and objectives. Due to his insistence on the production of a signiicant ilm (in staging and production), Serrano de osma connects with the experimental tradition in a similar way to orson Welles, although not forgetting the most deeply-rooted, Spanish popular tradition. The director will also be remembered for being completely a man of this industry, with an extensive career as ilm critic and sponsor of institutions for the recognition of ilm investigation in Spain, such as the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográicas (IIEC).

Ana Sedeño

Musical

141

Directory of World Cinema

Un rayo de luz Studio:

Producciones Benito Perojo Director:

Luis Lucía Producer:

Manuel José Goyanes Martínez Screenwriters:

Manuel Atalaya Félix Atalaya Cinematographer:

Manuel Berenguer Editor:

José Antonio rojo Composers:

Alfredo García Segura Gregorio García Segura Augusto Algueró

Synopsis Marisol is a boarder in a convent school in Málaga (Spain). There, she is visited by her mother once a year. Elena has made her daughter think she is a singing superstar so that the girl would not be ashamed of her origins. Marisol’s uncle Pablo, son of an Italian count, also visits her in the school. Her father died in a plane crash. After the school’s end-of-term performance, in which the nowgrown girl sings as the choir’s soloist, Pablo proposes to take Marisol to Italy to visit her grandfather. Count D’Angelo is a serious and rigid general oficer who becomes very fond of Marisol after receiving her in his castle. Soon, he decides to keep the girl with him in Italy but she does not want to stay there and she feigns injury in order to go back with her mother. once the grandfather inds out about the deception, he sends Pablo to take her away. The count does not even agree to say goodbye, although his granddaughter wants to apologize to him. In Madrid, Marisol discovers her mother’s lie. The count travels to Spain and, there, he meets the girl. He decides then to buy a house for Elena in which he will spend some periods of time. Elena and Pablo declare their love each other.

Cast:

Critique

Marisol Anselmo Duarte María Mahor

The success achieved by the ilm The Little Nightingale (Antonio del Amo, 1956) initiated one of the most successful recipes for the commercial cinema business in Spain during Franco’s regime: the one that turns children into the main characters of the folk musical genre. In 1959, the ilm-producer Manuel Goyanes watches on the television an 11-year-old girl from Malaga who performed with a dance group. Her name was Josefa Flores and the ilm-producer, impressed by the girl, got her parent’s permission to contract her. For a new star, the irst thing was a new name. Marisol was chosen as it is not dificult to remember and, in Spanish, it implies the idea of the sea and the sun. Her unusual physical features for the Spanish canon – blond hair and blue eyes – came in useful for associating the girl with a certain idea of modernity. Furthermore, around Marisol, proitable promotional techniques would be carried out, such as product merchandising and constant public appearances. In Un rayo de luz (A Beam of Light) because of general pan shots, the audience recognizes the city of Málaga as the place where the school is situated. However, it is the only identiiable reference in a ilm conceived as a fairytale and the story does not provide any characteristic related to the time-space context in which it is located. This very character of fantasy becomes more noticeable by the use of implausible events. These events have a melodramatic component although they are satisfactorily solved. Even the

Duration:

109 minutes Filming Locations:

Málaga Madrid Year:

1960

142 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

injury that Marisol does to Jorge, the neighbours’ son, has a positive consequence: the grandfather’s reconciliation with the other family. The non-deinition of the context and the lack of plausibility in the narration correspond with the characters’ simpliication, such as the grandfather’s bitterness caused by his son’s death. The character played by Marisol works out in a paradoxical way. on the one hand, the girl is characterized as Andalusian by her accent, though it is not a strongly-marked linguistic feature. Moreover, the main character dances and sings lamenco. She also gets excited when her grandfather and her uncle give her folk music and a lamenco dress as presents for her birthday. on the other hand, Marisol has more Anglo-Saxon physical features than Latin ones. Furthermore, the girl wears neutral clothes. Her taste for adventure makes Marisol surround herself with male friends and she occasionally dresses like them. Marisol’s joyful and strong character is shown in her constant tendency to sing Andalusian music. nevertheless, her fondness for singing is continually repressed by the nuns, her grandfather and her voice teacher. on the one hand, Andalusian music together with Marisol’s most singular features triumph over the formal values identiied with classical music, which is considered as ‘culture’ by the adults. However this triumph is not real: the conversion of the artist’s repertoire including pop-style songs will be emphasized in the next ilms she stars in.

Inmaculada Sánchez Alarcón

Musical

143

DE ÉPOCA

PERIOD FILMS

Directory of World Cinema

Period ilm as a genre in Spanish cinema has had a prominent role, after drama and comedy. It is a very rich genre because of its hybrid nature, as it can accommodate many other genres: epics, costume dramas, medieval romps, historical dramas, war ilms, etc. As stated in the introduction, it is a genre that is formally deined with clear characteristics: to recreate past events, often with elaborate sets and costumes (sometimes actual clothes) and is representative of the period relected. Therefore, as a rule, productions tend to be expensive because they require elaborate, extensive settings and, sometimes, on-location ilming, or big sets, inlated action on a massive scale, and large casts of characters. They usually focus on an historical or imagined event or character, be it mythic, legendary, or heroic igure, with an imaginative setting and sumptuous costumes, accompanied by spectacle and an epic musical score. The lapse of time covered is often extensive and is set against a vast backdrop. narrative follows the adventures of the hero, who is presented in the context of special historical events of the past. Spanish ilms have never reached the quality and relevance of period ilms like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or Gone with the Wind (1939), in the sense that they have not followed one of the principles of this genre: the grandeur. My theory, beyond the fact that the Spanish ilm industry has never had enough muscle, is that, in some way, it shows the inferiority complex of Spain as a nation since the late nineteenth century, especially when it deals with historical topics. In fact, it was not until 1988 that Carlos Saura provided, as a big production, a period ilm: El Dorado, based on one of the most important historical events of Spanish Imperial history. Perhaps the only similar recent production is Alatriste (2006) by Agustín Díaz yanes, whose usual style promised more: again, the unconscious desire seems to be to represent a powerful Spain. But there are other historical episodes that, without being pure relections of power, replay the epic of the Spanish character: Augusto Genina’s Sin novedad en el Alcázar/The Siege of the Alcázar, ilmed in 1940, therefore almost at the limit for being considered as a period ilm as it is based on a well-known episode of the Civil War; and a more legitimate example: Los últimos de Filipinas/The Last Ones in the Philippines (1945) by Antonio román. In this epic sequence, but deconstructing it and not anchoring it in history, I have included Albert Serra’s Honor de cavalleria/ Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) (2006), which proposes a free adaptation of Don Quixote. It is, in some ways, a postmodern reading of the myth in a Baudrillardian sense, as here the great story ceases to exist as such. This area of the postmodern runs throughout this genre in Spain from the end of the dictatorship with, for example, Vacas/Cows (1992), this time crossed with Unamuno’s intrahistorical mode. However, period ilms are not just historical or epics. There is also another great subgenre: the biopic (of which Spaniards are not very fond) and often less lavish versions of the epic ilm, such as Las tres gracias/Bocage (1936) by José Leitão de Barros, about the poet Manuel Maria Barbosa do Bocage. In Spanish cinema, a subgenre that should not be missed is that about religious exaltation,

Left: Alatriste/Agustín Díaz Yanes, nBC Universal Global networks España.

Period Films 145

Directory of World Cinema

represented by another co-production with Portugal, rafael Gil’s Nuestra señora de Fátima/Our Lady of Fatima (1951). often all these subgenres rewrite history, playing creatively with the historical truth, with ictitious recreations and exalted religiosity, streamlining the storytelling through accepted codes, creating romantic dream worlds. However, they sometimes verge on vulgarity, political correctness, and with scripts a little bit lame. no wonder, then, that the historical data is not always the most accurate and is often dominated by ideology. But, above all, the most important tell a truth that does not necessarily have to be faithful to an historical truth but serves to affect the viewer. Here are ilms such as Pilar Miró’s El Perro del Hortelano/The Dog in the Manger (1996), which recreates the famous play by Lope de Vega (a universal igure of Spanish literature and about whom another ilm was made in 2010 by Andrucha Waddington: Lope) or Juan de orduña’s Locura de amor (1948), based on the historical igure Juana La Loca. Finally, I have included in this genre a ilm by José Luis Garci that is not an epic, or a biopic, nor does it represent a key moment in Spain history, but has traces of all of them: You are the one (Una historia de entonces)/You are the one (A story of the past) (2000), which, just at the turn of the century, serves to act, with a post-war background, as a meditation on nostalgia, a sentiment that can be identiied in greater or lesser degrees with all periods ilms. In this sense, I think the best examples of periods ilms that Spanish cinema can offer, have less to do with the peplum than with ilms made by poets because, as Aristotle said in his Poetics, the role of the poet is to describe not what has happened but what might have happened and, therefore, poetry is more concerned with philosophy than with history.

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

146 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Alatriste Studio:

Estudios Picasso Fábrica de Ficción origen nBC Universal Global networks España Director:

Agustín Díaz yanes Producers:

Belén Atienza Álvaro Augustín Antonio Cardenal Íñigo Marco Screenwriter:

Agustín Días yanes (based on the novels by Arturo Pérezreverte) Cinematographer:

Paco Femenía Art Director:

Benjamín Fernández Composer:

roque Baños Editor:

José Salcedo Duration:

140 minutes Cast:

Viggo Mortensen Elena Anaya Unax Ugalde Eduardo noriega Filming Locations:

Cádiz region (Andalucía) El Álamo (Madrid) San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid) Viso del Marqués (Castilla LaMancha) Uclés (Cuenca) Year:

Synopsis Captain Diego Alatriste is a brave seventeenth-century soldier in the service of King Felipe IV of Spain. After ighting in Flanders, Alatriste returns to Madrid, where he takes Iñigo de Balboa in his care, after a promise to his dying friend Lope, Iñigo’s father. In Madrid, Luis de Alquézar and Emilio Bocanegra hire Alatriste and Gualterio Malatesta to perform a mysterious assassination. realizing the intended victims are the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckingham, Alatriste lets them escape, becoming involved in the intrigues and betrayals of the corrupt court. Alatriste then returns to the netherlands, taking part in the surrender of Breda. Between war scenes and shorter sequences in Madrid, the ilm ends with his death in 1643, in the Battle of rocroi.

Critique Alatriste (‘Sad-wing’, name of the leading role that makes also reference in Spanish to the brim of his typical hat) is based on a series of novels by Arturo Pérez-reverte. As in the books, the ilm is centred on Captain Diego Alatriste. It is the second most expensive Spanish production ever and brings together Hollywood stars and local directors to tell Spanish (hi)stories. In this sense, it is an example of a new trend in the national ilm industry. However, the number of Spanish stars (Javier Cámara, Blanca Portillo, Elena Anaya, and Pilar Bardem, just to name a few), both in starring and supporting roles, is also signiicant. The ilm makes an unorthodox use of its cast by having an American actor playing a Spanish character (the protagonist, Diego Alatriste, is played by Viggo Mortensen) and a woman playing a man (Blanca Portillo as Fray Emilio Bocanegra). Although watched by over 3 million in Spain, Alatriste was a critical failure. reviews have been especially damning about the inclusion of too many episodes from Pérez-reverte’s ive novels, dismissing Alatriste as an often-confusing ilm that feels too long. But whereas its narrative is fragmented and its editing problematic in terms of luidity of the storyline, the ilm’s high-production values stand out. Indeed, the ilm’s big budget (24,000,000 ) has had a clear impact on its look; as an adventure ilm, spectacle is one of the key features of Alatriste. This is particularly visible in the scenes in the palace, with dazzling costumes and décors, but also in war scenes, such as the battle of rocroi, where the number of extras used, as well as the presence of lags, horses, and cannons, are effectively combined with complex camera movements and an epic soundtrack. Alatriste begins with a clear contextualization, zooming in on a world map and using a voice-over narrator to describe the situation in Flanders in the seventeenth century. While it could be seen as a metaphor for contemporary wars – for the director, the hellish conditions in Flanders for the Spanish army of 1623 can be compared

2006

Period Films 147

Directory of World Cinema

to the position of American soldiers after the 2003 invasion of Iraq – Alatriste’s view of the past is utterly unromantic. Madrid, for instance, is represented as a bleak and shadowy capital, where court plotting and clerical repression set the tone. When in the city, Alatriste is seen drinking with his friends (including the poet Francisco de Quevedo, played by Juan Echanove) or spending time with his lover, the actress María de Castro (Ariadna Gil). Both plot lines – the debauchery portrayed in the taverns, and the fact that this is a forbidden romance (she is married) – underline the decadence of the period represented. Hence, despite ending on a positive note, by highlighting the bravery of the Spanish army, Alatriste is far from celebrating Spain’s Siglo de oro (Golden Age). There is an ambiguous line at the end of the movie spoken by Alatriste: ‘cuenta lo que fuimos’ (‘tell everyone what we were’), that can stress the importance of not forgetting about the past, and about those who fought for its glory – a preoccupation that Díaz yanes had already expressed in the title of his irst (and most successful) ilm, Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto/Nobody Will Speak of Us When We’re Dead (1995).

Mariana Liz

Bocage Las Tres Gracias

Countries of origin:

Spain Portugal Studio:

Sociedad Universal de Superilmes Director:

José Leitão de Barros Producer:

Ernesto González Screenwriter:

rocha Martins Pereira Coelho Gustavo de Matos

Synopsis The theme of this ilm is the life of the Portuguese poet Manuel Maria Barbosa do Bocage (1765–1805), focusing on the bohemian and passionate aspects of his personality. After years of travel throughout the Portuguese empire as a naval oficer, Bocage comes back to Lisbon with health problems and is welcomed home by his friend Lieutenant Coutinho. Bocage becomes romantically involved with his friend’s sisters: the beautiful and provocative Márcia, who breaks off her engagement, to the disgrace of her family, and young and naive Anália, who gives up of her religious vocation. Disillusioned and betrayed, Lieutenant Coutinho expels him from his home. Bocage is forced to hide himself among the people, where he lives a bohemian and marginal life. He becomes a popular igure and is involved with several women, notably Canária, a Brazilian singer. Some years later, Bocage accidentally crosses paths with his friend’s sisters and manages to repair the errors of the past: Márcia gets married and Anália enters the convent. Despite his friend’s forgiveness, Bocage tries one last time to conquer the heart of Anália. Without success, Bocage goes back to the people, where is happy, loved and revered by all.

Cinematographer:

Critique

Joseph Barth octávio Bobone Salazar Diniz Aquilino Mendes

In 1936, a co-production project between Portuguese and Spanish companies would lead to two versions of the same story: one for the Portuguese-speaking market, spoken in Portuguese and with

148 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Afonso Correa Leite Editor:

Peter Mayerowitz Duration/Format:

124 minutes/B/W Cast:

Alfredo Corcuera Francisco Costa Fuensanta Lorente Alfredo Mayo Filming Locations:

Lumiar (Lisbon) Year:

1936

Portuguese actors; another for the Hispanic market, spoken in Spanish and with Spanish actors. This ambitious Iberian co-production joined forces to gain a stake in the Latin American market, seeking to overcome the domestic limitations of both countries and enhance the formation of a Latin cinematographic distribution circuit. The disastrous reception in Spain jeopardized distribution in the Hispanic-speaking market, and the signiicant success in Brazil only served to mitigate the enormous losses of the investors. The crew was composed of Portuguese and Spanish technicians, led by José Leitão de Barros, the most prestigious director in Portugal and responsible for the irst Portuguese sound ilm. He was also an expert in historical adaptations of great literary successes of the Portuguese nineteenth century (A Severa/The Severe, 1931; As Pupilas do Senhor Reitor/The Pupils of Mr. Rector, 1935) and admirer of operatic devices with lavish sets, thorough characterization and exuberant wardrobe (some undersigned by Maison Garnier of Paris). Seeking internationalization, this co-production followed simultaneously the models of great historical reconstructions and literary adaptations of the European ‘ilm d’art’ and the musical comedy popularized by the Hollywood ilm industry. By mixing these two models, the producers wanted to make a ilm accessible to all audiences but also an object of art and culture. Despite being conventional, the ilm’s narrative structure is punctuated by musical and scenic moments made with extreme care, which contribute to enhance the general artistic quality of the ilm. The theatrical representation style, very usual at that time, with brilliant interpretations by experienced Portuguese and Spanish stage actors, is very important to dramatically enrich this cinematographic biography. The choice of the poet Bocage for the central character was also certainly crucial for the commercial and artistic success of the ilm because Bocage is one of the most irreverent, creative and popular authors of Portuguese literature, and the director was able to take advantage of both his work and his life. on the Portuguese side, this historical drama relected the political and ideological context of the Salazar’s dictatorship – the new State regime, where several historic igures were valued as vehicles for legitimizing a new idea of national culture, national art and national identity. In times of ideological rewriting of history, the historically-based cinema was useful to many authoritarian regimes. on the Spanish side, the interest in such productions seemed to be, for now at least, purely economic.

Paulo Cunha

Period Films 149

Directory of World Cinema

Cows Vacas Studio:

Sogetel Idea Director:

Julio Médem Producers:

José Luis olaizola Fernando Garcillán Screenwriter:

Julio Médem Michel Gaztambide Cinematographer:

Carles Gusi Composer:

Alberto Iglesias Editor:

María Elena Sáinz de rozas Duration:

93 minutes Cast:

Emma Suárez Carmelo Gómez Ana Torrent Karra Elejalde Filming Locations:

Guipuzcoa (Basque Country) Year:

1992

150 Spain

Synopsis 1875, the Third Carlist War. In the trenches at the front lines of Biscay, the Carlist sergeant Karmelo Mendiluze re-encounters his neighbour Manuel Irigibel. Memories of his village are suddenly interrupted by combat. Under ire, Karmelo is shot and Manuel uses the blood of his wounded neighbour to feign his own death and thus escape from the horror. This anecdotal episode, marked by war, betrayal and cowardice, sets the stage to portray the story of two rival Basque families who live in a small, isolated rural village. Across three generations, the spectator is witness to the strained relations between these two families, marked by rivalry and passion and, above all, by a malignant hatred that contaminates the oppressive space in which they coexist, to eventually culminate in absurd and irrational violence in the form of a bloodbath at the onset of the Spanish Civil War of 1936. Meanwhile, the cows, who live with the ilm’s characters in their farmhouses, observe life in the village with their hollow, non-judgmental gaze, minimizing the transcendental nature of human acts.

Critique Cows was Julio Médem’s irst full-length motion picture. one of the most outstanding ilm-makers in Spain in the last two decades, Médem met with great acclaim, winning the Goya Award for best new director for the daring plot and formal structure of a ilm which reveals the stylistic features that would characterize his later cinematographic works. Around this story of rivalry between two rural Basque families, the director constructs a peculiar and magical tale of an acrimonious and irrational hatred that can only breed violence. To do so, Médem stylizes the rural world, which serves as the setting for the ilm and is transformed into a claustrophobic space in which the families ind themselves swept away by a relentless force that leads them to confrontation and death. Two antagonistic forces, two family bloodlines, mark what, in the words of the director, is the fundamental theme of the ilm: what should one’s own conscience dictate in a place where there is war and horror, where one is forced to take one side or another? In this impulsive and violent universe where humans are placed on a par with animals and guided by the most elemental and brutal passions, united in a downward spiral in which the same errors are passed down from generation to generation in a diseased atmosphere without salvation, the grandfather Manuel Irigibel emerges as an important igure in the ilm. Manuel, who seeks refuge from his conscience in an internal world (‘similar to this one, but different’), transmits an encrypted message of condemnation and resistance through his sinister paintings and sculptures. Employing a style that is more poetic than narrative, based on visual and sonorous rhythms, metaphors and symbols, Médem con-

Directory of World Cinema

Cows/Vacas, SoGETEL.

structs his opera prima through a dialectic that alternates between an impulsive rural drama of a naturalist strain and the Spanish cinematic trend known as the ‘lens of myth’, whose best example can be found in The Spirit of the Beehive (1973). This lens gradually focuses on the special relationship between the old man and his grandchildren, marking a linear path within the circular structure of the storyline to depict the grandfather’s task of teaching his grandchildren, and their subsequent coming of age; a linear trajectory that gives expression to their progressive understanding of the truth of human existence through the children’s successive rites of passage. The rites of passage disrupt and fracture the continuity of the narrative, permitting another magical reality to emerge. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Manuel Irigibel seeks refuge in this magical reality through the eyes of the cows; a reality that his grandchildren are also able to take part in, following in their grandfather’s footsteps. In short, Cows serves as a point of departure for understanding the work of Julio Médem and gaining insight into his characteristic visual and narrative style. Cows is a ilm where the magical, the dreamy and the mythical emerge from the deep fractures produced in the rational fabric of a world that we identify as possible and commonplace. yet, as the storyline progresses, that world is shown to be radically tied to other irrational realities, making it impossible to separate the real from the magical.

Fernando Luque Gutiérrez

Period Films 151

Directory of World Cinema

The Dog in the Manger El perro del Hortelano Studio:

Lolailms Cartel Director:

Pilar Miró Producers:

Enrique Cerezo Screenwriter:

Pilar Miró (adapted from the play by Lope de Vega) Cinematographer:

Javier Aguirresarobe Art Director:

Félix Murcia Música:

José nieto Editor:

Pablo G Del Amo Duration:

104 minutes Cast:

Emma Suárez Carmelo Gómez Ana Duato Filming locations:

Lisbon, Setúbal and Sintra (Portugal) Year:

1996

152 Spain

Synopsis Diana, the Countess of Bellor, is in love with her secretary Teodoro. Though their love must be kept a secret from society, for a marriage between a lady and a mere commoner in the seventeenth century would never be allowed. Teodoro’s servant Tristan creates a farce in order to trick Count Ludivico into believing Teodoro to be his son. In his senility, Count Ludovico takes Teodoro to be the very same son taken from him by pirates. now, having gained his noble title, Teodoro is inally free to marry Diana.

Critique Pilar Miró was the irst woman head of the State Broadcasting and Cinematographic Service in Spain (Dirección General de Cinematografía y de radiotelevisión Española) and also the irst director in the history of Spanish cinema to shoot a ilm spoken wholly in verse. This adaptation of The Dog in the Manger keeps true to the original comedy of Lope de Vega, one of the most important playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age of the seventeenth century. In spite of the many inancing problems the ilm suffered, mainly due to the fact that few producers believed in a project involving the recital of seventeenth-century dramatic verse, the ilm gained public and critical acclaim. The name, ‘el perro del hortelano’ is what Teodoro uses to deine Diana’s attitude regarding her love for him –’Es cómo el perro del hortelano que ni come ni deja comer’ (‘She’s like a dog in a manger who doesn’t want to eat but won’t let anyone else eat either’), a phrase relecting hysteria itself, according to Freud, referring to the ambiguous behaviour of a woman about sex; the kind of sentimental ambiguity that leads to hysteria, which in Diana’s case is revealed by the love she manifests for Teodoro. only when she suspects him to be in love with Marcela, her maid, does Diana declare her love for him; when Teodoro loves her in return, her love turns to disgust. And on and on it goes. The plot, however, cannot be allowed to remain trapped in Diana’s vicious circle of indecisive desire and madness. The Dog in the Manger is a comedy, a genre whose narrative conlict mainly surges from the battle of the sexes, although in many comedies it is also bound up in the difference of class. Diana’s emotional state clearly transcends the conlict of the sexes; the noble title which Diana possesses as Countess of Bellor and the ofice of treasurer held by Teodoro in the service of Diana both clearly mark the importance of the difference of social class. Both these conlicts must be resolved if the lovers, true to the comedic happy ending, are inally to be together. The Dog in the Manger manages to do all this through the entangling sub-plot of carefree deceit concerning Teodoro’s nobility. only now, with the obstacle of class overcome, is Diana able to free herself from the legendary ‘I love him, I love him not’ and to love without hesitation as a woman. The truth is that Diana must

Directory of World Cinema

irst free herself from the veil which covers her and her emotions. The veil represents the contradiction of feminine desire – the desire to get close to someone while at the same time wanting to get away – which takes on a metaphysical role in Diana’s wardrobe: an elegant, sober, colourful wardrobe, deserving of praise for its excellent depiction of the era and its social classes. The same can be said of the scenery and lighting at the hands of one of the greatest ilm directors of contemporary cinema, Javier Aguirresarobe. Diana, once revealed, both literally and metaphorically, from the veil, unwaveringly proclaims her desire, ‘Teodoro, te amo’ (‘Teodoro, I love you’). The end.

Begoña Siles Ojeda

Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) Honor de cavalleria Language:

Catalan Studio:

Andergraun Films Eddie Saeta notro Films Director:

Albert Serra Producers:

Albert Serra Montse riola Luis Miñarro Adolfo Blanco Screenwriters:

Albert Serra Jimmy Gimferrer Montse Triola (inspired by Cervantes’ El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, 1605) Cinematographers:

Christophe Farnarier Eduard Grau

Synopsis Honour of the Knights is a free adaptation of Cervante’s universal novel. Far, however, from retelling the most well-known episodes of the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the ilm gives space to its weakest moments, all of those that were irrelevant to the development of the story. More than active agents, the knight and his faithful shield bearer wander through a narrative empty of adventures.

Critique The irst feature-length ilm by the young Catalan director, Albert Serra, can be styled as one of the most fascinating moments of Spanish cinematography at the beginning of the twenty-irst century. Honour of the Knights, which was entered into the Quinzaine des Realisateurs of the Cannes Film Festival, was judged by the prestigious French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma to be one of the top ten major ilms of 2007. The ilm, however, had only a brief commercial run and met with scant recognition in Spain. The radicalism of the ilm rests on the complex relationship with its text. As said, it is not an adaptation of El Quixote. It does not perpetuate the reiteration of Cervante´s material from one, the literary, medium to the cinematographic. Instead, it interrogates the novel, walking around its edges, looking at it from both the exterior and interior at the same time. The features that allude to the literary text are obvious from the very beginning. The camera follows a gaunt, grey-bearded old man who takes up his armour and shield and goes to ind a short, squat igure that is waiting in repose for him. The link has been established and there is no room for doubt. Don Quixote and his faithful servant, Sancho Panza are the unmistakable protagonists of the narrative. They are as much recognizable in the igurative as well as the thematic: the phlegmatic comic lackey in counterpoint to the restless lord.

Period Films 153

Directory of World Cinema

Honour of the Knights (Quixotic)/Honor de cavalleria, Andergraun.

Art Director:

Jimmy Gimferrer Editor:

Ángel Martín Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Lluís Carbo Bullo Lluís Serrat Massanella Year:

2006

154 Spain

However, the detour with respect to the novel also very quickly becomes evident. The Catalan used by the characters is provocative and no less so in the title which, more than in the wanderings of this singular knight, conveys a terrain-vague drawn by the text in its constant dialogue with other texts, such as medieval knights´ tales like Tirant Lo Blanc or Lancelot of the Lake. But also with other innumerable versions and adaptations which end up overwhelming the territory drawn by Cervante´s novel. More than in the luxuriant mountain landscapes in which the adventurers travel (a topography far removed from the wide plains of ‘la Mancha’), it is in the narrative where the interior/exterior dialectic makes itself most intensely felt. If the deranged old knight and his shield-bearer are the unequivocal protagonists of the story, it is nonetheless true that this story tells of their wellknown adventures in an incidental manner. There are no duels with windmills which our knight has confused for dangerous giants, nor are there heroic charges against fearful armies which are actually herds of sheep. Quite the contrary, the action – which is weakened to the limits of recognition – are reabsorbed into the vestiges of a wandering form of the events which do not it into a cohesive narrative structure. The repeated examples of this insane knight-errant in the literary tale are condensed in the ilm into the imprecations of an enlightened noble against the sky or in the violent decentralizing of his features on the screen. The lectures of the knight on the

Directory of World Cinema

golden age of knighthood to the goat herders that he shares meals with in the novel are, here, reduced to a few digressions while the knight and his page relax on the shores of a small lake after having had a refreshing bath. Honor de Cavalleria is closer to the fascinating exercise of the Quixote by orson Welles than to the many other versions of this immortal story. The difference with the Welles’s movie – aided by access to digital technology – is that Serra opts for an opposite attitude. He radically strips the image, reducing it to its bare essence and capturing only that which is leeting and evanescent; a gamble that inds immediate references in ilm to creators like robert Bresson, or the materialists Straub and Huillet.

Javier Moral

The Last Ones in the Philippines Los últimos de Filipinas Studio:

CEA-Alhambra Films Director:

Antonio román Producers:

Pedro de Juan Screenwriters:

Antonio román Enrique Alfonso Barcones rafael Sánchez Campoy Enrique Llovet Cinematographer:

Heinrich Gärtner (as Enrique Guerner) Art Director:

Sigfredo Burman Francisco Canet Composer:

Manuel Parada Editor:

Bienvenida Sanz

Synopsis In Baler, a coastal village of Luzón in the Philippines, during the summer of 1898, a garrison of about 50 soldiers, hides inside the local church besieged by the Tagalogs. This siege is held although the American-Spanish war is already over after the Treaty of Paris. The commander-in-chief of the detachment ‘Batallón de Cazadores nº2’, isolated inside the church, refuses to believe the news of the end of the war, relayed by the Philippine army oficers, for fear it is a ploy to force them to surrender, obeying the order to hold their position. After a 337-day siege, on 2 June 1899, a Spanish delegation arrived at Baler and managed to report to them that the war was over. The Spanish soldiers refused to leave the church unless they are sent back to Spain without being captured. And thus, the Philippine leader Emilio Aguinaldo forgives them and publicly acknowledges their courage. They are borne back to Spain with honours.

Critique This ilm is based on a true story. It may be considered a history or war ilm. It stands both as a homage to the heroes of Baler and as an exploit in Spanish history, It also highlights several Spanish symbols, one example being a soldier and a priest who act as just one, with Saint James representing both characters. In line with this joint symbol, though, while there are many places to hide in and to resist, a church is chosen – its walls and pillars are more solid. The colony and the mission are run by the captain, the physician and the priest. The story is told through the lives of those who are besieged, mixing the historical and the personal. Historical events are indicated by military decisions: ‘Hay que defender la guarnición hasta nueva orden’ (‘We must hold out until further notice’), and personal events relayed by the soldiers: the last bullight they had attended, what new technical advances are in fashion – cinema, electric trams, etc.

Period Films 155

Directory of World Cinema

Duration/Format:

99 minutes/B/W Cast:

Armando Calvo José nieto Guillermo Marín Manuel Morán Year:

1945

A ilm dramatizes and emotionalizes the story; we, then, watch this ilm within its context, and appreciate what aspects highlight the differences there are compared with other ilms, also made within a context and covering similar facts. This ilm was released under critical circumstances in post-war Spain, when there was a need to rediscover past history or to recover heroes of actual exploits; in short, to lift the spirit of the nation. A military and a roman Catholic Church advisor worked together to produce a factual and high-quality ilm. Antonio román, the director, also followed common guidelines for such ilms, mixing war with sentiment: irst, the ight between Spanish and proindependence soldiers, which inishes when Captain Enrique de las Moreras dies; second, Lieutenant Martín Cerezo is in command and leads the situation until the end. Some elements recall American Western movies: the courier arrives having survived Tagalog ambushes in the jungle; the siege of the church, etc., made vivid through the remarkable work of director of photography, Enrique Guerner, and the set design of Sigfredo Burman. The love theme that Tala sings in the tavern to her soldier lover, John, ‘Por qué mi canción ‘, symbolizes the relationship between the Mother country and the colony. In some way, this song anticipates the destiny of Spanish colonies. The soldiers sing of ‘Asturias, patria querida…’ (‘Asturias, dear mother country…’), the region in northern Spain where the reconquest against the Moors began. A history ilm always has reference to the time in which it is made; to the habits and desires of that time. ‘The Last ones in the Philippines’ describes ‘El desastre del 98’ – the Spanish loss of most of her colonies in 1898 – from the heroes´ point of view. Every social class in Spain, and especially intellectuals, were affected. Through this ilm, that passage of history is rewritten and explained in a less painful way, one that might justify facts and effects: a kind of psychoanalytic therapy for a country that has undergone defeat in war and deep colonial crises.

Carmen Rodríguez Fuentes

Locura de amor Studio:

Sevilla Films Director:

Juan de orduña Studio:

CIFESA Screenwriter:

Alfredo Tamayo Manuel Echegaray José María

156 Spain

Synopsis Locura de amor (Love Crazy) is structured around the eternal rivalry between the true Spain and its domestic and foreign enemies. In terms of the plot, the ilm deals with Queen Juana’s awareness of her husband’s affair with Beatriz, her lady companion, who is in fact Aldara, daughter of the last Muslim king of Granada. Locura de amor suffers from a strong Castilian nationalist vein in which sentimental and patriotic issues are intertwined, and in which the private affairs of the Queen (the King’s unfaithfulness) are mixed up with public issues (the attempt by the Flemish, headed by Archduke Felipe, to deprive Juana of her crown, citing her mental incapacity). Faced with this duality of interests, the Queen prioritizes her sentimental relationship and, consequently, loses her kingdom.

Directory of World Cinema

Pemán Carlos Blanco Cinematographer:

José F Aguayo Art Director:

Sigfrido Burmann Composer:

Juan Quintero Editor:

Juan Serra Duration:

112 minutes

Critique An important example of the Spanish fascist, kitsch aesthetic, Locura de amor is a paradigm of the post-Civil War Spanish ilms that recall Spain’s national history as a background for their plots. Juana I of Castile’s story of love, madness, and death combines the sentimentalism of melodrama and the imperialistic rhetoric of the idealized Spanish Golden Age. The return to Imperial Spain entailed the return to the origin of the Spanish nation, where the constitutive ingredients of a pretended Spanish ‘essence’ or, in other words, the true Spanish self (unique and different from the rest of the European nations), was distilled in its purest form. The inal segment of the ilm focuses on King Felipe’s agony, and this event makes it possible for orduña´s ilm to deal with one of the fundamental ingredients of fascist kitsch: death. The group of scenes I want to focus on starts with King Felipe’s illness

Locura de amor, CIFESA, Video Mercury.

Directory of World Cinema

Main Cast:

Aurora Bautista Fernando rey Sara Montiel Jorge Mistral Year:

1948

and his repentance, before Juana, for a life distant from her and the Catholic morals of the time. In this way, the topic of redemption through death, with which fascism deeply identiied, comes to the forefront. In fascist ideology, forgiveness is only enabled by death. After the conversation between the monarchs, the ilm returns, for the last time, to the present in which the ilm is being narrated. Captain Álvar de Estúñiga explains the King’s death in supernatural terms: ‘Fue la mano de Dios. Con su muerte terminaban los partidismos en Castilla’ (‘It was God´s wish. His death put an end to partisanship in Castile’). The Captain’s words can be read in relation to the post-war present in which the ilm was premiered. one of the arguments frequently used by the rebels to justify Franco’s nationalist insurrection was the division provoked by the political parties in Spain’s Second republic. King Felipe’s ‘sacriice’ makes possible the solution of the domestic problems and, therefore, beneits the community. This motive agrees with the fascist ideological precept that demands the subordination of the individual to the interests of the collectivity. It is ironic that, in this case, Felipe does not wish for his own death; it is imposed by God to guarantee the salvation of Spain. In the same way, Captain Estúñiga brings together in his memories the nobility and the people praying together for the King, enacting the fascist ideal of eliminating class differences in a society organically structured and uniied around a common objective. The melodramatic aspect of the ilm proves helpful in the search for a common identity dispossessed of class conlicts. When the King inally dies, Juana’s madness – which functions as a mechanism to elude reality – rekindles. With Captain Estúñiga’s voice-over, the funeral cortege carries Felipe’s cofin across the Spanish lands. His words insist on the queen’s madness. The ilm inishes with a tableaux vivant of Francisco Pradilla’s romantic painting Juana the Mad (1877). To sum up, orduña´s Locura de amor presents a perfect example of the Spanish fascist kitsch aesthetics: a historical melodrama in the service of a nationalist and ultraconservative ideological universe that inds in the national past a political model to be applied after the civil conlict. Fascinated by the grandiloquence and spectacular nature of the imperial years, CIFESA offers a product elaborated according to not only the regime’s megalomania but also to popular taste. Shaped by melodramatic serial publications, the public sought to be swept away from the daily hardships of the late 1940s. The artiiciality and excessive scenery end up betraying a ilm that, incapable of hiding its enormous ideological biases, embraces the fertile tradition of Spanish fascist kitsch.

Luis Mariano González

158 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Our Lady of Fatima Nuestra Señora de Fátima Countries of origin:

Spain Portugal Studio:

Suevia Films Aspa Films Director:

rafael Gil Producers:

Cesáreo González Aníbal Contreiras Screenwriter:

Vicente Escrivá Cinematographer:

Michel Kelber Art Director:

Enrique Alarcón Composer:

Ernesto Halffter Editor:

José Antonio rojo Duration/Format:

98 minutes/B/W Cast:

Ines orsini María Dulce Eugenio Domingo Filming Locations:

Fátima (Portugal) Miralores (Madrid) Year:

1951

Synopsis 1917, after the assassination of the King and the implementation of the republic, Portugal goes through an era of governmental instability, political radicalization and religious persecution. In a little town called Fátima, a poor agro-pastoral community, people live with hunger, disease and the effects of the war. Three teenaged shepherds, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, are very devoted to the Virgin Mary. In severe economic dificulties, Lucia’s father takes out a mortgage on the property of his family. The next day, in the Iria pit, the three shepherds have a vision: brilliant lightening and a lady in the sky that tells them to pray and that she will come back every month until october. nobody in the community believes in the vision of the Virgin Mary, not even the priest or their own families. The anticlerical Mayor hears the rumours and, fearing an outbreak of the Catholic faith in the region, threatens Lucia’ family. Meanwhile, the population begins to join the monthly worship of the shepherds. The cult grows and the political authorities in Lisbon press the Mayor to end it. The Mayor imprisons the three shepherds and intimidates them to get them to stop the cult. 13 october, a very rainy afternoon: thousands of pilgrims from all over Portugal and the press gather in Fátima to attend the advertised miracle. When the impatient crowd starts to protest, the rain stops falling, and the clouds opens up and the sun seems to fall upon the earth. Instantly, several miracles occur.

Critique Internationally speaking, the Marian cult in Fátima had an auspicious growth in the contexts of the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and the Cold War. Marian devotion has always been very popular in Spain but, since the tour through several Spanish lands of the original image of the shrine of our Lady of Fátima in 1948, the Spanish devotion of the Lady of Fátima has increased exponentially. Our Lady of Fátima is a Spanish production, with the cooperation of an associate Portuguese producer (Aníbal Contreras), and it was thought of as an historical drama: a very popular genre among those years in Portuguese and Spanish cinema. This project of a doctrinal and propaganda ilm, supported by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church of both countries, was written by Vicente Escrivá with the cooperation of two ecclesiastic assistants (Monseñor Ángel Sagarmínaga and D Javier Echenique, both responsible for Spanish missionaries). Escrivá was a Spanish writer who had been responsible for other ilms on great feminine characters of History, with great success in Spain – Agustina de Aragón (1950) and La Leona de Castilla/The Lioness of Castille (1951). rafael Gil had worked in Spanish cinema since the late 1930s, directing documentaries, melodramas, historical and literary adaptations and religious ilms.

Period Films 159

Directory of World Cinema

Parallel to the oficial version of the facts – the irst apparition, the lack of belief of the people, the political persecution of the administrator, the hesitation of the local Church and the so called miracle of the Sun – the ilm also includes dramatic ictional elements, particularly the stories of Lúcia’s older brother Manuel and of the couple Lourenzo and Helena, as an attempt to introduce dramatic density to the ilm and to appeal to popular taste. The result of this attempt to merge genres is a narrative without unity and apparently illed with scraps that seem to appeal mostly to the basic emotions of the viewer, alternating moments of dramatic intensity with some lighter passages of humorous content. This ilm is primarily a document or testimony that seeks to disseminate a Catholic message through a narrative that is unbalanced and not very coherent. At several moments, the religious and historical agenda of the ilm seems to limit the creative freedom of both the director and the screenwriter.

Paulo Cunha

The Siege of the Alcázar Sin novedad en el Alcázar Countries of origin:

Spain Italy Studio:

UFISA Film Bassoli Director:

Augusto Genina Producers:

renato and Carlo Bassoli Saturnino Ulargui Screenwriters:

Pietro Caporilli Alessandro De Stefani Augusto Genina Cinematographers:

Francesco Izzarelli Jan Stallich Art Director:

Gastone Medin

160 Spain

Synopsis The Siege of the Alcázar is based on an actual event that took place during the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, after the uprising by General Franco and after a failed military insurrection in Toledo, Colonel José Moscardó, locked up in a citadel along with a garrison and a portion of the civil population (around 1.800 people), refuses to surrender and give himself up to the republican troupes of the legitimate Madrid government. The ilm recreates some of the more relevant episodes of the republican siege which lasted from July to September and Moscardó’s resistance until the arrival of the nationalist troupes.

Critique The Siege of the Alcázar was among the most highly-acclaimed propaganda movies of the Franco regime as it celebrates one of the most famous feats in the struggle between nationalists and republicans during the Spanish Civil War. This ilm won the Mussolini Cup at the Venice Film Festival of 1940, and was critically praised even by Michelangelo Antonioni, who was suspicious of its fascist tendencies, maybe because, even as a propaganda ilm, it is an entertaining movie, and with special effects remarkable for the time – for example the excellent models used to simulate the bombing and blasting of the building. From the start, Italian producers renato and Carlo Bassoli, Spanish producer Saturnino Ulargui and director Augusto Genina had the backing of the Spanish government and of the oficial Italian ilm industry to work on the project. As such, no

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Antonio Veretti Editor:

Fernando Tropea Duration/Format:

116 minutes/B/W Cast:

Fosco Giachetti Maria Denis rafael Calvo Aldo Fiorelli Andrea Checchi Filming Locations:

Alcázar of Toledo Year:

1940

expense was spared in constructing the grandiose sets designed by Gaston Medin or in directing the crowd scenes, using numerous extras and shot between the Cinecittà studios and on location at the ruins of the citadel, with Italian, French and Spanish actors. Moreover, Lieutenant Colonels José Carvajal Arrieta and ricardo Villalba rubio were brought in as military advisors to supervise the ilming, as they had personally participated in the July uprisings. The ilm exalts the traditional values of Francoist beliefs. The defence of the Toledo fortress is no less than the defence of the immutable concepts of nation, religion and family. All of these are present, not only in the main plot of the ilm but also in the different stories that are born of, and are developed around, the numerous characters within the walls of the citadel. Each one of these short tales alternates with the main storyline of the siege, adding touches of drama, action, suspense and even adventure, and thus catches the viewers’ eye on different registers. Through the manipulation of history and the use of resources, including the mystical conversations between saints, those who lay siege to the citadel are considered, without exception, bearers of evil, while the rebels are turned into victims who, be it ighting or be it with resignation, valiantly accept and face their destiny. As such, the heroism of the soldiers of the citadel evidently contrasts with the brutality of the republican soldiers. This ‘Manichaeism’ later led Italian producer renato Bassoli to propose an ‘updated’ version of the movie, modifying the scenes that represented the extreme cruelty of the republican behaviour, even going so far as to eliminate any reference to Franco and to Italian participation in the conlict.

Félix Monguilot-Benzal

You Are the One (A Story of the Past) You are the one (Una historia de entonces) Studio:

nickel odeon Dos Enrique Cerezo PC 29 Director:

José Luis Garci

Synopsis Julia, a highly-educated woman from an upper-class, right-wing family, grieves the loss of her lover, José Miguel, during the post-Spanish Civil War years. To try to recover, and suffering from a deep depression, Julia moves from Madrid to her childhood summer house ‘Llandelabarca’, in a small village in rural Asturias, Cerralbos del Sella. The return to the setting of her happy childhood and the reunion with a series of characters (the house keeper ‘Tía Gala’; her daughter-in-law Pilara; Juanito; the priest Matías; and the school teacher orfeo) will be crucial to understanding the changes that have occurred in her life and the changes that the socio-political situation has imposed upon all of them. A Christmas nativity play; the love Julia has awakened in both orfeo and the young Juanito; ‘Tía Gala’s’ silent sorrows from her past; Pilara’s desire to know whether

Period Films 161

Directory of World Cinema

Producer:

José Luis Garci Screenwiters:

José Luis Garci Horacio Valcárcel Production:

Luis María Delgado Cinematographer:

raúl Pérez Cubero Art Director:

Gil Parrondo Composer:

Pablo Cervantes Editor:

Miguel García Sinde Duration:

111 minutes Cast:

Lydia Bosch Juan Diego Ana Fernández Julia Gutiérrez Caba Filming Locations:

Avilés and Parque natural de Muniellos (Asturias) Year:

2000

162 Spain

her husband is alive; and a posthumous letter from José Miguel will enable Julia to see her own experience in relation to the hopes, loneliness and miseries of everyday post-Civil War lives.

Critique Set during the post-Spanish Civil War period in a rural Asturias, José Luis Garci’s You are the one stylishly and acutely explores its characters’ introspection, giving precedence to their inner experiences and conlicts and the perception of reality that each has to confront after the Civil War over the narrative action. This self-assessment of their individual consciences and perspectives leads them, however, towards no resolution or action. With the contrasting exception of Juanito, a young boy full of life for whom the world is just a classic Hollywood ilm, with Julia, the protagonist, as its beautiful, vanilla-scented star, the characters are revealed to us through a series of dramas, presented to the viewer in a subtle and elegant manner through a series of stylized dialogues. Through these, while we see each psychological struggle, we do not see any real change in how the characters think of themselves. It is signiicant that You are the one’s socio-political background is pertinent only in terms of the characters’ reactions to the changes that occur in their personal lives. The ilm privileges the individual’s responses to their historical situation rather than risk offering a simpliied version of the political situation of Spain in the 1940s. José Luis Garci’s assumption of the viewer’s historical knowledge allows him to represent the psychological hardship of six characters’ everyday life. Filmed in black and white, You are the one, stylistically, is a tribute to the romantic images of the golden era of Hollywood (Leisen’s, Capra’s and McCareys’), to the great signiicance of cinema to the children of the post-Civil War generation (embodied in Juanito) and to Vermeer’s paintings. Style, delicacy and exquisiteness are the elements constantly sought out by José Luis Garci. Characterized by the nostalgia and melancholy of its impressive photography, Julia’s glamour, her smoking, the melodramatic effects of the snow, the lacrimae, the Friedrich-style wanderers in front of the sea, the rain, and the idyllic peacefulness of the village, You are the one holds in psychological tension the uncertainties that lie ahead in each of the characters’ live and turns down the possibility of resolving them. These sorrowful stories will not be concluded or simpliied by Garci. It will be the viewer who will actively engage with the psychological issues exposed throughout the ilm: Julia’s depression; Don Matías’ lack of conviction and the doubts created for him by contemporary politics; Pilara’s wait for the return of her husband, not knowing if he is alive, in France or as a Maqui; orfeo’s unhappiness and lack of self-esteem which cannot be hidden by the fraternal dialogue with the young Juanito about

Directory of World Cinema

the love and time; or Tía Gala’s hidden wounds. These sorrowful stories will not be concluded or simpliied by Garci. This is most strongly suggested by the similarities between the opening and closing shots of the ilm. These both show Julia driving along winding country roads in tears. In both, the viewer is interested, intrigued and attracted but for neither is any simple explanation, historical or psychological, offered.

José Manuel Goñi Pérez

Period Films 163

DICTATORSHIP FORGOTTEN CINEMA

P

Directory of World Cinema

After the Civil War, the Franco regime would develop, in the ilm industry, simultaneous economic protection systems and strict ideological censorship (including the compulsory dubbing and the creation of the no-Do newsreel). However, reading it as uniformly-fascist ilm, and of non-aesthetic interest, does not withstand a careful analysis. Contrary to what is usually asserted, production would often seek a fertile continuity with the popular-culture traditions developed during the silent cinema period and the republic. For example, among the irst movies of Suevia Films, the leading ilm production company of the Falangist Cesáreo González, there are movies with a grandiose historical setting that certain sectors of the Franco regime liked (El abanderado [The Standard Bearer], Eusebio Fernández Ardavín, 1943), but also others that tried to connect with successful republican production and hired its most prominent director (Florián rey, for ¡¡Polizón a bordo!! [Onboard Stowaway], 1941) and its brightest star, Imperio Argentina (Bambú [Bamboo], José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1945). Another aspect is the overwhelming number of literary adaptations of ‘conservative’ writers like Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Armando Palacio Valdés or Wenceslao Fernández Flórez. However, other authors who were also adapted at that time are often forgotten, like Benito Pérez Galdós (Marianela, Benito Perojo, 1940), Carmen Laforet (Nada, Edgar neville, 1947) and Antonio Buero Vallejo (Historia de una escalera [History of a Ladder], Ignacio F Iquino, 1950). Perhaps the case that best illustrates the murky complexities of the time is Fernández Flórez, eventually a decisive writer in the formalization of some of the richest stylings of Spanish post-war cinema. Contemptuously labelled as an exemplary representative of a supposed pro-Franco cinema, he wrote some of the most outstanding ilm scripts of the irst years of the 1940s – along with others that try to combine Hollywood elements with some Hispanic traditionalism (Un marido a precio fijo [A Husband at a Fixed Price], Gonzalo Delgrás,1942; Ella, él y sus millones [She and his Millions], Juan de orduña, 1943). He also wrote for the traditionalist, dark, and in some way realistic, ‘human comedies’ produced by the Valencian company CIFESA, starring the near-debutant Antonio Casal, from the popular theatre, and directed in 1942 by the cultivated and restless rafael Gil. These started with Flórez’s highly critical stories El hombre que se quiso matar (The Man Who Wanted to Kill Himself) and Huella de luz/A Sight of Light, ideologically-ambiguous ilms, no doubt, but able to refer, often in a metaphorical or even unconscious way, to the harsh Spanish post-war period. Finally, Fernández Flórez’s writings will also have a decisive impact on one of the most important formal features of the Spanish cinema of the time: its self-conscious and relective determination (Intriga [Intrigue], Antonio román, 1943; El destino se disculpa [Fate Apologizes], José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1945). Indeed, the constant presence of deconstructing effects that reveal the artiice of the representation can be traced in the wild and effective vaudeville comedies of Ignacio F Iquino (El difunto es un vivo [The deceased is Living], 1941) even in the surprisingly-anarchistic parodies of ramón Barreiro (El Pirata Bocanegra [Pirate Blackmouth], 1946), from the narrative conception of some comedies like the extraordinary La vida en un hilo (Edgar neville, 1945) or the corrosive and critical Dos cuentos para dos/Love Charm (Luis Lucia, 1947) to Left: Main Street/Calle Mayor, Suevia Films.

Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

165

Directory of World Cinema

the demiurgic and suffocating textual system of the historical melodrama Locura de amor (Madness of Love) (Juan de orduña, 1948), a famous CIFESA production. This phenomenon, which anticipates a similar process that occurred in the Hollywood ilm industry only after World War II, questions, once again, the alleged delay of Spanish cinema in relation to the international development of ilm aesthetics. Another hasty and ultimately false claim is the one that links certain popular and/or comic-sketch cinema with the ilm interests of the Franco regime. Quite the contrary: just as the new State had failed in its attempt to promote, with examples such as the almostcontemporary Raza (Race) (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1941), based on a ludicrous story written by Franco himself under the name of Jaime de Andrade and the unique, modern, violent, Eisensteinian and clearly Falangist Rojo y negro (Red and Black) (Carlos Arévalo, 1942), a successful fascist ilm industry, it did not, even in its own interest, remove from the screen any popular element or republican ilm comic sketch that reminded audiences of the success (and freedom) of the recent past. Thus, and contrary to what was usually stated, the oligarchy and the upper middle-class sectors supporting the Franco regime could not hide their disappointment at some products they considered imbued with ‘ilthy’ traditionalism and suspected of being pro-popular front (Alma de Dios [Soul of God], Ignacio F Iquino, 1941, with an exceptional José Isbert in full development of his trademark funny character; and La chica del gato [Cat Girl], ramón Quadreny, 1943). Edgar neville, perhaps the most important ilm-maker of the time, created, from the mid1940s, an unconfessed liberal trilogy (Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks, 1944, Domingo de Carnaval, 1945, and El crimen de la calle de Bordadores, 1946), a true example of pragmatics and moderate cultural dissidence, which is one of the author’s strongest contributions to the recreation of a nineteenth-century imagery of Madrid from the genres of stories of customs and manners and the characters of popular classes. In Domingo de Carnaval, for example, the legacy of Goya, closely linked in neville to José ortega y Gasset’s teachings, was used in a critical rereading of the painter José Gutiérrez Solana. Along with the crucial ilm expressions of the so-called ‘Another Generation of 27’ – in which neville is the main igure along with cosmopolitan and versatile artists, many of them comedians, such as Antonio de Lara ‘Tono’, Miguel Mihura, José López rubio and Claudio de la Torre, who were less and less complacent about the Spain that in some way they had helped to build – are other ilm-makers that can be grouped into two close generations that would produce many of the best ilms of the second half of the decade. The irst group, already known by some astute critics as the ‘generation of innovators’, is composed of directors who, like Manuel Mur oti (Un hombre va por el camino/A Man on the Road, 1949), Antonio del Amo (Cuatro mujeres, 1947) José Antonio nieves Conde (Angustia, 1947) and Arturo ruiz Castillo (Las inquietudes de Shanti-Andía, 1946), maintain an impressive degree of personal dissidence from the oficial structures, from the republicanism of some of them or the genuine pro-Hedilla Falangism of others (nieves Conde). For their part, members of the latter, somewhat younger, group are a diffuse current that call themselves ‘the telluric’ which, led by Carlos Serrano de osma, would leave behind ilmographies as brief as they are fascinating, with titles of formal and profound density and deep psychoanalytic concerns that, like La sirena negra (The Black Mermaid) (C Serrano de osma, 1947), La fiesta sigue (The Party Goes On) (Enrique Gómez, 1947) or the exceptional Vida en sombras (Life in Shadows) (Lorenzo Llobet Gracia, 1948), are pessimistic speeches about the time in which they live and its devastating psychological consequences. In them – as in many of the densest titles of the period (Mariona Rebull, JL Saenz de Heredia, 1947) – the irretrievable loss of women and the consequential loneliness and melancholy (and even madness) can be read as metaphors for a desolate, anxious country with a guilt complex that grows out of control. Historical destruction and loneliness, then, turned into lucid wounds of desire.

José Luis Castro de Paz 166 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

A Man on the Road Un hombre va por el camino Studios:

Sagitario Films Director:

Manuel Mur oti Producer:

Johannes W. Bernhardt Screenwriter:

Manuel Mur oti Cinematographer:

Manuel Berenguer Art Director:

Sigfrido Burmann Editor:

Antonio Gimeno Composer:

Jesús García Leoz Duration/Format:

92 minutes/B/W Genre:

Drama Cast:

Ana Mariscal Fernando nogueras Pacita de Landa Enrique ramírez Year:

1949

Synopsis Luis is a tramp who arrives at a village in the north of Spain and is greeted by a widow, Julia, who lives with her daughter Blanca on a mountain called Monte oscuro, at the far end of the town. Julia asks him to help her on the land. once his task is inished, the tramp moves on, as he feels no urge to stay. Later in summer, the golden ields in Castile bring Luis memories of Monte oscuro and he decides to return. once there, Julia and Blanca welcome him with great joy and he agrees to stay there for good. The locals fail to understand the relationship between Luis and Julia and he feels forced to leave yet again. The very night he makes up his mind, Blanca falls seriously ill so Luis goes to fetch a doctor. However, the doctor refuses to go up to Monte oscuro due to a storm. Luis then decides to take medical instruments in order to operate on the child himself. This leads to a confrontation, ending in Luis chased by the men of the village. Despite this, the procedure succeeds and Luis admits he is actually a renowned surgeon who, haunted by his past, became a tramp. After this, he marries Julia and becomes the local doctor, with the approval of all the neighbours.

Critique A Man on the Road is the irst ilm directed by Manuel Mur oti and it has signiicant features that are common in some of his later ilms. First of all, it belongs to a subgenre called rural Drama that is connected to Spanish ilm and literary tradition and inluenced, in this case, by the Mexican melodrama, so popular at the time – for example, those of Emilio Fernández. not surprisingly, there is an obvious inluence from the Western genre, evident both in the narrative and in the stylistic elements used. on the other hand, there is an emphasis on open spaces, as can be seen in Manuel Berenguer’s photography; the road becomes a metaphor for obtaining a inal objective and the land a source of life and sustain. As in Westerns, Mur oti insists on the importance of nature as a framework for life. In this sense, nature provides the perfect setting for men and women to walk, run from their past, and look for a place to stay or to take root. Lastly, venues with vague locations and symbolic names, like Monte oscuro, are used so that spaces become valid for any given time and place. Luis runs away from his own past demons. This is why he irst decides against remaining in Monte oscuro, as he never wants to commit. Eventually, the attraction of the land is stronger than remorse. Luis recalls the ields he planted and also Julia who, as a mother, symbolizes the strength of the earth and the possibility of generating life. From Julia’s perspective, the arrival of Luis is at irst an extra help. He is a man to share her work with, because the igure of her absent husband is still present in her life. When Luis returns the second time, we realize that he had left a deep impression in the

Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

167

Directory of World Cinema

household. This is reinforced by the appearance of a ‘new’ Luis at the top of the stairs – shaved and neatly dressed. The symbolism of the stairs as a way towards self-discovery and catharsis is present in various scenes of the ilm. The staircase stands for the rise and fall of all the characters in Monte oscuro and the changes they experience. Likewise, the Luis that comes down the stairs after the operation is no longer the previous vagrant but the doctor who has saved a child, something he had failed to do earlier in his life. He also has a second chance, with Julia’s strength and unconditional support. This will mark a new emotional beginning for him as he manages to leave behind his past and start afresh with a new family.

Isabel Sempere

Carmen fra i rossi

Synopsis

Cinematographer:

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and its repercussions in Madrid separate Javier from his iancée Carmen. While Javier enlists to ight alongside the nationalists, she remains in the capital where the republicans hold ground against the siege laid by Franco’s troops. In one of his missions, Javier has the opportunity of returning to Madrid: disguised as a republican, his orders are to reach the city via one of the tunnels beneath the university campus and deliver a secret message. once he has arrived he will inally have the possibility of seeing his loved one. Later Javier learns that Carmen works in a place where republican soldiers meet and that she listens to their conversations in order to secretly radio important information to the Francoists. When Javier returns to his base, he listens to one of Carmen’s transmissions and hears how she and her companions are discovered by the republicans and shot. She dies and a desperate Javier rushes out of the trench to return to Madrid, but he is hit by a bullet. The protagonist inds himself alongside a republican soldier who is also badly wounded. In the end both die, having spent the inal moments of their lives together.

Francesco Izzarelli Jan Stallich

Critique

Country of origin:

Spain Italy Studio:

Film Bassoli Director:

Edgar neville Producers:

Film Bassoli Screenwriter:

Edgar neville (based in his novel)

Art Director:

Guido Fiorini Composer:

Ezio Carabella Editor:

Sara ontañón Fernando Tropea Duration/Format:

99 minutes/B/W

168 Spain

The ilm Carmen fra i Rossi was directed by Edgar neville in Italy in 1939. The Bassoli brothers, feature-ilm producers from rome, wanted the Spanish director to adapt for the screen the story which he had published in Italy earlier the same year. The movie was ilmed in double Spanish/Italian versions at Cinecittà studios with external scenes shot at the Ciudad Universitaria of Madrid. The original title chosen for the Italian market was Carmen fra i Rossi and in both cases the cast remains much the same. The only difference is with the lead role, which in the Italian version was played by Fosco Giachetti and not by rafael rivelles.

Directory of World Cinema

Genre:

War Cast:

Conchita Montes rafael rivelles Juan de Landa Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1939

Carmen fra i Rossi is a propaganda ilm from the point of view of the victors, but which at the same time presents some substantial differences from other productions made in Spain in the years immediately after the Civil War. More modern and daring, neville concluded the story with an ending which the authorities of the new regime had not expected. The Francoist protagonist and the republican militiaman lie wounded in the middle of the battle ield as both try to make sense of the war to justify all the pain caused. Censorship cut part of the sequence, thus eliminating the scene in which the two embrace just before death. This meeting prematurely considers the acceptance of the defeated by the victors and the peaceful coexistence of both sides in the bosom of the new Spain. yet this was a vision which could not have been further from the plans the new government had in mind for the losers. The Spanish version of the ilm has yet to be discovered, but recently a copy of the Italian version was found in the Berlin Filmarchiv under the title In Der Roten Holle. As has been proven, the ending of this Italian version also had to be modiied. Carmen fra i Rossi can now be seen as a fundamental element for reconstructing the complex activity carried out between the Spanish and Italian ilm industries in the period immediately following the Spanish Civil War as it presents one of the irst collaborations between the two countries, and it would lead the way for a great series of co-productions and double versions produced during the irst years of the Franco regime and the last years of Mussolini’s Italy.

Felix Monguilot-Benzal

Furrows Surcos Studio:

Atenea Films Director:

José Antonio nieves Conde Screenwriter:

José Antonio nieves Conde Cinematographer:

Sebastián Perera Composer:

Jesús García Leoz

Synopsis Fascinated by his stay in the city, Pepe, eldest son of a Castilian peasant family, convinces his people to migrate to Madrid in search of prosperity. As has happened to thousands of families before, and to other thousands that will follow during the following decades, the mirage of money and material comforts is seductive enough to stake all on an adventure for those who hitherto have known nothing but the hardness and the narrow horizons of life in the dry ields. In Madrid, the family must adapt to the conditions of their new environment: the city whose intrinsic vitality contrasts with huge areas of marginalization vainly tries to hide the Dictatorship. Hosted by relatives, the message is explicit: all must work to succeed, because the only important thing is money. But work is precisely what is lacking in that city that welcomes, to its regret, thousands of newcomers. one by one they adapt to their new situation, discovering that their role is that of being exploited. There is no room for dignity, for the traditions that kept them together or for that sense

Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

169

Directory of World Cinema

Furrows/Surcos, Atenea Films.

Editor:

Margarita ochoa Duration/Format:

90 minutes/B/W Genre:

Drama Cast:

Luis Peña María Asquerino Francisco Arenzana Marisa de Leza Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1951

170 Spain

of honesty that once governed their actions. They succumb to the harsh reality that turns the father into a puppet relegated to tasks normally associated with women; the oldest son a pawn to a gang of criminals at the behest of a ruthless speculator; the youngest son a hopeless drifter; and the mother into a procuress looking the other way while the daughter, captivated by the apparent sophistication of the cousin and the vain dream of becoming a singing star, eventually submits to the role of a rich man’s mistress.

Critique Directed in 1951 by ilm-maker José Antonio nieves Conde, who till then was free from friction with the Dictatorship, Surcos/Furrows has gone down in history not just because of his numerous narrative achievements; it is certainly the irst ilm in Spanish cinema that takes note of Italian neorealism, which implies an approach to the physical reality of Madrid, its ugliness and those huge gaps that become hostile territory where misery and poverty are omnipresent, as implied by the movement of the cameras from the unreal cardboard set to the physical terrain of the streets where daily life unfolds. However, beyond telling a story of men and women subjected to constant physical and moral degradation, the real purpose of the director was to draw attention to the need to implement a series of profound changes that will implement the most socially-conscious ideology of the Falange political movement, that pending revolution whose rhetoric nieves Conde, Eugenio Montes and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, respective authors of the plot and the screenplay for the ilm, clung to. on this ideological perspective attached to a hyper-realistic vision in which there is no room for complacency, the Madrid in Furrows is the gutter down which disappear the values of family, honesty and the sense of work, to be replaced by concepts like falsehood, opportunism and crime, so that every reverse its main

Directory of World Cinema

characters experience are part of the allegorical struggle between tradition and modernity – individual and collective decency into degradation and loss of identity. Conceived as a vast choral drama, Furrows contains vivid portraits of characters of the underworld, as if they came from a noir movie. This was unusual in Spain at that time, maybe as a reaction to the pervasive corruption. The rule of the strongest and the blows received by the main characters are real. And although the censorship-imposed ending triggers, in some of them, a memory of its former dignity, the audience knows that the effect of its defeat is irreversible.

Juan Mas

La vida en un hilo Studio:

Estudios Cea Director:

Edgar neville Producer:

Edgar neville Screenwriter:

Edgar neville Cinematographer:

Enrique Barreyre Art Director:

Sigfrido Burman Composer:

José Muñoz Molleda Editor:

Mariano Pombo Duration/Format:

92 minutes/B/W Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Conchita Montes rafael Durán Guillermo Marín Julia Lajos Year:

Synopsis Mercedes returns to her home village after becoming a widow. She meets a friendly talkative fortuneteller on a train. The fortuneteller explains how Mercedes´ life would have been totally different if she had chosen something apparently unimportant in her view. The fact of rejecting one person´s offer to share a taxi-cab and to accept, instead, a similar offer with someone else who, afterwards, would become her husband, was the key event she was referring to. She explained that small things she had missed in her marriage would have meant happiness, and the rejected man she met on the irst taxi ride would have been the right choice for her. She had unconsciously missed the chance of her life. But in Madrid, a second chance was waiting for her, and she was not going to let it go.

Critique ‘La vida que ella no había vivido se impresionó en sus ojos como una fotografía’ (‘The life she had not lived was impressed in her eyes, like a photograph’) and this story is told in La vida en un hilo (Life on a thread). neville is the director chosen to work the magic that movies allow: time and space may be altered under skilful hands; lashbacks, a train journey and its destination are proper ingredients for this ine Spanish comedy. What would we have done if at a certain moment in our lives we had chosen a different path? Would a different taxi have changed everything? neville´s ability leads us on a ride through every hidden corner of destiny. Unnoticed events make a life go right or wrong: one of them made Mercedes take the wrong turn. If only had she paid more attention to Miguel´s taxi and his whistle neville, one of most interesting and modern directors of the period, remains undervalued; lashbacks and present time situations are managed in a masterly way, and his ilms are neither stale nor old-fashioned. one can see this ilm as a comedy, or as a description of what destiny is hiding from us as humans. The fortune teller character is

1945 Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

171

Directory of World Cinema

credible because, since the beginning of time, men have believed destiny is decided and cannot be changed; palm-reading or readings of the eyes are perfectly acceptable. The careful and humorous dialogues, and a good story and screenplay make the middle classes look a bit questionable. First-class actors and actresses are the foundation in his work. rafael Durán and Guillermo Marín play the main male roles: ramón is simple and dull, rigid and boring, while Miguel is dynamic, and an artist (like neville, he touches on different ields of art); ramón always considers his family´s interests before his or his wife´s; Miguel controls his own life. Anyone can laugh at ramón but they can laugh with Miguel. Julia Lajos as the fortuneteller is someone to be noted, and Mercedes, played by Conchita Montes, also stands out: innocent but irreverent at the same time. Conchita, one of the main actresses of 1940s’ Spain, worked almost exclusively in this type of ilm. She won no prizes over this decade, although the critics were favorable. on most occasions she plays unusual women characters: modern women whose styles were years ahead of their time. not only does neville design leading roles for women, but also makes them interesting characters: Dupont, the fortuneteller, is quite different from how middle classes are usually represented and the bourgeoisie might consider her character as not respectable; she is eccentric in her attire and gestures, and is hard not to be noticed when she talks. Life on a thread is an important ilm in the history of Spanish cinema. It meets public expectations for the time: comedies of middle- and high-class families of remarkable reinement. It is a master work in timing and creating its own tempo: dynamic, modern and very attractive. Fictional narrative of brilliant approach and implementation, it uses lashbacks to manage two different stories: one that happened in the past and one, a might-havebeen. These two stories entangle their threads and the ilm then becomes elegant yet naive, and original. neville shows his support for the modern way of life, as opposed to middle class traditions.

Carmen Rodríguez Fuentes

Main Street Calle Mayor Countries of origin:

Spain France Studio:

Play Art Iberia Films

172 Spain

Synopsis The story of Main Street is set in a little inland town, where a group of immature old bachelors are cheating on 35-year-old Isabel and making fun of her, pretending that one of them, Juan, is in love with her. As Juan gradually gets involved in Isabel’s true feelings, he becomes aware of the true nastiness of his behaviour and of the dificult condition of the female in Francoist Spain, but he does not dare to tell her that it is all just a joke. Federico, a well-read man from Madrid and an old friend of Juan’s, is shocked by the old bachelors’ gross behaviour. The typical male jokes become, then, a heartrending matter of conscience for Juan, torn between his old friend’s moral scruples and his local mates’ saying that he is not able to overcome his scruples. Thus, the man who wanted to make a show of his virility by laughing at an honest woman looking

Directory of World Cinema

Director:

Juan Antonio Bardem Producer:

Manuel J Goyanes Screenwriter:

Juan Antonio Bardem (based in Carlos Arniches’ play La señorita de Trévelez, 1916) Cinematographer:

Michel Kelber Art Director:

Enrique Alarcón Composers:

Joseph Kosma Isidro Maiztegui Editor:

Margarita ochoa Duration/Format:

99 minutes/B/W Genre:

Drama Cast:

Betsy Blair José Suárez yves Massard Manuel Alexandre Filming Locations:

Cuenca (Castilla-La Mancha) Logroño (La rioja) Palencia (Castilla y León) Year:

1956

for real love becomes his mates’ unexpected laughing stock. Eventually, Federico puts an end to the situation when he decides to go and tell the truth to Isabel, who really believed that she was about to marry Juan.

Critique This ilm depicts a general portrait of Spanish provincial lifestyle during the central decades of the twentieth century, mainly regarding social/gender roles. Adapted from one of the most popular of Carlos Arniches’ plays, Main Street deals with the representation of the ambiguous feelings one may have while observing people who live in a secluded environment and act according to old and ixed social manners and rules. In this respect, the ilm may not be solely ‘Spanish’, as the opening voice-over imposed by the pro-Franco censorship insists on stating, but it is obvious that it deals with an image of Spain widely circulated by both national and foreign intellectuals and artists. Juan Antonio Bardem shares with Arniches (and with past and present Spanish post-romantic regenerationists and intellectuals searching for the national Spanish identity from the late nineteenth century) the same attitude in adopting a viewpoint that is contradictorily both critical and nostalgic. They try to conjure a very special aesthetic experience, out of fascination and pity, of wonder in front of Isabel’s true faith, and rejection of the old bachelors’ crudeness. Even if no reference to a particular political context is ever given, Bardem manages to immortalize an epoch and a way of living and thinking in which most people resigned themselves to remaining the same, since for those who were not happy, and particularly for women, there was no way out. Through its storyline, this ilm shows how narrow the limits of personal development may be when individuals are constantly observed and criticized by others. This is made worse here by the remote urban context, metaphorically represented by citizens endlessly walking up and down the town’s main street in the afternoons. The spectator may feel the ambiguity (better than real contradiction) in the director’s viewpoint in so far as he manages to demonstrate that some aspects of social life are harmful while he sheds light on the close link between people, tradition and religion and on the fact that such a link makes people interdependent, for better or for worse. The overall realism of the whole work, the visual purity of its sequences and Bardem’s profound care for the framing and the visual organization of the plot, make us feel attracted to a kind of magnetism which words cannot entirely express. Bardem also succeeds in showing the silent inluence exerted by the imperturbable scenery of old buildings on these Spanish middle-class characters’ behaviour. These are mainly the local literary club, whose busiest place is the billiard room; the cathedral façade and walls; and above all the long arcades of the main street, where city-dwellers continuously pass and meet in the afternoons and public holidays. All these magniicently contrast with the central monologue in a park overlooking the town, where Isabel’s words on her female condition echo and hit Juan’s conscience.

Jaime Céspedes Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

173

Directory of World Cinema

The Miracle of Marcelino Marcelino pan y vino Countries of origin:

Spain Italy Studio:

Chamartín Falco Film

Synopsis Spain, nineteenth century. Any given town. A Franciscan friar leaves his monastery to go to town and console a sick girl and her parents. In order to do this, he tells them Marcelino’s story. In a long lashback, the clergyman narrates how the baby was abandoned when he was born and the friars found him at the monastery´s door. Five years later, Marcelino plays and misbehaves, with the friars’ indulgence. Disobeying their orders, goes into the attic and inds a carving representing Jesus Christ on the cross. Soon, Marcelino and the statue become friends. Marcelino gives him food (bread and wine). one day, the little boy asks him to go with his mother who is in heaven. Soon, the miracle takes place.

Director:

Ladislao Vajda

Critique

Producer:

The Miracle of Marcelino is a religious ilm, a genre that was very popular in Spain but also in other countries during the 1950s. In 1953, Franco signed the Madrid Agreement with the United States, thus putting an end to the isolation that Spain suffered after World War II because of its support of Fascist regimes. For this reason, Franco´s dictatorship was very interested in minimizing the fascist components of the conservative coalition while amplifying its Catholic nature. A number of Spanish ilms produced at that time helped in this task. Inserted in the national-Catholicism ideology matrix, this ilm is more interesting today because of its avant-garde aesthetic (Ladislao Vajda worked in the avant-garde cinematographic circles in Germany before World War II) than because of the very eficient, melodramatic and religious story of Marcelino´s miracle. Marcelino is, fundamentally, a homage to mothers, but not to women in general – they are almost invisible in the ilm. Aligned with the conservative imaginary of Franco’s regime, the ilm presents motherhood as the vital and essential mission of women, the one that gives meaning to their lives. In this conservative ideological universe, mothers are placed on a pedestal. Within a society in which responsibilities for men and women are clearly deined (work outside of the home for the former and motherhood and the care of the children and the house for the latter), the friars at the monastery present themselves as problematic characters who destabilize this dichotomy. The friars cook, do laundry and all the housework reserved for women, thus revealing that this division of labour is a social construction. Besides the Catholic apotheosis represented by the miracle that enables Marcelino to be with his mother, Vajda’s ilm is, from an aesthetic point of view, one of the most accomplished products of the scarce Spanish cinematography of the ifties. The black-andwhite photography of Enrique Guerner (Heinrich Gertner, trained in the expressionist German cinematography prior to War World II) contributes notably to this end.

Vicente Sempere Screenwriters:

Ladislao Vajda José María Sánchez Silva (original novel) Cinematographer:

Antonio Simont Art Director:

Enrique Guerner Composer:

Pablo Sorozabal Editor:

Julio Peña Duration/Format:

91 minutes/B/W Genre:

Comedy Drama Cast:

rafael rivelles Juan Calvo Antonio Vico Pablito Calvo Year:

1955

174 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The Miracle of Marcelino/Marcelino pan y vino, Chamartín Producciones y Distribuciones.

Within the symbolic universe created by the ilm, there are three icons that are of particular interest: the bread and the wine associated with the Christian Eucharist; the stairs that, in spite of the friars’ prohibition, Marcelino climbs in order to meet Jesus Christ; and the child’s ‘invisible friend’, Manuel, also with clear Christological connotations. Thus, this display of religious symbols throughout the ilm attempts to remind the audience of the existence of a superior spiritual sphere which Marcelino will soon access. In this sense, the stairs function as the connection between both worlds: the superior one, spiritual and dominated by the impressive wooden carving of Jesus Christ, and the inferior one, earthly, where Marcelino has spent most of his life in the friars’ community, practically isolated from the rest of the world. The symbolic display does not inish there: the scorpion that stings the child and the close-up shots of the spider that spins its web anticipate Marcelino’s death. His death is presented to the audience as sweet and desired, a necessary step towards the happy ending that represents the inal meeting between Marcelino and his mother (not shown in the ilm). The thesis of the ilm is clear: in accordance with the catholic universe, death means the deinitive access into the spiritual sphere and, in this way, it is shown as positive. Marcelino’s death does not produce sorrow but Christian happiness. To summarize, The Miracle of Marcelino presents an avant-garde aesthetic in a highly symbolic ilm of Catholic and national exaltation, which is still, today, one of the most emblematic productions of Spanish cinema.

Luis Mariano González

Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

175

Directory of World Cinema

The Nail El Clavo

Synopsis

Screenwriter:

Judge Joaquín zarco meets on a trip a fascinating woman who calls herself ‘Blanca’. She always seems reserved until one night, during Carnival, when she gives in to Joaquín’s advances and accepts his marriage proposal. However, while the judge is out of town, Blanca mysteriously disappears. Five years later, Joaquín is investigating the murder of a man whose disinterred skull is found with a nail sticking out of it. The search for the murderer will involve the protagonists of this drama in a conlict where desire and the law are side by side.

rafael Gil (based on a short story by Pedro de Alarcón)

Critique

Studio:

CIFESA Direction:

rafael Gil

Photography:

Alfredo Fraile Art Direction:

Enrique Alarcón Francisco nieva Composer:

Juan Quintero Editor:

Juan Serra Duration/Format:

99 minutes/B/W Genre:

Crime romance Cast:

Amparo rivelles Milagros Leal Irene Caba Alba rafael Durán Filming Locations:

Cuenca (Castilla-La Mancha) Year:

1944

176 Spain

The viewer experiences the feeling of embarking on a strange and highly-enjoyable stagecoach journey through Spain’s Castile region at the end of the nineteenth century. The closed ambiance inside the stagecoach helps bring together the two characters: Judge Joaquín zarco and the woman. Starting with the very irst images, the ilm immediately connects us with John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), one of the directors that rafael Gil openly admires. In the tradition of the great classics, Gil builds with great precision the ambiguous character of the woman and the growing passion of her travelling companion. The ilm alternates between ilm noir and drama, genres which are reinforced by Alfredo Fraile’s photography, with its dark tones, manipulation of shadows and night scenes. But in spite of its references to the great Hollywood classics, Gil’s ilm possesses a powerful Spanish trademark: the portrayal of common types. They are composed in a rural setting, portraying country characters with their popular sayings and phrases permeated with delicate irony. In fact, humour can be found several times in The Nail, representing a break with the obscure, almost expressionistic, atmosphere, which predominates in the ilm. Thus, resorting to the use of very humorous characters and situations creates a balance with the aesthetics and lighting with noir effects. The feeling of mystery involving the woman who calls herself Blanca attracts the judge like a vortex. Blanca is mysterious. rafael Gil models a character that crosses back and forth: from white to black, from light to shadow, from veils to revelation, from the beautiful to the strange. Although the audience does not see the nail (nor the skull in which it was found), it is present throughout the plot and not only gives the ilm its name but also symbolizes the sacriice of the central character. This element is reinforced by the images of Christ nailed to the cross which appear in several sequences of the ilm, particularly in the trial sequence, with the cruciix on the judge’s bench and another cruciix on the defendant’s neck. one of the ilm’s most striking sequences is in the trial scene. The defendant enters the courtroom completely covered in black, led by two guards. The irst sequence shows her in her black

Directory of World Cinema

widow-bride clothing, gradually removing the veil that hides her face. Blanca reveals herself as Gabriela the murderess, as the judge-groom stares in shock. In this inal act of the ilm, drama will predominate in the narrative until it culminates in the woman on her way to the gallows. one of the masterly moments of the ilm is a ball in the presidential hall, where the magistrate dances with one of the guests while the woman’s face gradually changes into Blanca’s. The stunning waltz scene, shot by a high-angle camera, ends with the couple dancing while the other guests disappear as though under a spell. The idea of splendour in the imaginary is a strong point in this powerful scene: an ending impregnated with Fordian references shows two stagecoaches silhouetted on the background. Thus this element which has permeated the whole ilm, a stagecoach or carriage, will bring the story to a close. It punctuates the narrative, always appearing to bring the lovers together, conceal them, or break them up, and carry them to their inal destination.

Vanessa Brasil Campos

Radio Stories Historias de la radio Studio:

Chapalo Films Director:

José Luis Sáenz de Heredia Producer:

Eduardo de la Fuente Screenwriter:

José Luis Sáenz de Heredia Cinematographer:

Antonio L Ballesteros Art Director:

ramiro Gómez Composer:

Ernesto Halffter Editor:

Julio Peña

Synopsis Gabriel Matilla and Carmen are romantically involved and working together on a morning radio show where they encourage listeners to exercise. While the couple broadcasts the exercises, two people living in a pension religiously follow the recommended charts to stay in shape and reduce their waistlines. When the popular radio host Bobby Deglané entrusts the young announcer Gabriel with the radio show with the largest audience, Cara al público (Live Radio), he is replaced by Alfredo, his professional rival and, at the same time, the person who will later try to seduce Carmen. These two stories open and close, giving way to three others: (1) A humble and mature inventor has to disguise himself as an Eskimo to win a 3,000 peseta prize which will allow him to patent a piston he has invented; (2) The radio station’s call to a home phone number chosen at random is answered by a burglar, Ángel de Andrés, who is trying to steal from the home owner – his landlord, José María Lado – and thus manage to pay him his rent. The thief chooses to respond to the radio programme and heads out in search of the owner so that he can go to the radio station and share the 2,000 pesetas prize with him. And, (3) Don Anselmo, a teacher in a small rural town, who participates in the popular game show ‘Double or nothing’ at a Madrid radio station because he needs the money so that a child from his town can receive an operation in Sweden.

Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

177

Directory of World Cinema

Duration/Format:

95 minutes/B/W Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Carlos Acevedo Alicia Altabella Margarita Andrey rafael Bardem Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1955

Critique Sáenz de Heredia, irst cousin of the founder and leader of the Spanish Falangists, José Antonio Primo de rivera, achieved professional status with Raza (Race)(1941), whose script was based on a novel by Jaime de Andrade (Franco’s pseudonym). This ilm was considered a reference point for the aspirations of the Franco regime. In the 1950s, Sáenz de Heredia was able to assemble of team of technicians and professionals thanks to his ability to direct modest and light-hearted projects without distancing himself from his ideological afinities. In this period of calm, and through his company, Chapalo Films, he would complete this fresh and lively traditional comedy. He enjoyed a comfortable permissiveness with the censors, as well as a large budget for the time, after the ilm was designated ‘in the national interest’. It was one of the most successful ilms of those years. Radio Stories has technical agility and narrative luidity, but also an impressive lineup of secondary actors who contribute to the creation of living personalities despite their scant dramatic development and the broad outline of their characterizations. The three sketches move back and forth between the farcical/burlesque/ comic tradition, thanks to the easy recognition of well-known popular igures and the adaptation of a series of everyday tales. The movie is a living testimony to the privileged nature of radio in post-war Spain, where advertising displayed the emerging capitalist-development policies, and also clearly illustrated the humble social classes that found themselves estranged and dislocated by the norms of consumer society. At the same time, the idea of generating complicity with the medium of radio makes the most of broadcast expository strategies by formalizing the presence of the omniscient narrator through voice-over in order to fuse the different stories and oblige the public to empathize with the modest protagonists. Moral discourse has been varnished with a softness that is in keeping with the benign and exemplary attitude so loved by the Francoist apparatus. one example is in the irst of the three episodes, perhaps the most effective and emotive, which starts out in the manner of a graceful comedy, peppered with small doses of absurdist humor, that later takes on an eloquently dramatic poignancy when the inventor presents himself as an Eskimo in the radio competition and tells the story of his career in just 20 direct and effective camera shots. The conclusion of that episode allows for the illustration of how a broadcaster, personiied by the most celebrated announcer of the day, Bobby Deglané, became a mere representative for the positive message of solidarity and caring in the face of social deprivation.

Pablo Ferrando García

178 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The Spirit of the Beehive El espíritu de la colmena Studio:

Elías Querejeta Director:

Víctor Erice Producer:

Elías Querejeta Screenwriter:

Víctor Erice Ángel Fernández Santos Cinematographer:

Luis Cuadrado Art Director:

Jaime Chávarri Composer:

Luis de Pablo Editor:

Pablo González del Amo Duration:

97 minutes Genre:

Drama

Synopsis ‘Un lugar de la meseta castellana, hacia 1940’ (‘a place of the Castilian plateau, around 1940’). Just after the war, in Hoyuelos (Segovia), marked by the Franco’s symbol of the yoke and arrows, a truck arrives with a mobile cinema which will screen Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). Among the children attending the screening, we see Ana and Isabel, the protagonists of the story. Subsequently, strongly impressed by the ilm, Ana asks Isabel ask about life and death: the latter, a little older, responds guardedly. Ana and Isabel’s father, Fernando, tends his beehives and the mother, Teresa, writes letters to a potential lover; the two seem remote from their parental responsibilities, and their married life is cold. Wandering from this cold home – we never see the whole family in a single shot, nor do Fernando and Teresa share a single shot/ countershot – Isabel said she saw the monster in an abandoned farm worker’s house. on the way to visit it, they are fascinated by the passing train, from which, later, jumps a republican fugitive soldier, who goes to hide in the abandoned house. Ana inds him there and takes care of him, and, unintentionally, gives him a watch belonging to her father. When the fugitive is cornered and shot by the Guardia Civil, this watch gives her away, in front of her father. Feeling betrayed, Ana lees to the forest where she inds some mushrooms – which we know are poisonous from a previous scene. We do not see her eating them, but she hallucinates the monster (replicating Whale’s famous scene in Frankenstein). Ultimately they ind her at dawn, guarded by the only wall left standing in a ruined house. Teresa, relieved to get her back safe and sound, burns one of the letters to the alleged lover. Ana, convalescent, gets out of bed and, surrounded by the moonlight, looks through the open crossed window: ‘Soy Ana’ (‘I am Ana’).

Cast:

Critique

Fernando Fernán-Gómez Teresa Gimpera Ana Torrent Isabel Tellería

Unanimously, The Spirit of the Beehive is the top-rated Spanish ilm of all time. It was ilmed only two years before the death of dictator Franco and perhaps, therefore, much of the criticism has been committed to providing two readings that we believe fall short: the irst, in which the beehive would be those people in Spain muted by decades of dictatorship, and the second, more sociological, which would point towards the dissolution of the Spanish family. The problem is that these two readings do not meet the irst and crucial component of the title of the ilm: the spirit. our point is that the fact that the ilm has survived over time and has gradually increased its prestige is certainly because something spiritual plays in the viewer’s unconscious, beyond the political and sociological message. Indeed, we say that that is the truth in every art work. The ilm begins as a marvellous classic tale with the inscription ‘Érase una vez ‘ (‘once upon a time ...’), so, while girls are awoken by the fantasy world, adults seem to be locked in the beehive, trapped (the train always leaves) in a wasteland of post-war Spain.

Filming locations:

Hoyuelos (Segovia) Parla (Madrid) Cíjara (Toledo) Year:

1973

Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

179

Directory of World Cinema

All of this is underlined by the director’s biography that really permeates the story: Erice was born in the 1940s; the four protagonists are named after the actors who play them; it took 10 years for the director to make another ilm, etc. The ilm displays a series of metaphorical levels through iconic motifs (children’s drawings from the credits produced by the child actors themselves, the painting of St. Jerome and the lion in the ofice of father, the Guardian Angel in the girls’ bedroom and, above all, Whale’s ilm, and others not mentioned explicitly, such as Paul Wegener’s Golem [1920] or L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat/Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat [1896] or Pasolini’s poetic cinema), and narrative motifs (the intimate drama genre, classic fairy tales, La Vie des Abeilles/ The Life of the Bee, Maeterlink, 1901, Unamuno’s La tía Tula, 1921). Some references not found in the review literature that we believe are obvious are Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955) (by the accumulation of metaphorical levels: the monster and the ight between good and evil), Bunraku or Japanese puppet theatre, which is worked by black-clad operators on stage (as in the sequence, with the oil lamp, where for the irst and only time Fernando is touched by Teresa), and the director ozu yasujiro, of whom Erice is a professed fan (he visited ozu’s tomb during his visit to Japan), especially Tokyo Monogatary/Tokyo Story (1953), with its empty shots and the symbolism of the clock as a parent-child structure (just as Fernando does not fulill his role as father, the father in Tokyo Monogatary wants it to be another male igure who takes care of noriko). The artistic equation that comes from the ilm is shown in a father who is quietly expelled from the bed but who, at the same time, is fascinated by the woman as he writes about the queen bee in his lonely nights; and in the two children: Isabel, who is beginning to experience sexual awareness (when painting her lips with her own blood) and Ana, a little younger and, therefore, still symbolizing her sexuality. Ana, as St. Jerome does with the lion in the painting, helps the fugitive, but reality imposes its law, as this one dies, shot like Frankenstein. However, from the watch, a hope is born: a natural law that allows a symbolic thread between Ana and the father. But all this in a cold, empty house in which it seems almost logical that monsters should appear. Therefore, as deduced from the inal scene, the main truth is that Ana should learn to face life alone, but without falling into the beehive, as indicated by the open doors, but allowing herself to be imbued with the spirit of the world. responsible for this bath of light around Ana (the blue of the night contrasted with the orange of the beehive), as a guardian of Erice’s truth, is Luis Cuadrado, the director of photography, who offers some of the most beautiful and evocative chained fades in ilm history (ire/mushrooms, bees/Fernado’s masked face), where you can ind references to rembrandt and Vermeer but, above all, zurbarán’s creation of igures from just light. Spirit, quietness, inner journey, dark night, open ending, resignation, etc., form a semantic network that derives from the ilm and which connects, beyond political and sociological reading, with the best of Hispanic thought: the mystic.

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano 180 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Vida en sombras Studio:

Castilla Films Director:

Lorenzo Llobet Gracia Producer:

Francisco de Barnola Screenwriter:

Lorenzo Llobet Gracia Victorio Aguado Cinematographer:

Salvador Torres Garriga Art Director:

José Antonio Martínez de Arévalo Composer:

Jesús García Leoz Editor:

ramón Biadiu Duration/Format:

75 minutes/B/W Genre:

Drama Cast:

Fernando Fernán-Gómez María Dolores Pradera Alfonso Estela Fernando Sancho Filming Locations:

Barcelona Year:

1948

Synopsis Carlos Durán, star of the ilm, is born in a sideshow in which, when he grows up, he exhibits a cinematographic projector. His life will be marked forever by this fact. Cinema, its history, and the protagonist’s life occur simultaneously. Thus, in a cinema, Luis Carlos and his friend ight each other during the screening of The Broken Coin (Francis Ford, 1915) and make up watching Easy Street (Chaplin, 1917). In 1929, the year of the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, Carlos wins a competition for experimental ilms and meets the girl who will soon become his wife. Soon, we learn, she is pregnant – just as Spain is about to enter into a Civil War. Carlos, who has gone out to shoot street skirmishes, hears, as he phones home, the sound of gunire. Back at home, he inds his wife dead. From now on the life of Carlos, overwhelmed by guilt, is a life without direction. only a visit from his friend Luis encourages him to go see Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), a ilm that impresses him so much that he is forced to leave the screening in a state of shock. Alone in his room, our protagonist summons up in his mind a portrait of his wife that seems to smile at him; Carlos spins the zoetrope, the apparatus that has been with him since childhood, and decides, then, to return to ilming. The ilm ends with images that appear identical to the very beginning of the ilm.

Critique What makes Vida en sombras (Life in Shadows) an unusual ilm, directed in 1948 by Lorenzo Llobet Gracia, is repetition. Beginning and ending are identical. or, rather, there is not, properly speaking, an end, even though the ilm itself has invited us to follow the trajectory of its protagonist at the same time, and parallel to, the very history of cinema itself, starting with the early ilm show and continuing on to ilm comedy, classical Hollywood cinema, and concluding with a critical reference to the mannerist movies of Alfred Hitchcock. This is an unusual story of a ilm within a ilm. And, at the same time, a truncated history of a couple – hence the black hole of the ilm. Its centre of attraction, that around which everything else revolves, is caused by the death of the protagonist’s wife, and also by his unborn son’s death. And this essential feature, the impossibility of the child, puts Life in Shadows in the wake of the European avant-garde ilm and, also, as a clear ilm precursor of postclassical cinema. We are before a cinematic masterpiece – and not just within Spanish cinema – and also a work deeply torn by the inal crystallization of delirium, caused in part by traumatic shock resulting in the protagonist’s vision of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and especially the sequence, reproduced in part in Llobet Gracia’s movie, where Maxim de Winter reveals how humiliating it was for him to discover from the woman, who until that moment was his wife, that the child they expected was not his; that he was not the father. It was then that Maxim killed rebecca. And it is, when watching that scene, that Carlos Durán, fully identifying with Maxim, suffers a strong shock as he, too, was placed in the position of impossible fatherhood. Then comes the delusional solution, and, with it, repetition; the return of the same.

Basilio Casanova Dictatorship Forgotten Cinema

181

THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY CINEMA CINE DE LA TRANSICIÓN

O

Directory of World Cinema

The Transition, a historical period which spans the change from a dictatorial political regime to one with greater public freedom, constitutes the foundation of both the current Spanish nation and the agreements that Spanish society has made regarding the civil norms necessary for a peaceful existence. There is no general agreement among historians as to the key moments that signal the beginning and the end of this process of change. The most restrictive dates would be from Franco’s death, 20 november 1975, until the irst democratic elections, 15 June 1977. The broadest dates would set this period as beginning with the fatal terrorist attack on Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, 20 December 1973, until Spain became part of the European institution, 1 January 1986. The dominant opinion regarding the Transition is based on the idea of reconciliation among Spaniards who, in spite of their differences, overcame the wounds of the past and together conceived the future. However, recent years have seen the raising of voices that point out the deiciencies in this process, the restrictions, its political limitations and how agreement between the two majority parties, at the very least, forced the crimes of the Franco regime and the memory of the Second republic to be forgotten. Spanish cinema experienced similar changes as those felt in other areas of Spanish society. In fact, during the inal years of the dictatorship, even with the machinery of the Franco government’s repression and censorship still fully functioning, ilms such as The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973) or La prima Angélica (Carlos Saura, 1974), among others, transmitted images of new ways of being and feeling, and a certain state of consciousness that was favorable to the ideas behind political transformation: social reconciliation and the re-establishment of civil liberties. Already in 1975, the last year of Franco’s life, following a miniscule liberalization of some censorship regulations, not be completely abolished until 1977, there were ilms that could clearly be attributed to a left-leaning approach that, at that time, advocated values that broke with those of the dictatorship: Pascual Duarte (ricardo Franco, opened May 3, 1975); Pim, pam, pum...¡fuego!/Ready, Aim, Fire! (Pedro olea; opened May 5, 1975), Furtivos/Poachers (José Luis Borau, opened September 16, 1975). In the irst of these movies, unlike in the original novel by nobel laureate Camilo José Cela, the violence has a strong social component; in the second ilm, the vengeful character of the Civil War’s victors is shown quite clearly. Finally, the third movie shows a civil governor, the main authority in Spanish provinces, as a weakwilled puppet. Spanish cinema’s democratic leaning, which was already present during the inal years of the Franco regime, was strengthened by the generational renewal that took place during that time, as well as by the rapid disappearance from Spanish screens of movies with ilm imagery linked to the cinema of the dictatorship. Movies such as Y al tercer año resucitó/...And the Third Year, He Rose Again (rafael Gil, 1980, about a hypothetical resurrection of Francisco Franco) or Que vienen los socialistas [Socialist are Coming] Mariano ozores, 1982, about the Left’s imminent rise to power) constitute the last examples of this type of ilm that enjoyed any success at all in the

Left: Poachers/Furtivos, Jet Films.

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

183

Directory of World Cinema

theatres. Film-making from the Transition incorporated a new idea that has since become dominant: the canon that says that our national cinema will be developed on the notion of art cinema (demonstrated in the work of Carlos Saura, Luis García Berlanga or Mario Camus, to name those directors who won the national Prize for Cinematography given by the Ministry of Culture), with very little discussion regarding the place of genre or popular ilms. Even the ilms with an industrial base made by José Luis Garci (oscar for the best non-English language movie for Volver a empezar/Begin the Beguine, 1982) or Fernando Trueba (oscar in the same category for Belle Époque in 1992) were presented to the public as examples of art cinema. The processes of separating from the centralized Government of the dictatorship brought with them, as a corollary, the growth of ilm productions in the various Autonomous Communities that showed a certain determination to maintain a distinct identity. The so-called cinema of nationalities and regions was found throughout Spain, but special attention should be given to the cases of Catalonia, La ciutat cremada/The Burned City (Antoni ribas, 1976), and the work of the ilm-makers Ventura Pons or Francecs Bellmunt; and the Basque Country, where Imanol Uribe stands out; the Community of Valencia where Carles Mira and a reborn Vicente Escrivá work; or in Andalusia, with the notable work of Gonzalo García Pelayo. needless to say that although, during the Transition, cinema institutions were transformed with an intensity and depth that has not been seen in any other period in the history of Spanish cinema, the changes also brought to light some realities that were practically unheard of in the ilm-making of the Franco years. An example would be the feminine view contributed by Pilar Miró, Cecilia Bartolomé or Joseina Molina; the vigour of ilms that presented an ideology or that represented a formal break, both in ictional works as well as in documentaries, such as those made by Pere Portabella, Iván zulueta, Basilio Martín Patino, Jaime Chávarri or Jaime Camino; and ilms of the erotic genre, legally known as movies with an ‘S’ classiication, and some of whose better-known directors, such as Jesús Franco, currently wear the halo of art cinema director. Finally, we cannot fail to mention that what would later become the most internationally-recognized phenomenon in the history of Spanish cinema would have its beginnings in the stimulating artistic and cultural renewal process that exploded during this period. Pedro Almodóvar’s irst ilms: Folle...folle...fólleme Tim! (Fuck… Fuck… Fuck Me Tim!) shot in súper 8, 1978, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980) or Laberinto de Pasiones/Labyrinth of Passion (1982) are perfect examples of the air that Spaniards were breathing during the Transition at the end of the Franco dictatorship.

Manuel Palacio note: This article was written as part of the research Project ‘Media in the Spanish Transition (1975-1985): the Images of the Democratic Change’, Ministry of Science and Innovation (Government of Spain), CSo2009-09291.

184 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The Disenchantment El Desencanto Studio:

Elías Querejeta PC Director:

Jaime Chávarri

Synopsis The poet Leopoldo Panero, a former communist transformed into a Franco supporter through fear of death, died in Astorga in 1962, the city where he was born. Fourteen years later his family, his widow Felicidad Blanc and his three sons, Juan Luis, Leopoldo María and Michi, all artists or poets, and most closely connected to him, come together to talk of his life to camera. Their differences and their identities show in a ilm that turned into a metaphor for the transition of Franco´s Spain to democracy because, paradoxically, the ‘disenchantment’ seemed to refer to the slowness of the changes of the new regime of freedoms.

Producer:

Elías Querejeta

Critique

Screenwriters:

Thirty years after the irst showing in Spain of The Disenchantment – which was continued in the ricardo Franco sequel, Después de tantos años (After All These Years) (1994) – its signiicance in, cinematic terms, as a pioneer was not, in general, understood. It was conceived by two poets, Leopoldo María and Juan Luis Panero, along with their brother Michi, and their mother, Felicidad Blanc; and with the igure of their father, fellow poet Leopoldo Panero, loating above the ilming like a ghost. They were not professional actors, but for the majority of specialist critics, they turned their performance into a cinematic classic. This curious symbiosis of cinema and poetry was shown in these two features in which the protagonists performed (the Panero ilms made a seminal impression on later generations of ilm-makers). The book entitled Después de tantos desencantos (After all These Disenchantments) details the poetic elements that they wanted to tackle in the two ilms, which were nevertheless buried in the spectacle of the ilms and their more intimate and familial elements. A collection of poems dedicated by the authors to the two productions exists in addition to their criticisms of these cinematographic extravaganzas and, inally, some very perspicacious opinions on international cinema by Juan Luis, Leopoldo María and Michi. The legend of the Paneros and the supposed curse on the lineage which ends with them – none procreated nor are known to have any descendents – adds credibility to a premonition: it was in The Disenchantment that Michi debated sarcastically whether or not his family took after the Wittelsbachs, the line of kings and princesses that also fell victim to its own peculiarities, and about which Juan Luis wrote: ‘no habían nacido para vivir sino para morir / y supieron, con indudable perfección, ser ieles a esa norma’ (‘They were not born to live but to die / and knowing with unquestionable perfection to be faithful to this standard’). It may be that these two ilms help us to better understand and value its protagonists as, after so many disappointments, few things about the daily life of the Paneros can now be considered to be especially extravagant, if observed from outside the artistry: the ilms have remained a rarity, although they seem to have marked a common

Jaime Chávarri Elías Querejeta Cinematography:

Teo Escamilla Editor:

José Salcedo Duration/Format:

97 minutes/B/W Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Felicidad Blanc Lepoldo María Panero Juan Luis Panero Michi Panero Year:

1976

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

185

Directory of World Cinema

The Disenchantment/El Desencanto, Elías Querejeta.

moment in a time of transition in Spain to which the citizens owe a great deal. Even compared with the leisure pursuits and entertainments of today, the vice and madness seem to be elsewhere, and not in Leopoldo María, now hospitalized in a psychiatric centre. This is the sad and dismal part of the only legend that surrounds them – and that has made this ilm a ‘classic’ Spanish ilm about the heartbreaking testimonies of his family – Leopoldo Panero Senior, the great poet of Franco, was formerly a Communist. The Paneros’ eruption onto the big screen was very enriching, but the mother, Felicidad Blanc, ended her days as an usher, albeit in a Palace, and Michi passed away in the care of Astorga (León) social services, friendless by his own confession. ls this a preview of what awaits the two Panero poets that we can still enjoy? nobody

186 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

knows because nobody asks, because practically nobody cares. Their exceptionality was never fodder for the front pages, literary supplements or television interviews. They remained distanced from the majority of academies, universities and conferences, wealth and baubles. ostentatious glory was not for them. But that majestic, extinguished ancestry knew how to contemplate its decay with the solemnity, lucidity and sanity which is the mark of the genius, ingenious and ingenuous.

Federico Utrera

El bosque animado Studio:

Classic Films Producción Director:

José Luis Cuerda Producer:

Eduardo Ducay Screenwriter:

rafael Azcona (based on the homonymous novel by Wenceslao Fernández Flórez) Cinematographer:

Javier Aguirresarobe

Synopsis In Cecebre, somewhere in Galicia, a group of diverse characters and the conditions of their daily life are revealed. But Cecebre is unlike anywhere else, and nor are the people conventional. Fendetestas is a bandit in the forest. Gerardo, the lame welldigger, regrets that his lover Hermelinda has gone to the city, and she is fed up with her aunt and how she treats her. The Crazy man of Vos brings gifts, which are not from him, to the property owners of the Pazo. The spirit of Fiz de Cotovelo seeks a Christian who must go to San Andrés de Teixedo barefoot and with a candle in order to keep a promise that he could not keep in his own lifetime. The witch Moucha has improbable solutions that get results. Fuco, a little boy, tricks the bandit. Two spinsters from the city come to relax and end up leeing in fright because of the rural customs and noises in the night. Fuco, the son of Marica, leaves his job as assistant to the well-digger because he likes working with the bandit Fendetestas The procession of the souls of the Santa Compaña cross through the forest; these and other colourful inhabitants constitute a portrait of a society so magical as to be real.

Composer:

José nieto

Critique

Editor:

El bosque animado (The Living Forest) is based on some of the stories from the 1943 homonymous book by Wenceslao Fernández Flórez. rafael Azcona maintains the structure and characters of the book in the screenplay, but he accentuates the humorous and surreal qualities, while eliminating those parts of the book that refer to the animals and plants as human beings. of the sixteen estancias, as Fernández Flórez called the chapters, Azcona retained only ten, and four of these only partially. Although the changes are notable, above all the ending, the idea of a magical realism and the force of nature remain untouched in the ilmic text. In this way, a space is created, like a microcosm in which hunger and aspiration for a better world abound. José Luis Cuerda creates a choral work from the human characters originated by the author, and yet reinforcing and accentuating the humour, and the situations that have a bearing on rural customs. The characters and absurd dialogue manage to

Juan Ignacio San Mateo Art Director:

Félix Murcia Duration:

103 minutes Genre:

Fantasy Comedy Cast:

Alfredo Landa Tito Valverde Alejandra Grepi Miguel rellán

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

187

Directory of World Cinema

Filming locations:

Sobrado dos Monxes (Galicia) Year:

1987

break or attenuate the dramatic and miserable existence which is portrayed in the novel. one example is the wake for the body of Pilara, a dramatic situation that provides the setting for one woman´s story about the soul of her neighbour who left heaven because she could not ind her son among the seraphim and cherubim. The village of Cecebre is portrayed as a closed place, and yet it is still possible to enter and leave. By this, the idea that this very magical space is, at the same time, real is emphasized. It is necessary to highlight that in the ilm the main characters are humanized. The bandit is good; the spirit scares the two ladies from the city only in sorrow; and the owner of the Pazo has no problems mixing with the poor of the village. If in the novel the characters scarcely relate to each other, in the ilm, relationships are established so that their stories are not as separated and show a more positive perspective. So much so that the most dramatic part of the novel, the death of the well-digger, is eliminated for a happier ending. This ilm reinforces the genre of Spanish rural cinema that lees from drama and sinks into the grotesque and the force of nature. Before this came Habla, mudita (1973) by Gutiérrez Aragón and, later, Tasio (1984) by Armendáriz and Amanece que no es poco (1989) by Cuerda. This is the vein of Spanish cinema to which The Living Forest belongs and that its, in part, with the picaresque of the Spanish Golden Age (the seventeenth century) and, in part, with the grotesque (‘esperpento’) of Valle Inclán.

Agustín Gómez Gómez

The Holy Innocents Los santos inocentes Studio:

Ganesh Director:

Mario Camus Producer:

Julián Mateos Screenwriters:

Mario Camus Antonio Larreta Manuel Matji (based on the homonymous novel by Miguel Delibes, 1981)

188 Spain

Synopsis This ilm focuses on a family working on the lands of an Extremadura marquisate in zafra, inland South-Western Spain, and on the strained relationship with their masters during the 1960s. The ilm shows some of the dificult situations that the various members of this family have to deal with daily in order to keep their masters satisied, and the way the servants are treated practically like any other farm animal they live with. Paco struggles to keep their traditional position unchanged, in opposition to his relatives’ natural reactions against their masters – mainly his wife régula, his son Quirce and his brother-in law Azarías, who cannot fully control himself due to a mental problem that, at the end, leads to the murder of don Iván, the master of the farm.

Critique The Holy Saints is without a doubt one of the best Spanish countryside dramas, as well as one of the most frequently-quoted ilms in the history of Spanish cinema, thanks to the fact that, as with ricardo Franco’s adaptation of Camilo José Cela’s La familia

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Hans Burmann Art Director:

rafael Palmero Composer:

Antón García Abril Editor:

José María Biurrun Duration:

103 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Alfredo Landa Terele Pávez Francisco rabal Juan Diego Filming Locations:

Alburquerque Almendralejo Mérida zafra (Extremadura) Year:

1984

de Pascual Duarte/The Family of Pascual Duarte (also located in Extremadura), this ilm succeeds in visually recreating the farmers’ life conditions and the hardship with their masters. In this respect, the high quality of the actors’ performances makes them all look as if they really shared the leading role of this collective drama. The director and the screenwriters chose to make a ilm that is based more on images than on words, but even if the dialogues are scarce, they testify to the traditional domination exerted by the masters over the servants – a domination that, in real life, is mainly verbal, and which, in the ilm, is expressed through powerful images full of tension, and repressed hard feelings. That is why, in the opening sequence, we see Paco giving a reading lesson to his son late at night in a room with hardly any light. That is why Quirce, the son, remains silent most of the time, preferring to face his parents’ masters in a deiant manner, particularly after his return from military service. His silence makes don Iván (Juan Diego) angry. The master would like the young man to behave like a faithful dog or, more precisely, like Azarías’ precious bird when he whistles for it in one of the most successful domineering sequences, in which we can see the master’s frustration in contrast with Azarías’ satisfaction as the bird lies from the top of a house to Azarías’ shoulder. Don Iván tries to exert and to feel that kind of ‘natural’ social domination over Paco, and that is why he insists on showing his hunting mates Paco’s skill at inding a wounded bird by snifing the ground as if he were a dog. From the beginning, Camus offers many wonderful interior and exterior countryside scenes, sometimes accompanied by a sparse, but effective, use of music. The collaboration between the cinematographer and the art director manages to shed a harsh light on this profoundly-moving drama. Depending on the characters’ feelings, it looks as if this light had been directly taken from Velázquez most inspired autumnal palette – a few cold colours only, ranging from white to pale green and from grey to the darkest browns, which can be appreciated in both inside and outside settings and costumes, making this ilm, apart from its social contents, a beautiful visual experience. The way the master is killed by Azarías while hunting, at the height of the ilm, in revenge for having killed his faithful bird, seems to point out the responsibility of the masters for the social stagnation that rural Spain has traditionally suffered from both before and, as the ilm shows, after the Civil War.

Jaime Céspedes Gallego

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

189

Directory of World Cinema

The Old Memory La vieja memoria Studio:

Proilmes Director:

Jaime Camino Producer:

José Antonio Pérez Screenwriters:

Jaime Camino román Gubern Cinematographers:

José Luis Alcaine Teodoro Escamilla Magín Torruella Composer:

Xavier Montsalvatge Editor:

Teresa Alcocer Duration:

175 minutes Genre:

Documentary Filming Locations:

Barcelona Madrid Toulouse (France) Paris Bruxels St. Martin Le Beau (France) Quimper (France) Moscow Year:

1979

190 Spain

Synopsis The Old Memory is a documentary that recounts the memories of some political igures as well as other lesser-known characters. It recounts some key moments in the history of Spain’s Second republic and how it began, and then during the Spanish Civil War. It does not try to reconstruct the overall history but, rather, it presents fragments told by people of that time who do not pretend to be experts. The testimonies are mainly those of communists and anarchists who fought on the side of the republic: the losers. The anarchist movement is very present in the ilm as it carried a lot of weight in the military and political organizations in Cataluña. Throughout the documentary, the anarchists talk about how they lived and organized the revolution, and Jaime Camino makes sure to include the problems and limitations of their utopian society.

Critique ‘To Joris Ivens’, this is how The Old Memory begins. It is a tribute to the ilm-maker, but also to the militant cinema that believes ideas can change, bend, and make reality better, even though 40 years have passed since its existence. Ivens was a communist and he ilmed The Spanish Earth (1937), his only documentary about the Civil War. The montage chooses sides: in The Spanish Earth Camino picks up the heroism of the people who resisted, and an incomplete truth that the war was lost because Germany helped the nationalists. Also, another communist complaint is made: the lack of unity, the anarchists, and their vain attempt at a revolution. Although The Old Memory speaks about the Civil War in general, there is much footage dedicated to Barcelona and what the anarchists did there, how they lived during this historic moment and how they acted as revolutionaries, with all the implications and ideology that word holds. The anarchists arrived at their line in the sand so quickly it was almost disturbing. As one old anarchist said, ‘We were overlowing’. no longer was it about the revolution, but rather how to organize it in a way that kept it going. Camino makes his montage act as the memory of his protagonists. The resistance in Barcelona (republican) is displayed through time, narrative and dramatic development, even glorious at times; the Alcázar (nationalist) is explained simply as a successful army. For Barcelona, there are testimonies of bravery and emotion from the elderly anarchists; for the Alcázar, a clipped, cold-sounding voice. Like the rest of the documentary, acts are never covered up, but some are dealt with quickly as almost obligatory, while others receive special treatment, almost as if in compensation for the war that was never won. In this sense, it is important to note the date of the ilm: 1979, only a few years after the death of Franco and the end of his dictatorship. Almost 40 years of imposed silence makes The Old Memory seem like the memories of those that had not

Directory of World Cinema

had the opportunity to tell others how they lived or their point of view, and it is a way of seeing a world that had been invisible. The documentary was ilmed in 1979 and it is powerful to see the happiness that the protagonists feel when they remember those times. They lived by great words: liberty, revolution, equality. Their best weapon was enthusiasm, someone said, but this enthusiasm was also a problem. Camino introduced a counterpoint, an analysis which does not it the idyllic plan that some had for Spain. In this version, the defeated are the anarchists. only them. Some distinguished communists (Dolores Ibárruri and Enrique Líster) help explain the other anarchistic revolution: the murders, the inconsistencies, the chaos and mistakes. It is a criticism, but not selfcriticism. The communists won, at least, this small battle against those that maintained an ideological ight during the entire war. The spirit of Ivens appears again. The communists left a clear vision that what anarchism thought about ‘people’, though Kropotkin deined it as an idyllic form, almost celestial, pure and infallible, was false. The conclusion is that they (the communists) returned to do what they were doing: making mistakes; the defeated, therefore, are not at fault but, rather, others are to blame.

José Cabeza

Poachers Furtivos Studio:

El Imán Director:

José Luis Borau Producer:

José Luis Borau Screenwriter:

José Luis Borau Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón Manuel Borau José Luis Gutiérrez Aragón

Synopsis The title, Furtivos, means both ‘poachers’ (in the sense of hunting secretly) and, more broadly, having secrets. An oedipal relationship between a mother called Martina, and her son, Ángel, who live together in a forest, is central to the story. Martina’s other son, the Governor, played by the ilm-maker himself, José Luis Borau, often comes to visit them to go hunting. He is rather clumsy, but Ángel takes advantage of the sounds of gunshots to hunt his own prey. When Ángel falls in love with a young woman, Milagros, who has escaped from a reform school, he takes her home. Milagros had escaped to join her lover, Cuqui, a delinquent. But having fallen right into the arms of her new lover Ángel, and going to live with him, she must marry him or she will have to return to the nuns. Martina, Ángel’s mother, is deeply jealous and ends up killing her new daughter-in-law. When Ángel discovers what his mother has done, he asks her to confess in the church before killing her.

Cinematographer:

Luis Cuadrado

Critique

Art Director:

The ilm was released at the end of the Franco era. The censors reacted severely to the way in which the governor was represented, and the nude scenes deeply disturbed many, but Borau managed to have the ilm released. rather like a horror movie, Borau directed this masterpiece about how repression works: editing the gazes between the characters and showing taboos while

Mario ortiz Composer:

Vainica Doble

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

191

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

Ana romero Marchent Duration:

99 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Lola Gaos ovidi Montllor Alicia Sánchez Felipe Solano Filming locations:

Arklow and rathdrum (Ireland) Irati (navarra) Montejo (Madrid) Mühlbach (Austria) olorón (France) rebollo (Castilla y León) Salt Spring Island (Canada) Year:

1975

never naming them creates an atmosphere where a moral silence is imposed and totalitarian forces reign. Francoist cinema was often allegorical, critiquing established visions by illustrating them with a different idea. relecting directly on politics from a non-Francoist perspective was, of course, not possible. Poachers is about what should be hidden: the irst aspect that should be hidden is Ángel’s hunting, knowing that Franco also liked this activity very much. The governor, representing Francoist authority, often comes to the forest to hunt with other Civil Guards. But he is openly clumsy and childishly selish in his dialogues. The second part to be hidden is the mother who is sexually abusing her other son, Ángel. In this forest, which represents nature, the real hunt for animals completes the devouring attitude of the mother towards her own child. The mother igure can be read as symbolizing a Spanish earth that has given birth to two children: a governor representing the Franco government as a childish man, and another son that she is abusing. Hunting and repression destroy the country and the only way out seems to be through killing her. The ilmic forms are representative of Francoist cinema. As speech could not be a major way to illustrate what the ilm-maker wished to express, symbolic thoughts are demonstrated through body language and the way in which gazes are exchanged between the characters. As the mother, Lola Gaos is convincing. Her gestures and movements resemble those of animals: her skinniness, her long, claw-like arms, and her raw voice. Her voice seems damaged – she is a voiceless exhausted creature – while her body illustrates savage tenacity. Her face depicts many emotions, and we see her cruelty when she kills a wolf. When working in the garden, she looks at her daughter-in-law’s body as though in a horror movie. We remember how strong and cruelly she behaved while killing the animal that was crying out in pain. When murdering this animal, as a jealous, destructive reaction to her son bringing home his iancée, the older woman’s tortured breathing signals desperation. The transfer of violence to animals is frightening. normally, Ángel left an older reindeer walking in the forest alone. But when his mother killed his wife, he immediately shot the reindeer. It is like a metaphor running throughout the ilm of the victim always being in a weaker position, with the cruelty never stopping but, rather, needing to be transferred to another subject. This is another level of how repression works, always ending up by destroying the weaker party. Borau created this horror movie like Hitchcock’s Psycho, but within a Spanish political context, with silent characters aflicted by damaged voices, unable to speak up, and with incessant violence. It is a convincing masterpiece of how repression works in a country that had lived under a dictatorship from 1939 until Franco’s death in 1975.

Pietsie Feenstra

192 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Rapture Arrebato Studio:

nicolás Astiárraga Director:

Iván zulueta Producer:

Augusto Martínez Torres Screenwriter:

Iván zulueta Cinematographer:

Ángel Luis Fernández Art Director:

Iván zulueta Carlos Astiárraga Eduardo Eznarriaga Composer:

negativo Iván zulueta Editor:

José Luis Peláez José Pérez Luna María Elena Sáinz de rozas Duration:

106 minutes Genre:

Drama Horror Cast:

Eusebio Poncela Will More Cecilia roth Marta Fernández-Muro Filming Locations:

La Mata del Pirón (Castilla y León) Madrid Year:

1979

Synopsis José Sirgado, a B-movie ilm-maker given over to heroin and undergoing a profound crisis, receives a package at home from a young man, Pedro, whom he met some time ago in a friend’s house. The shipment consists of a cassette of instructions and a Super 8 ilm shot by the sender. Under the inluence of heroin, José notes with curiosity that seemingly banal material degenerates gradually into the strange journey that the worn voice of Pedro and the mysterious contents of the reels propose. obsessed with ilming everything around him, Pedro devoted the last stage of his inquiry to ilming himself and analysing the behaviour of the camera in front of the object. This is how he discovers the presence of a red frame that stands between the camera and himself and that will become more and more important. Prompted by the last reel and with the apartment key, José will take the Pedro’s place, facing the grim experience of its absorption by the camera.

Critique After a quiet release, Rapture would soon become one of the most amazing cult ilms of Spanish cinema for its treatment of the drug, its fascinating vampire subject, and the unusual use of a battery of the experimental avant-garde resources that zulueta had partially developed in his previous shorts and medium-length ilms. zulueta’s brief career and his tragic life (he died in late 2009 having made only one more ilm) added no further ingredients to the myth. Rapture was born from the very immersion in pop and mass culture that marked the early work of Pedro Almodóvar, but is separated from the pastiche and comic detachment that characterized the latter. Among the experimental subjects that Rapture explores, igure, irst, the home movies, in which the apparently banal, everyday life of the artist is transcended and is full of dark signals, and, second, the use of recycling and the practice of re-shooting, for which zulueta would use images from his own previous Super 8, and which will give his ilm a huge variety of textures and granulation that make its footage a kind of ‘found footage’; and third, Rapture behaves in metalinguistic way and relects on the bases that make up the ilmic device, about what happens between the imaging and the projection, on the mechanical eye of the camera’s intention to record and grab the object, on the licker, on that ilmic impossible meaning: the pause. To be precise, zulueta spins his story about the mysteries that awaken from the embedded red frame found by Pedro, as a foreign body, in one of his self-ilmings; this is, in fact, a reference to Schwechater (1957–58) by Austrian Peter Kubelka, creator and ilm theorist of metric cinema. Although guided by these experimental ilm codes, Rapture was able to extend its inluence to an audience wider than usually attends avant-garde cinema. This is due to the skill displayed by zulueta in wrapping a story of initiation, convoluted but not hermetic, with the relections that experimental cinema often presents in a cool, programmatic and rational way. Rapture thus

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

193

Directory of World Cinema

adds excitement and intrigue to the script development while connecting with contemporary issues such as drugs, of which he offers an unusual treatment (zulueta expresses himself from drugs rather than speaking about drugs). And, last but not least, the cinephilia that is displayed in his images is far from arcane codes known only to avant-garde consumers but, rather, it is about popular references ranging from the American commercial cinema to classic child icons or gay encryption, from Andy Warhol to a comic-book culture and mass culture in which a whole generation was educated. zulueta stamps on it a tragic tone that deines perfectly the chosen title: Rapture. on it converge the enjoyment of misplacement caused by heroin, the suspension of ilm movement, the vampirism, while also being fraught with mystical overtones.

Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

The Remains from the Shipwreck Los restos del naufragio Studio:

Producciones Aura Incine Producciones Mon-Vel Institut national de l´Audiovisuel Televisa Europa Director:

ricardo Franco Producer:

José María Pascual Screenwriter:

ricardo Franco Cinematographer:

Cecilio Paniagua Art Director:

José Antonio de la Guerra Composer:

David C Thomas Editor:

Guillermo S Maldonado Duration:

100 minutes 194 Spain

Synopsis After a painful break-up with his girlfriend María, young Mateo, a cellist, tries to start a new life accompanied by his scarce belongings in the shape of Pop LPs, novels and souvenirs. At the home for the elderly, Casa de las Hermanitas de los Ancianos Desamparados, where he starts to work as a gardener, almost by mistake, he meets Enrique Pombal – a restless rebel with anarchist trends – and begins a friendship with the old man as he prepares for a performance called Los restos del naufragio (The Remains from the Shipwreck). Their friendship strengthens during the rehearsals and the fervent stories which they share, much to the amusement of the other residents, while Mateo plans scenarios in which he could win back the affections of his beloved girlfriend. After a few failed attempts, with many anecdotes and misunderstandings, they run away in a stolen car to look for the remains of the shipwreck of a pirate’s galleon.

Critique The Remains from the Shipwreck soon became a cult movie for the left-wing during the immediate transition and in the ideology of a generation disillusioned after the irst free elections on 15 June 1977. The ilm is built on two classic stylistic references: the pirate’s stories and the journey as an access to knowledge and identity. Primarily, the plot is forged around the tribute to childhood and old age and the unspoken bonds between them that represent the existence in the collective imagination of a character like Peter Pan, supported by the romantic component of the pirate’s stories. The journey refers to a personal crisis of the author and, the following year, was transmuted into a homonymous book of poems. The cinematographic script used is characterized by the game between reality (of the story) and fantasy (of the characters). Although it is lagged up by the montage, the lack of distinction between these levels makes the transition between sequences really steep, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy and caus-

Directory of World Cinema

Genre:

Drama Cast:

Fernando Fernán-Gómez ricardo Franco Ángela Molina Alfredo Mayo Year:

1978

ing dissolution of the continuity of time and space. If the viewer does not thoroughly focus on the plot, they will have serious dificulties following the storyline and its deeper meaning. The tale attempts to draw together the rehearsals and the performance of a play with an almost oneiric visualization of the pirate’s adventures, told by the character of Pombal. Franco’s production tends to smooth these breaks with his insistence on the long-shot, in an attempt to get the spectators out of the hypnosis created by the other elements of the staging and the story itself. Similarly, the decision to cast himself in the role of Mateo connects the ilm and its author with the universe in a similar way to the character performed by Woody Allen in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), which blends the roles of participant in the story and observer of the iction. As in most pirate ilms, The Remains of the Shipwreck is full of literary references, some quite direct, such as the typically Marxist revolutionary plays, La canción del pirata (Pirate’s Song) by José de Espronceda or Treasure Island by Louis Stevenson, with some more implicit allusions to works such as The Book of the Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights). The ilm was well received by the critics of the day, was presented in the oficial section of the Cannes Festival in 1978 and conirmed the success of director ricardo Franco. However, it should be emphasized that the stylistic split of this ilm from some of his previous ones, such as Pascual Duarte (1976) is characterized by its use of what some have called ‘non-narrative technique’. Conversely, the critics later reproached the director for his attempt to appropriate the visual language and the narrative technique’s level of confusion from authors such as the magical realist Jorge Luis Borges, without achieving an accurate visual description of the episodes representing the internal voice of the protagonist.

Ana Sedeño

Seven Days in January 7 días de enero Countries of Origin:

Spain France Studio:

Goya Films Les Films des deux mondes Director:

Juan Antonio Bardem

Synopsis Seven Days in January begins with a wedding which places Luis Maria and his social group amongst the conservative sector of Spanish society: in favour of the Franco regime and uneasy about the changes being effected during the transition to democracy. The situations narrated venture into the workplace of labour lawyers and the public ‘street’, in which the protests of a group of workers relect that the struggles of the time (amnesty for social and political prisoners, improvement of working and social conditions) were supported with the legal expertise of a handful of lawyers linked to the Spanish Communist Party. The voice of the television receiver intermittently contextualizes the tensions of these years of change, criss-crossed by the murders committed by far-right groups in parallel with the radicalism of left-wing terrorist groups such as the one that carried out the abduction of Lt Villaescusa (the GrAPo). The historicist iction reaches its apex

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

195

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

roberto Bodegas Alain Coifier Serafín García Trueba Screenwriters:

Juan Antonio Bardem Gregorio Morán Cinematographer:

when, as the workers’ strike continues, the right-wing youth group to which Luis María belongs prepares and executes the murder of several leftist lawyers in Atocha Street in Madrid. Afterwards, Luis María sets off on a fruitless escape to the coast of Murcia. The survivors of the attack relive the event when they confront its perpetrators, which ends with the conviction of the accused in a court of law. The inal images return the viewer to the interchange between the private and the public with the burial of the murdered lawyers accompanied by a massive procession, silent and peaceful.

Leopoldo Villaseñor Editor:

Guillermo S Maldonado Composer:

nicola Peyrac Duration:

157 minutes Genre:

Political drama Cast:

Manuel Egea Fernando Sánchez Polack Virginia Mataix José Manuel Cervino Year:

1979

Critique This ilm documents the incidents that occurred before and after the murders of the labour lawyers in Atocha Street on 24 January 1977. This type of cinema was new to Bardem – and for Spanish cinema in general. Shortly after the murders occur, he toyed with the idea of representing it in cinema. The title chosen relates, irst, to the novel by John reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), on which Eisenstein based October (1927); and another, to the ilm by John Frankenheimer Seven Days in May (1964), which was about a military conspiracy fostered by right-wing extremists in the US. Despite the fact that Bardem declared that it was his intention ‘as a citizen, a ilm-maker and a communist’ to make this ilm, the events were not told from the perspective of the victims of the murder but, rather, of those who carried it out: representatives of those groups of the franquista far-right who were unwilling to accept the democratic change that Spain was experiencing, fearing it would result in chaos, as well as in the loss of their inluence and control of the state. The ilm shows a typiied Francoist society, its attitudes and the social behaviour that it engendered, with considerable differences between the female characters, who represent the two opposing models of the submissive woman and the militant feminist who refuses to conform to the roles assigned to her. The narration, in a semi-documentary style, and with informative rigour, has a rhythm reminiscent of Fred zinneman’s The Day of the Jackal (1973). The main character, Luis María, is a young man who was raised in a family that supported the Franco dictatorship; his use of violence is a symbol of the desperation of his social group as it resists change. Television fulils the role of narrator and contextualizes the events of the ilm, demonstrating that Spain’s transition to democracy was not as peaceful as it is often portrayed in historical accounts. Instead, it was a tense time for a divided society, which was evidenced by the reaction provoked by the ilm’s release. The objective of this ilm was a plea for freedom and for peace, as was made clear in its promotional poster: ‘una película contra la violencia y el terrorismo venga de donde venga. Una película sin odio que le hará pensar. no cierre los ojos véala’ (‘A movie against violence and terrorism, whatever its source. A ilm without hatred that will make you think. Do not close your eyes, see it’).

Magdalena Garrido Caballero 196 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Speak, Little Mute Girl Habla, mudita Countries of origin:

Spain Germany Studio:

Elías Querejeta Director:

Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón Producer:

Elías Querejeta Screenwriters:

Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón José Luis García Sánchez Cinematographer:

Luis Cuadrado Art Director:

Fernando Hermoso Composer:

Luis de Pablos Editor:

Pablo González del Amo Duration:

88 minutes Genre:

rural drama Cast:

José Luis López Vázquez Kiti Manver Francisco Algora Filming Locations:

Santander region Year:

1973

Synopsis A family of urbanites, made up of three generations, in which all the men are named ramiro, is in the country looking for peace and tranquillity. The grandfather, a publisher, becomes lost in the forest and arrives at a village where he inds an open house; the inhabitants there give him dinner. In this house live three women, also of three generations, and a boy, Andrés. He and his sister are both mute. We do not know the cause of this but everything indicates that it is due to a learning problem. From the irst moment, Andrés cares for the uncivilized girl who lives tending the cows and goat. This interest will lead to ramiro prolonging his stay in the country, while the rest of his family return to Madrid. All his efforts are in vain because the poor mute girl does not manage to articulate more than a few odd sounds. Although he is aware that she is only interested in small material things, he feels a certain admiration for the girl. Finally, he is accused of raping the girl. The ilm ends with ramiro returning to Madrid with his wife and son while the mute girl stands alone in the road pronouncing his name. Later we see her teaching her brother how to articulate basic sounds, starting, like she did, with the vowel ‘A’.

Critique Habla, mudita (Speak, Little Mute Girl) is a ilm that deals with communication, and in this case the lack of communication. An editor concerned about the value of words is in a hostile world where he tries to survive in the most practical way that he knows. A dialogue between a shepherd and ramiro makes evident this situation: Words, my friend Castelar, are only instruments, like hoes and sickles. What would you say of a hoe that could not dig? Well, that it is broken. However, the peasant is not intimidated and starts naming synonyms for the word path (Road, trail, track, street, and byways) because he, too, has read the dictionary. Everything then becomes as if a dialogue between two deaf people, between antagonistic worlds, where they cannot hear one another and where they see each other as if from a distance. At the beginning of the ilm ramiro tells, as if he were a naturalist, the story of the tawny owl, which presages what we will later see. The grandfather recounts how it is the time of mating, but in the forest there is only one remaining specimen of the species. nevertheless, the bird continues to emit the same sound but there are no females. This gives rise to a dissertation on the question of whether it is a language without communication or a communication without language. We can see the same relection repeated when she asks him to play a rustic lute and, although it is not music, she dances. Gutierrez Aragón places the action within a rural-urban duality, the clearest way possible to make visible a world left behind. Indeed, the characters of the countryside are rude ignorant creatures that have a negative outward vision: from the grandmother who

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

197

Directory of World Cinema

Speak, Little Mute Girl/Habla, mudita, Elías Querejeta.

insults ramiro and, by extension, all men of the city, to the mass of neighbours that go looking for him because they believe that he has raped the mute girl, or even when hikers are blamed as being the heirs of those who deforested their forests to build the Armada. But nor do the city people have an idyllic image of country people. The ilm, therefore, tells us about the different codes that deal with the communication between different people. This learning process produces a transformation in both characters. However, the changes are only supericial, and the end is as it was in the beginning.

Agustín Gómez Gómez

Voyage to Nowhere El viaje a ninguna parte Studio:

Ganesh Director:

Fernando Fernán-Gómez

198 Spain

Synopsis Historically, Arturo Galván has been at the head of his travelling theatre company representing classic comedies in rural areas of Spain, which he reaches by bus or even by walking uncomfortably on dusty roads, where extreme weather seems to conspire against his art. For him, and for the people he feels responsible for, being an actor is something that is carried in the blood, which affects the life and marks the destination. Unfortunately, these are the hard years after the war and his calling, reviled by a society that is rooted in the prejudices of extreme conservatism, begins to experience the irst signs of its inevitable demise. While his son Carlos Arturo tries to ight the most urgent problems – sorting out contracts in towns and

Directory of World Cinema

Producer:

Maribel Martín Julián Mateos Paco Villar Screenwriter:

Fernando Fernán-Gómez Cinematographer:

José Luis Alcaine Art Director:

Julio Esteban Composer:

Pedro Iturralde Editor:

Pablo González del Amo Cast:

Fernando Fernán-Gómez María Luisa Ponte José Sacristán Juan Diego Duration:

134 minutes Genre:

Comedy Drama Year:

1986

other venues, shortages and inancial worries (more often than not condemning them to hunger) and the insecurity of a profession they love – they come to realize that they can no longer compete with the cinema, which has become the spectacle of the times. The comedians watch the risk of disintegration helplessly. Most of the members of the company dream of better horizons: of a Madrid full of theatres, cafes, and the opportunities and material comforts denied them by their daily vocation. years pass and, beset by poverty and by the demands of his lover with whom he dreams of a promising future in the cold rooms of menial boarding houses, Carlos Galván takes the painful decision to leave his father and the company. After a rough start, his race to professional success will be unstoppable, and its decline will take him to the furious reworking of a world of memories, the mockery of fate and the bitter reality of his inal failure.

Critique Based on his own novel by director Fernando Fernán-Gómez, Voyage to Nowhere is, with Juan Antonio Bardem’s Cómicos/Comedians (1954), the greatest tribute that cinema has paid to those theatrical professionals that, from the Golden Age, took theatre to every corner of Spain, paying a high price of social exclusion and neglect. However, these comics were the last of the old school that provided the theatre and the cinema with three generations of great performers. Without ignoring its aspect as road movie, the tragicomic tone of the ilm arises from the interaction of elements taken from the works in Galván’s repertoire with the dramatic force of the situations that occur outside of the makeshift stage. To these must be added the experience of those players whose proximity to the collective memory of much of the public are able to make the audience share in his sad coming and going, enriching the implicit in a staging that offers a soulless vision of the play within theatre and ilm within a ilm: its huge and pathetic antiheros. Also of the Spanish society,or at least of that social majority – in the irst decades of dictatorship – that was torn between hunger, being rooted in their customs, and the urgent call of migration to large cities. It is necessary to ask what remains of these comedians; what is their destiny? And the answer is none other than that leap in the dark experienced by Carlos Galvan; the improbability of his memories, the evidential value of that memory manipulated in an attempt to survive by making the past more bearable: that constant succession of defeats and unfulilled longings. Hence they acquire the same meaning as the nights of success, the prizes that never arrived and the improbable – especially since it took place at the time that raged over the regime’s repression – dialogue with the youths of the village whom he – we do not know if it is the man or the actor – instructs in the rudiments of class struggle. Ultimately it is a question of episodes that travel between reality and iction to the dictation of the memory of a loser who, in his last days, needs urgently to rewrite the theatrical representation that has been his life.

Juan Mas

The Transition to Democracy Cinema

199

CRIME AND THRILLER

Directory of World Cinema

Crime iction made an early appearance in Spanish cinema, but it is in the 1940s that we ind an important cycle of this genre. During that decade, the work of the Catalonian production company Emisora Films stood out, and also that of a series of ilm-makers and writers who were responsible for a great leap forward in the genre. To begin with, we must mention Ignacio F Iquino, an amazingly proliic director who, in the 1940s, was responsible for ive detective stories before setting up, in the 1950s, the main production company for crime iction in Spain: IFI. Also outstanding was the remarkable Edgar neville, who, during the same period, made a series of original crime sainetes. rafael Gil and José Antonio nieves Conde also made notable movies. not until the 1950s and early 1960s did Spanish crime iction reach its peak and come closer to ilm noir. Although what predominated at the box ofice was comedy, folkloric musicals and religious stories, Spanish noir production continued regularly in the 1950s, after pioneer movies such as Brigada Criminal (Crime Squad) (Ignacio F Iquino), Apartado de Correos 1001 (PO Box 1001) (Julio Salvador) and Séptima página (The Seventh Page) (Ladislao Vajda). With production divided between Madrid and Barcelona, the genre grew in importance with the commitment of directors – also some writers and producers – like the above-mentioned Iquino, Salvador and Vajda, or such as José María Forqué, Julio Coll, Antonio Isasi Isasmendi, Juan Antonio de la Loma, Antonio Santillán, José María Forn, Francisco rovira Beleta and Juan Bosch. We must also underline the contribution of writers – some of whom were well-known playwrights – like Miguel Mihura, Alfonso Paso or Carlos Blanco. These and other professionals created emblematic ilms such as Los ojos dejan huellas (Eyes leaves traces) (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1952), Los peces rojos/Red Fish (José Antonio nieves Conde, 1955), ¿Crimen imposible? (Impossible Crime?) (César F Ardavín, 1954), El cerco (Police Cordon) (Miguel Iglesias, 1955), Expreso de Andalucía (Express Train from Andalucia) (Francisco rovira Beleta, 1956), Distrito Quinto (Fifth District) (Julio Coll, 1957), El cebo/It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958), A tiro limpio (Just Shooting) (Francisco Pérez-Dolz, 1963) and Crimen de doble filo/Double Edged Crime (José Luis Borau, 1964), among others. Film noir did not develop in Spanish cinema, to a great extent conditioned by the censors who would not permit any dissidence that would break with the immaculate image of the Franco regime. In contrast with the ambiguous connotations of American ilm noir – a main source of inspiration – the Spanish counterparts showed a moralizing, poetic world with clear limits in which evil is always punished, and a Manichaean dichotomy between the characters who represented the law and those who wallowed in vice and crime. In fact, many of these ilms were conceived in clear homage to the police. This impediment did not hinder Spanish crime ilms in dealing with almost all the plot types seen in the American noir: police procedurals, crooks, prison and the ‘wrong man’, etc. While respecting the constrictive perspective mentioned above, all subjects were shown, with the exception of private detectives: characters of

Left: Thesis/Tesis, Las Producciones del Escorpión.

Crime and Thriller 201

Directory of World Cinema

ambiguous morality that, so frequently in the genre, showed up the deiciences of the police. In fact they would not be portrayed until the arrival of democracy in Spain. Despite the lack of nuance in the blueprint of the characters, the moralizing traits of the stories or the simple way in which violence and crime were depicted, the genre did not give up on its relection of truth in these golden years, as can be seen in the importance they give to urban areas and the outdoors, to stories based on facts, or the way they express a certain tradition in their relection of typically Spanish customs and practices. Almost always shot in black and white, with low budgets, this is a genre that, particularly in its Barcelona perspective, adopted a ‘modern’ angle, and from the 1950s on, kept an eye on new European cinema, French polar cinema included. Even though crime had to be punished, these crime movies deal with tough themes, and give a glimpse of the existence in Spain of awkward realities in the areas of sin, vice and corruption. In the early 1970s, the thriller found its place in a commercial panorama where comedy and horror movies predominated; sometimes the thriller showed characteristics of the latter. Eloy de la Iglesia’s irst feature ilms itted into this genre, which allowed him to touch on marginality and alienation. At the beginning of the 1970s we also ind La cabina/The Phone Box (Antonio Mercero, 1972), a multi-prizewinning TV thriller with a script partially written by José Luis Garci, a ilm-maker who, some years later, would bring a new brio to ilm noir with El crack (The Crack) (1981), a ilm about a Hammett-style private eye. With the end of the Franco dictatorship, Pepe Carvalho – the most popular private detective in Spanish literature – also made his irst ilm appearances. Cinema during the transition to democracy in Spain was zealous in exploring freedom of expression. Crime iction, although still a very encoded genre, corresponded to this desire, and over the 1980s grew in strength, at times based on accident and crime reports, and at others on literary adaptations of writers like Vázquez Montalbán (the ‘father’ of private eye Carvalho), Andreu Martín, Antonio Muñoz Molina and Juan Madrid. A clear example of the aim to bear witness to the harsh social reality of the country is the so-called ‘petty criminal cinema’, lead by Antonio de la Loma and Eloy de la Iglesia, who portrayed, as never before, the most marginal sectors of society. In the 1990s, the urban thriller gained prestige in the hands of directors such as Antonio Chavarrías, Mariano Barroso, Daniel Carparsoro, Agustín Díaz-yanes and Enrique Urbizu. Their ilms have a contemporary feel due to their bleak and critical tone, their cult of ugliness and their rather unwholesome atmosphere. In the second half of the decade, Alejandro Amenábar stands out with Thesis (1996) and Open your eyes (1997). Amenábar, a devotee of Hitchcock and Spielberg, breaks with any hint of Hispanic folklore and connects with the young audience by skilfully showing all the ins and outs of the suspense thriller, reminding us that angst is a very effective means of attracting the viewers’ attention. In the irst decade of the twenty-irst century, the thriller continued to be an outstanding genre within Spanish movie-making, with numerous guises: rural, psychological, detective, etc. The prison thriller Celda 211 (Cell 211) (Daniel Monzón, 2009) was an amazing hit, with much better box-ofice recognition than other powerful thrillers such as La caja 507 (Box 507) (Enrique Urbizu, 2002), La habitación de Fermat/Fermat’s Room (Luis Piedrahita and rodrigo Sopeña, 2007), Hierro (Gabe Ibáñez, 2009) and Intacto (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2001). on the other hand, we must underline the approval of the critics for independent thrillers that, like Las horas del día/The Hours of the day (Jaime rosales, 2003) or Aro Tolbukhin, en la mente del asesino (Aro Tolbukhin, in the Mind of a Killer) (Agustí Villaronga, Lydia zimmermann, Isaac Pierre-racine, 2002), put us in the uncomfortable role of the criminal. However, we must admit that, together with the triumphs of the genre and its daring propositions, many of the thrillers produced lack high pretensions – they are presented as more-or-less-sophisticated and iniquitous entertainment – and their quality is relative. Such defects can be found in most of our recent movie-making.

Pablo Echart Orús 202 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Anguish Angustia Language:

English Studios:

Luna Films Pepón Coromina Samba Director:

Bigas Luna Producer:

Pepón Coromina Screenwriter:

Bigas Luna Cinematographer:

Joseph M Civit Art Director:

Felipe de Paco Composer:

JM Pagán Editor:

Tom Sabin Duration:

88 minutes Cast:

zelda rubinstein Michael Lerner Talia Paul Àngel Jové Filming Locations:

Barcelona Madrid new york Los Ángeles Year:

1987

Synopsis John, a plump middle-aged man, and Alice, his wizened old mother, share a home. Alice sets a spiral disc spinning on a phonograph and hypnotizes her son. The scene then changes to a hospital, where John works as a doctor who collects human eyes as medical specimens. one day John gives a patient the wrong contact lenses and refuses to remove them even though she is in obvious pain. He gets ired for this, and shots of Alice back home reveal that she can hear what is going on through a seashell she holds to her ear. When John returns home, she sends him forth on a mission, telling him to collect ‘all the eyes of the city’ as revenge against humanity. John’s irst stop is the home of the patient he mistreated earlier that day; he murders her and her husband, and takes out the woman’s eyes. At this point the ilm image seems to recede and, as the camera pulls back, we see that everything we have watched is not reality but rather a movie called The Mommy being viewed by an audience within the movie we are viewing. That audience includes two young women, blasé Linda and her sensitive friend Patty, who are increasingly anguished by the shocking weirdness of The Mommy. It then becomes clear that a killer is on the loose in the theatre where The Mommy is being shown. Anguish now continues on three levels: that of the audience watching The Mommy; that of the characters in The Mommy; and that of The Lost World (Harry o Hoyt, 1925) an old Hollywood picture watched by people in a theatre that John enters to gather more grisly trophies. The inal scene casts additional doubt over what has and not been real in the events we have witnessed.

Critique This disorienting blend of the horror, slasher, and psychodrama genres was ilmed in English. It is one of the rare movies that authentically bridge the divide between art cinema and exploitation ilm, delivering impressive doses of fright and gore with a narrative complexity that requires more than one viewing to be fully appreciated. Having established and developed the ilm-withina-ilm-within-a-ilm structure, which becomes as dizzying as the spinning spiral that Alice uses to entrance her son, Luna bedecks the mise-en-scène with off-kilter details that further skew the story’s portrayal of natural and supernatural events. How is Alice able to hear things as they happen miles away? What is the point of the meticulously-detailed scene with the bird and the cupboard? Why do certain locations in the ilm (a doctor’s ofice, a movie theater) have placards with Cyrillic lettering? These and other questions evade deinite answers, even as they enrich the picture’s high-wire oscillation between the ferociously concrete and the perplexingly oblique. one of the most intriguing aspects of Anguish is the critique of cinema coiled within it. Patty is repelled by the movie she is

Crime and Thriller 203

Directory of World Cinema

watching, and she gets woozy at the sight of Alice’s hypnotic spiral; yet her eyes stay riveted on the screen, and when she inally escapes to the restroom, forebodings of the real-life killer drive her back into the darkened auditorium. Anguish appears to say that the more deeply transixed we are by a movie, the more endangered we are by images and sounds that seduce the unconscious and reduce our ability to distinguish between actual and phantasmal worlds. This is an unusual message for a movie to carry, aligning Luna with the Stanley Kubrick of A Clockwork Orange (1971), where the antihero’s forced viewing of ultraviolent imagery is a nightmare illustration of cinema’s most insidious powers. other aspects of Anguish are more amusing, if perversely so; for example, the movie theatre showing The Mommy is called the rex, which jokingly alludes to both the tyrannosaurus rex of The Lost World and the Oedipus Rex of ancient Greece, which foreshadows the unnatural ties between John and Alice, and also between the real-life killer and the mommy he believes is controlling his actions. Another reference point for Anguish is Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho (1960), where the protagonist’s mind is invaded and conquered by a mother of his own imagining. Antecedents by Kubrick and Hitchcock notwithstanding, Anguish carves out its own grim territory in the art-horror domain, transforming cinephobic dread into a ilm charged with perfect, poisonous allure. Luna gives us hypnotism as necromancy, mesmerism as mutilation, and moviegoing as a voyage into psychic jeopardy. Fixing your eyes on Anguish, you hope you will still have them when the show is over.

David Sterrit

Bilbao Studio:

Fígaro Films Director:

José Juan Bigas Luna Producers:

José Luis Corominas Farrey Screenwriter:

José Juan Bigas Luna Cinematographer:

Pedro Aznar Editor:

Anastasi rinos

204 Spain

Synopsis Leo suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder because of Bilbao, a stripper and prostitute in the Chinatown district, Barcelona. Leo designs a thorough plan to include Bilbao in his collection of erotic articles. Hidden behind his sunglasses, as a detective, Leo follows Bilbao around the city. He chases Bilbao up to her house, he takes pictures of her, he keeps the newspaper cuttings in which she appears and he acquires any object related to her. However, Leo lives with María. She is a few years older than him and she feels strongly sexually attracted to him. But he rejects her because of his delirious passion for Bilbao. Prepared to carry out his plan, Leo drugs and kidnaps Bilbao in order to take her to a house. She is sodomized by Leo and, by chance, she suffers an accident and dies. Finally, Leo – overwhelmed by fear – turns to María. Together with the help of the main character’s uncle, they get rid of the corpse.

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Kurt Iceberg Weill Duration:

86 minutes Cast:

Ángel Jové Isabel Pisano María Martín Filming Locations:

Barcelona (Cataluña) Year:

1978

Critique Bilbao is a ilm produced in the heat of explicit eroticism during the relaxation of sexual censorship after Franco’s death. The ilm is, then, another Spanish ilm production deined by political and, above all, sexual transitions. Although Bilbao could be deined as an erotic ilm, the sophistication of its images points to the eroticism as an intellectual act. Thus Bilbao – within Bigas Luna’s ilmography – could be designated as a ilm of intellectual sensuality, as with other productions directed by the same ilm-maker like Caniche (1979) and Anguish (1987). In Bilbao, Bigas Luna – inluenced by an avant-garde and experimental genre – tries to follow in the footsteps of independent American cinema and Andy Warhol. Also, the conception of the photography manages to create an atmosphere of blurred and claustrophobic eroticism: the suburban aesthetics and the use of light are presented as outstanding elements in order to emphasize the atmosphere of the story. His fascination for consumer society’s typical objects – inspired by Warholian pop – comes together with Bigas’ past life as interior designer. This is shown throughout the narration, for example, demonstrated in the scene with the hairdryer where the director’s fetishism becomes speciic. Bilbao belongs to the phase in which Bigas Luna was immersed in his search for his own way of expression. From this ilm, the director starts to outline the guidelines that will deine his main characters’ psychological proile: voyeurism, obsessive temperament and fetishism. Elements such as Leo’s sunglasses, he wears them even in closed spaces and during the night, his use of raincoats with turned-up collars, and the way he takes pictures of Bilbao, are all of them the legacy of distinguished voyeurs like James Stewart in the ilm Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). Besides taking part in a strategy to see without being seen, these elements represent an intellectual erotic act. In this way, Bigas Luna makes clear his passion for looking through the voyeur’s intellectual erotic act. Moreover Leo’s appearance and behaviour are elements that strengthen and describe the main character’s psychological impenetrability. The ritual that Leo carries out before going in search of Bilbao shows that he lives in an unreal world. The mental disorder he suffers from is also shown by the magic value that he gives to objects. Furthermore, in Bigas Luna’s ilms, a character’s reaction or the presence of an object gives signiicance to a scene or a whole sequence. Here, the representation of food is not gratuitous: the ish and the sausage or the milk spilt over María or Bilbao’s body have a religious symbolism and a ludic and erotic meaning. Both sequences suggest a metaphorical image that deines Bigas Luna’s cinematographic imagination. Bilbao turns, in some sense, into a cathartic exercise in which the author tries to free himself from his inner ’I’. However in a Spain that has just come out of forty years of moral and political repression during Franco’s regime, Bilbao can also be considered as a symbol of how individual freedom can choose many ways.

Francisco Marcos Martín

Crime and Thriller 205

Directory of World Cinema

Domingo de Carnaval Director:

Edgar neville Producer:

Synopsis Domingo de Carnaval is the story of the investigation of a crime that happens during the Carnival in Madrid in the early twentieth century. In the course of the story of the search for the murderers, the capture of one of the protagonists happens while the Carnival is developing. The costumes and masks of the characters and the rest of the community who ill the stage will act as a cover and hinder the investigation process.

Edgar neville Screenwriter:

Critique

Edgar neville

The ilm Domingo de Carnaval (1945) connects with the local customs of Spain in the early twentieth century and is part of a trilogy that recreates the atmosphere of that time in Madrid along with Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1944) and El crimen de la calle Bordadores (1946). The generic features of the ilm mix scenes of police investigation and contemporary intrigue with appropriate markings of popular culture: regional dances, ethnographic rituals, traditionalist costumes, characteristic dialogue of the comedy of manners, and the representation of a whole amalgam of entertainment and social games, seasoned with humour and familiarity that appears in such times of celebration. The characters are played by established artists of the day, such as Fernando Fernán-Gómez, who plays the detective Matías, Conchita Montes, in the role of nieves, who, as a neighbour of the murdered woman, gets caught up in the police investigation, and Julia Lajos, performing under her own name as the maternal adviser-friend of the protagonist. This archetypal model of two young people who fall in love with the help of another, an intermediary in the affair, and inheritor of the literature of La Celestina and of the picaresque novel, is characteristic of neville. The Carnival, the festival, is set in the traditional Madrid, with a picturesque aesthetic based on pictorial references to Francisco de Goya – in paintings such as El entierro de la sardina, La pradera de San Isidro or El disparate de Carnaval. on the other hand, the characterization of the staging of the characters is inluenced by the paintings of José Gutiérrez Solana in paintings such as Carnaval, Baile de máscaras del paraguas or Máscaras de las afueras. The artist had a considerable presence in the making of this ilm as an aesthetic consultant but, unfortunately, he did not get to see its release before he died. The inluence of his painting style can be seen, especially, in the design of the masks and the representation of daily life, focused through a grotesque perspective, characteristic of his style of visual representation. Although, from a narrative point of view, the ilm is part of the detective genre and the fundamental qualities of intrigue, suspense and inquiry are obvious, this work cannot become a generic prototype of the ilm style largely because of the particular

Studio:

Cinematográica Española Americana Cinematographer:

Enrique Barreyre Art Directors:

Francisco Canet Antonio Simont Composer:

José Muñoz Molleda Editor:

Mariano Pombo Duration/Format:

83 minutes/B/W Cast:

Conchita Montes Fernando Fernán-Gómez Guillermo Marín Julia Lajos Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1945

206 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Domingo de Carnaval, Cinematográica Española Americana.

combination of the inluence of the pictorial and literary manners (through the coexistence of the grotesque aesthetics of Valle Inclán and the sketches of Wenceslao Fernández Flórez or Arniches) and the construction of popular stereotypes inluenced by the humour of ramon Gómez de la Serna. Through this pictorial heritage can be distinguished, as an intertext, the signs of identity of Spanish twentieth-century culture, the aesthetics of the ilm becoming more than a just selection of scenes from everyday life set to a coherent ilm narrative. The added attraction comes from the fact that the shooting of the ilm, in post-Civil-War Spain, was during the dictatorship when the carnival was, in fact, prohibited by the Franco regime. So, Domingo de Carnaval is a fun ilm with great dialogue that takes place in the rastro area of Madrid, with a touch of mystery and an expressionistic background that, even today, surprises us because of the poor means he had at that time to ilm. According to Conchita Montes, the protagonist, ‘the colour ilm was like a beautiful Solana because Edgar admired him when the average Spanish barely knew this great painter’.

Rafael Gómez Alonso

Crime and Thriller 207

Directory of World Cinema

Death of a Cyclist Muerte de un ciclista Countries of origin:

Spain Italy Studio:

Guión Producciones Cinematográicas Suevia Films Trionfalcine Director:

Juan Antonio Bardem Producer:

Manuel J Goyanes

Synopsis María, a married woman from the Madrid gentry and Juan, her lover, a university professor, while driving back to Madrid after an amorous encounter, hit a cyclist on the La Coruña road. Although they check that the cyclist is still alive, they do not help him and lee to avoid the discovery of their adultery. After the death of the cyclist is published in the newspapers, Juan’s remorse increases. Everything is complicated when ‘rafa’, a snobbish art critic from high society who suspects they are lovers, starts to blackmail them, through class resentment. María suspects he knows about the accident. Juan is distracted and accidentally fails a student, Matilde, in an exam. He also tries to meet the family of the deceased. Juan, harassed by the student’s protests, tells Matilde that he is leaving his teaching job. Matilde forgives him and tries to help him, but the cyclist’s death weighs on Juan’s conscience. He will try to convince Maria to surrender but, in a inal appointment to discuss it, visits the crash site and she runs him over with the car. Maria, now on the run, in order to avoid colliding with another cyclist, has an accident and dies.

Screenwriter:

Juan Antonio Bardem Death of a Cyclist/Muerte de un ciclista, Suevia.

208 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Alfredo Fraile Art Director:

Enrique Alarcón Composer:

Isidro B Maiztegui Editor:

Margarita ochoa Duration/Format:

88 minutes/B/W Genre:

Drama Cast:

Lucia Bosé Alberto Closas Bruna Corrà Carlos Casaravilla Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1955

Critique only two years earlier before the release of this ilm, Bardem had thrown his boutade during the famous ilm conference Conversaciones de Salamanca (1955), criticizing, from his viewpoint, the ankylosed situation of Spanish cinema. With Death of a Cyclist, he set himself to move from theory to action. This is one of the most important ilms from the Franco era, both in the staging and at the narrative level. The inluences are clear: F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Surcos/Furrows (nieves Conde, 1951) Cronaca di un amore/Chronicle of a Love (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1950); in the case of Antonioni, not only by the presence of Lucia Bosé in the role of ‘Maria’, but by the intensive use of depth of ield, lighting and the symbolic use of black and white, the use of empty ields, inally, against the backdrop of neo-realism – not the classic Hollywood model, which was perceived as retrograde – and the noir thriller. All of this makes this ilm a metaphorical story, fully loaded with critical ellipses. But perhaps it was this obligatory basis in the metaphoric that allowed the script not to turn it into a political manifesto, becoming one of the irst international successes of Spanish cinema that is not akin to the dictatorial regime (he received the Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival). Therefore, he became the subject of considerable debate in various cultural areas of the time. Alfredo Fraile’s photography is fed by the best Hitchcock, allowing the viewer to become emotionally identiied, because under the manichean criticism that the story is always skirting around the issue, we ind balanced and dynamic shots, even pictorialist, with clever use of depth of ield and portraying the characters in their closed society: maybe, therefore, the actual staging of the story demanded that the end be left exactly the way Bardem wrote it, despite a sense that it might be moralistic. The reference to Hitchcock is a conscious one, as ‘rafa’ sings a song called ‘Blackmail’, like Hitchcock’s 1929 ilm which also tells the story of a couple trying to cover up a murder committed by the wife, who is blackmailed by a hateful little man. Therefore, despite the clear neorealist registration, we constantly have Hollywood in the background; this is crystallized, for example, in the Matilda character, as an impossible love that acts as liaison between the melodrama and the Italian style. It is a dialectic that can be seen in many single tracking-shots: for instance, in the cafe Juan speaks on the phone on the foreground (Hollywood, although more mannerist than classic), and then he turns and goes into the general background level (no loss of focus due to the neorealist depth of ield). But as we approach the end, it would seem as if melodrama took advantage – see the climax in the sequence of lamenco dance –, and, therefore, we believe that although the story ending was censored – the one originally planned by Bardem set out the Maria’s light for freedom without the inal moral punishment – it really was what the ilm’s overall narrative structure demanded, as melodrama always ask for a closed end to give meaning to the story.

Crime and Thriller 209

Directory of World Cinema

Coda: In the last scene – echoing the irst in the ilm – a cyclist passes by and sees María’s crashed car. The question that arises from this action is whether he is leaving to get help, or perhaps, really, he runs away like María and Juan at the beginning of the story. With this ambiguous scene Bardem was getting around censorship by avoiding a moralistic closure. This loop also points towards the strained Spanish political and social situation of the 1950s.

Lorenzo J Torres Hortelano

It Happened in Broad Daylight El Cebo/Es geschah am hellichten Tag Countries of origin:

Spain Switzerland Germany Language:

German Spanish Studios:

Praesens Film Chamartín P y DC CCC Filmkunst Director:

Ladislao Vajda Producers:

Lazar Wechsler Artur Brauner José Luis de navasqües Screenwriters:

Friedrich Dürrenmatt Ladislao Vajda Hans Jakoby Cinematographers:

Enrique Guerner Ernst Bolliger

210 Spain

Synopsis The story takes place in Switzerland. A peddler discovers the body of a girl in the forest. All evidence seems to point to his guilt and only Superintendent Matthai is willing to believe his innocence. The peddler hangs himself in his cell and the case is closed; at the same time Matthai departs to Jordan. A chance discovery at the airport persuades him that the case is not closed and he decides to stay in Switzerland to deal with it himself. In order to catch the murderer, he becomes the owner of a petrol station and hires an unmarried mother, Ms Heller, as his housekeeper. Her daughter Anna Maria has a close resemblance to the murdered girl. The girl is used as bait so Schrott falls in the trap and is inally caught by the police.

Critique This Swiss-Spanish-German co-production was directed by the Hungarian director with Spanish nationality Lazslo Vajda (Ladislao Vajda) when he was already famous, following the success of The Miracle of Marcelino (1955). The ilm is based on a screenplay by Friedrich Dürrenmatt which later became a novel, Versprechen. Auf der Kriminalroman Requiem (1958). This story was re-adapted several times from the 1990s onwards, with The Pledge (Sean Penn, 2001) being the best-known re-make of the ilm. once again, Vajda touches the subject of the relationship between parents and children, a central theme in his works, this time with the backdrop of the breathtaking landscapes of the Swiss cantons photographed in an icy black and white, supported by the great performances of Heinz rühmann, Michel Simon and Gert Froebe. It happened in Broad Daylight is also relevant because of how it approaches the subject of pedophilia, a problem present at the time, though hidden and rarely exposed in the cinema due to its extreme harshness. This theme – which could have given the story some degree of morbid curiosity –, is handled with extreme sensitivity by the director, to the point that the

Directory of World Cinema

Editors:

Hermann Haller Julio Peña Music:

Bruno Canfora Sound:

Alfonso Carvajal Duration/Format:

90 minutes/B/W Cast:

Heinz rühmann María rosa Salgado Anita Von ow Gert Fröebe Year:

1958

ilm had no problems with Franco’s censorship at its Spanish premier. However, such moderate treatment does not hide the existence of a social problem that, in spite of its seriousness, was not properly dealt with by the authorities. The ilm criticizes the police, who are not interested in this kind of case, and how defenceless are children when faced with pedophiles of respectable appearance who have a normal social life instead of a police record. Vajda wants to tell us that the danger is everywhere and a person considered weak by his wife and neighbours can suddenly turn out to be a murderer. The appearance of Schrott – together with all the scenes in which he appears – work as an example of how the worst human compulsions exist in a person who appears kind to everyone else. on the other hand, the frenetic search for the killer – shot in a relentless rhythm – means a road of no return for the main character as he accepts emotional relationships into his life. Matthai is a lonely man for whom the most important thing in life is work. Life together with Ms Heller and her daughter – at irst his bait – becomes a family relationship where Matthai experiences the responsibility of paternity, and Ana María begins to recognize him as a father. The touching end shows the need to always safeguard the innocence of children, but also portrays a man starved of affection assuming the role of fatherhood. This end makes us remember the inal sequence of Vajda’s previous ilm Un ángel pasó por Brooklyn/The Man Who Wagged His Tail (1957), with Peter Ustinov and Pablito Calvo. El Cebo is, in short, a superbly played and directed thriller that once again bears witness to the mastery of this forgotten ilm director.

Isabel Sempere

Nobody Will Speak of Us When We’re Dead Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto Studio:

Flamenco Films Xaloc Director:

Synopsis A young woman, while temporarily working as a prostitute, is caught up in a shooting between maia members and corrupt policemen in Mexico City. one of the two survivors of the crossire, Gloria Duque, learns about the international money-laundering business of the gangsters involved in the incident which includes a headquarters in Madrid. Deported to Spain after the shooting, Gloria comes back to a home she had abandoned three years before. There, she re-encounters her vegetative husband and her mother-in-law, Julia, a humble socialist teacher who she sees as a role model. Determined to leave behind the poverty they live in, Gloria plans on taking advantage of the information she gained about the Mexican maia. Still in Mexico City, the other survivor of the opening-scene shooting, a murderer struggling with faith issues, is ordered to go and look for her.

Agustín Díaz yanes

Crime and Thriller 211

Directory of World Cinema

Producer:

Edmundo Gil Screenwriter:

Agustín Díaz yanes Cinematographer:

Paco Femenía Art Director:

Benjamín Fernández Composer:

Bernardo Bonezzi Editor:

José Salcedo Duration:

99 minutes Cast:

Victoria Abril Federico Luppi Pilar Bardem Filming Locations:

Madrid México DF Year:

1995

212 Spain

Critique In terms of cinema and literature, Nobody Will Speak of Us When We’re Dead is one of the most audacious Spanish ilms of its time. Based upon a story by scriptwriter and debutant director Agustín Díaz yanes, this drama subverts the codes of contemporary gangster cinema. Thus, main character is a thief incarnated as a humble woman, Gloria Duque, looking to pay her mortgage and leave her alcoholism behind. The gangster behind Gloria is Eduardo, a professional killer with faith issues, second thoughts about his job and deeply troubled by the health of his sick daughter. Although including some crude passages, like the dramatic warehouse shooting in the opening sequence, Nobody Will… does not celebrate violence in the fashion of new gangster cinema directors Scorsese or Tarantino. Unlike most contemporary movies of the genre, this one offers a very solid leading character who, not by chance, happens to be a woman, and provides her with a complex personality and story. An alcoholic, unemployed, poor and lonely wife of a comatose former bullighter, who can only rely on her mother-in-law – in turn a former political prisoner during Franco’s dictatorship – Gloria provides the ilm with a socially-committed perspective. It is possible to detect in this debut ilm a number of mannerisms of director Díaz yanes. The dichotomy between male and female characters, with a clear admiration for the latter and certain deprecation for the former is probably the most striking one. The leading male character, Eduardo, is one of the few men in the ilm with some morals. Unlike him, most of the men are sordid and ruthless creatures, acting solely out of ambition and sadism, unabashedly dominated by their uncritical sexual impulses and regarding women as supplementary and uncomplicated inferior beings. Gangsters and small-time robbers have also had continuity in the author’s cinematography. Violence, prostitution, and the tacit notion of an overpowering Fate, are recurrent in the imaginary of the director. In Nobody Will…, a story that is very much about surviving, human and divine justice and morals, everyone pays for their actions, eventually. Technically, the ilm is a very solid exercise in visual storytelling. The director’s previous experience in ilm-making and the study of his preferred authors pay off in this carefully-planned and eficiently-shot movie, where almost every frame’s movement and length has a narrative counterpart to its shape. The use of a steadycam allows the director to moderate the pace of the information low at any time, revealing things detail by detail at times (like in the famous opening scene), placing the audience on the same level as the character, before surprising them (when Gloria comes back home drunk and asks her husband to die, believing they are alone) or following the action in a given set. The most experimental sequences are those in which the camera becomes subjective and the audience is presented with a character’s point of view. notable examples of this technique are the sequences in which Gloria’s doubts chase her (for instance, in the

Directory of World Cinema

presence of alcohol, or when under its inluence). The symbolic use of framing and setting of the action, together with some photographically-powerful elements, have made a few scenes of the ilm transcend the screen and become ixed in the collective imaginary. Gloria’s march through an endless tube tunnel eating sunlower seeds, having been rejected at a collective job-recruiting session, is a powerful example of the rhetoric of the movie’s images.

Xiana Gómez-Díaz

The Red Fish Los peces rojos Studio:

yago Films Estela Films Director:

José Antonio nieves Conde Producers:

rafael Carrillo Screenwriter:

Carlos Blanco Cinematographer:

Francisco Sempere Art Director:

Gil Parrondo Luis Pérez Espinosa Editor:

Synopsis Ivón, a chorus girl, and Hugo, a failed writer, turn up at a provincial hotel on a stormy night. They have come from Madrid with Carlos, Hugo’s son, born nineteen years earlier after a casual affair. They decide to lean over the cliffs to look at the angry waves down below – and Carlos falls to his death. Hugo goes over in his mind all the events that have led up to this terrible denouement. It all started two weeks before, when a misunderstanding led him to confess the existence of his son to Ivón. This son had deprived him of a legacy, and now threatened to steal the heart of Ivón who, without meeting him, allows herself to be seduced by the illusion of a comfortable life. Punished by a millionaire aunt who refused to leave him her money because Carlos had been born out of wedlock, despised by a publisher who thinks he is a bad writer, and wounded by the betrayal of the woman he loves, Hugo inds that his relationship with his son deteriorates until it is beyond repair. Two police inspectors bring to light various inconsistencies in Hugo’s story and manage to reveal the truth about this strange crime, provoked by the equally unusual identity of the young Carlos.

Margarita ochoa

Critique

Duration/Format:

The Red Fish is an excellent example of Spanish ilm noir. Despite good performances by Arturo de Córdova and Emma Penella, the ilm was not well received, either by the public, or by the critics. This blow affected the careers of José Antonio nieves Conde, who had had a major impact on Spanish cinema with Surcos/Furrows (1951), and the scriptwriter Carlos Blanco, mainly known for his work with José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, with whom he had written another ilm noir classic, Los ojos dejan huellas (Eyes leave traces) (1952), also starring Emma Penella. nieves Conde gave the plot an expressionist visual aesthetic that generated situations of great strength, and Blanco wrote a complex plot rife with deceptions and pretence, and chose to break with the chronological order of events, which gave verisimilitude to an implausible device.

94 minutes/B/W Cast:

Arturo de Córdova Emma Penella Félix Dafauce Filming Locations:

Cáceres (Extremadura) Gijón (Asturias) Madrid Year:

1955

Crime and Thriller 213

Directory of World Cinema

In a metaictional scene, Hugo, writer and imaginary murderer of an imaginary son, quotes the usual features of the detective story: murder, money as catalyst for corruption, police investigation, a web of lies, expressionist aesthetics and the blending of present and past..., and yet, The Red Fish is far from being just another conventional crime ilm. The plot gains in originality from the Pirandellian echoes of a ictitious character who turns against his creator, and gains density thanks to a suffering hero, wracked with guilt – like Lear – at causing a tragedy when his trust in the loved one is questioned. Arturo de Córdova relects the depths and nuances of a character marked by romanticism and melancholy, guilt and despair. Hugo is the demiurge of a sentimental farce which turns him into a victim – inally redeemed by the love of Ivón which stops the tragedy from reaching its ultimate consequences – and the father of an imaginary character who takes on a real presence as he lives within him. Hugo takes to an extreme the love of father for a son that arises between a writer and his ictional creations, and when he murders his imaginary son, he feels stained with blood. The Red Fish belongs with a series of ilms – like A Double Life (Cukor, 1947), to mention another ilm of the same period – and novels – irst, and foremost, Don Quixote – which explore the excesses of the imagination and the dissolution of the borders between iction and reality. Hugo’s own words also provide a strong defence of a kind of iction that breaks with the fashionable neorealism that he blames for his literary failure. Arguing with a publisher, Hugo says that ‘what is human is not alleyways with washing hanging out and children with runny noses; what is human is the imagination’. The hotel doorman presumably shares this point of view: he cheats police inspectors in his statement just because he cannot stand a boring story.

Pablo Echart Orús

Soldiers of Salamina Soldados de Salamina Languages:

Spanish Catalan French Studio:

Lolailms Director:

David Trueba

214 Spain

Synopsis Soldiers of Salamina was adapted from an internationally-successful book of the same name and deals with the attempts of a journalist, Lola Cercas, to uncover the exact circumstances surrounding the attempted execution and escape of the prominent falangist writer rafael Sánchez Mazas in the inal days of the Spanish Civil War. Sánchez Mazas, having escaped from a iring squad, was saved from recapture and death by a republican soldier, who saw him hiding in a bush but did not tell his commander. Setting out to write a book around this event, Lola questions what went through the mind of this soldier who rejected the dictates of war in a moment of shared humanity, pondering that in the answer may lie ‘algún secreto esencial de la Guerra Civil española’ (‘some essential secret of the Spanish Civil War’). The ilm jumps between

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Andrés Vicente Gómez Cristina Huete Screenwriter:

David Trueba (based in the homonymous novel by Javier Cercas) Cinematographer:

Javier Aguirresarobe Art Director:

Salvador Parra Editor:

David Trueba Duration:

119 minutes Cast:

Ariadna Gil ramon Fontserè Joan Dalmau María Botto Filming Locations:

Dijon, Côte-d’or (France) Girona región (Catalonia) Madrid Year:

2003

present and past, depicting Lola’s investigation in the present, but intercutting this with various recreations of the Civil War story which she uncovers in her attempt to understand this traumatic moment in Spain’s history.

Critique The key issue which Soldiers of Salamina explores is the nature of our relationship to the past. Although the ilm is based on factual events, the combined effect of its form and content is to challenge any simplistic concept of historical truth in favour of a form of knowledge that is always subjective and provisional and which acknowledges the impossibility of any objective relationship to history. The central character Lola is a ictionalized (and in the process feminized) version of Javier Cercas, the author of the book on which the ilm is based. However, the relationship between the ictional and the ‘real’ is often uncertain in the ilm, as is evidenced, for example, in the interviews which we see with the ‘forest friends’: three republican deserters who gave Sánchez Mazas food and lodgings in the days after his escape. These men all play themselves in the ilm and their interviews with Lola are ilmed by handheld camera, giving the footage the verité tone of documentary. yet, the fact that these ‘real’ images are incorporated into Lola’s ictionalized story makes problematic the whole notion of truth within the ilm. This intertwining of ‘truth’ and iction is continued in the depiction of the Civil War, which includes both nationalist newsreels from the warfront, dramatizations of Sánchez Mazas’ story and even one newsreel which is doctored in the style of Forrest Gump so as to depict the actor playing Sánchez Mazas being sworn in as a government minister by Franco himself. This critical engagement with the cinematic vocabulary of documentary is also seen in the use of dramatic recreations. The testimonials which interviewees give, as well as the evidence which Lola uncovers, frequently provoke lashbacks to the events being discussed. When this occurs, the action intercuts between the historical dramatization and shots of Lola reading or interviewing in the present. However, the ilm acknowledges the inevitably partial nature of the present-day accounts which are generating these historical images. For example, in one scene, shots of Lola reading Sánchez Mazas’ diary are intercut with images of his escape through the forest, until a close-up of Lola turning the pages of the diary reveals the next page to be torn out, abruptly halting the recreation. The missing page of the diary captures the inevitably incomplete and imperfect knowledge of the past which is all that Lola can hope to attain. This becomes explicit in her inal encounter with an ageing republican veteran, as he berates her for seeking to ind in him a hero of history. Instead, he insists, ‘los héroes no sobreviven’ (‘it’s the heroes who don’t survive’). He lists the friends who went to war with him, declaring, ‘nadie les recuerda, ni nunca, ninguna calle miserable, de ningún pueblo miserable, de ninguna mierda de país llevará su nombre’ (‘no one remembers

Crime and Thriller 215

Directory of World Cinema

them and not one miserable street, of one miserable village, in one shitty country will be named after them’). Given all these lost voices, any attempt to recreate history will always be incomplete. Thus, the ilm insists, our relationship to the past is not one of reconstruction but a conscious and deliberate construction, which necessitates establishing our own ethical relationship to history in the present.

Conn Holohan

Thesis Tesis Studio:

Las producciones del Escorpión Sogepaq Director:

Alejandro Amenábar Producer:

José Luis Cuerda Screenwriters:

Alejandro Amenábar Mateo Gil Cinematographer:

Hans Burman Art director:

Wolfgang Burmann Composers:

Alejandro Amenábar Mariano Marín Editor:

María Elena Sáinz de rozas Duration:

124 minutes Cast:

Ana Torrent Fele Martínez Eduardo noriega Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1996

216 Spain

Synopsis Ángela, a student from Madrid, is researching the connection between explicit violence and the media. The director of the Project, Professor Figuera, suffers a violent heart attack during the projection of a mysterious VHS tape, found by chance in the library of the University. This recording appears to be a snuff movie in which is shown the brutal killing of an old student of the school, and includes several scenes of torture and explicit abuse. This will be the irst step in a thriller adventure in which Ángela will be helped by Chema – a nerd lover of gore cinema and trash music – against a hidden network of snuff-movie developers.

Critique The irst movie of Alejandro Amenábar can be understood as one of the most powerful works from a whole new generation of young ilm-makers. The importance of the impact of this ilm in Spanish society at the beginning of the 1990s – reinforced not only by the Goya Spanish Academic Awards but for important box ofice results – can be easily understood in the basic characteristics of the ilm: simple but solid direction, the easy acceptance of the classic teenager thriller and, of course, the mixing of different bloody-andtricky elements that suggest to the audience an active and gruesome game between what you can see on the screen and what is suggested. And it is maybe in this last point in which Thesis becomes a truly interesting movie. The obvious restrictions of a low-budget movie were converted by Amenábar, and the rest of the team, into a lot of effective magic tricks, chances to shock the audience by an intensive use of off camera coordinated with disturbing sounds. Using this strategy, we are invited to imagine the suffering of the victims, accurately enclosed with single and brief shots of the murderers. Similarly, the director again and again combines the point of view of the cameras who are recording the snuff movies and his own camera as the moviemaker, creating a lot of interesting and powerful effects of identiication.

Directory of World Cinema

However, and no matter how well Thesis works in the ield of ilm direction, the ilm has been criticized for some speciic and major problems which dull the narrative and which give us serious doubts about him as ‘critic of the postmodern fascination of audiovisual violence’. In the irst place, Thesis is strongly connected with classic teen-movies about serial killers. It is interesting to remember that it was launched in cinemas the same year as Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) – a postmodern rereading of the teen exploitation movies developed in the 1970s and the 1980s. This problem is easily detected in stereotypical acting; the classic thriller structure based mainly in the inal surprise with the discovery of the murder; and the trivialization of the characters (the rich guy, the nerd without friends addicted to Heavy Metal music, the Smart girl, etc.). There is a strange dichotomy in Amenabar´s way of ilming: being close to the common blockbusters of the gender and searching for audiovisual originality, which the characters are seeking to do during the whole movie; one of the evil characters, Professor Castro, says: ‘Tenemos que dar a la audiencia lo que quiere’ (‘We have to give to the audience what they want’). Amenábar himself works in this direction so as to offer an easy plot to the public. Thesis, without any doubt, fascinated the Spanish audience, offering them some interesting and new insight into snuff and horror movies. Good direction was, maybe, the most relevant success of the ilm. Unfortunately, the main topic of the movie – the relations between cinema, audiovisual violence and the audience – was not as powerful as with other, older Spanish directors who faced the same problems, such as Ladislao Vajda or Agustí Villaronga.

Aaron Rodríguez

Timecrimes Los Cronocrímenes Studios:

Karbo Vantas Entertainment zIP Films Fine Productions Director:

nacho Vigalondo Screenwriter:

nacho Vigalondo Producer:

Eduardo Carneros

Synopsis Héctor and his wife Clara have recently moved to a house in the Spanish countryside. on returning home one night, Héctor receives a silent phone call, doubly unsettling as no one knows their number. Whilst relaxing in the garden and watching the surrounding woods with his binoculars, he spots a girl stripping off in the bushes. on investigation he inds the girl lying naked and motionless and is immediately attacked by a stranger whose face is covered in bandages. Fleeing the scene, Héctor stumbles upon a mysterious private facility and meets a scientist who convinces him to hide from his assailant in a strange contraption. When Héctor emerges he discovers that he has travelled back in time by an hour. The scientist, claiming that the machine is a prototype, seems to have no idea who Héctor is and how he came to be there.

Crime and Thriller 217

Directory of World Cinema

Esteban Ibarretxe Javier Ibarretxe Cinematographer:

Flavio Martínez Labiano

Ignoring the scientist’s advice to lie low until events catch up with him, Héctor leaves the facility, confused and disorientated by his experience. He is then plunged into a desperate situation involving the girl, his wife and the scientist where one wrong move could spell disaster for all of them.

Art Direction:

José Luis Arrizabalaga Arturo García ‘Biaffra’ Composer:

Chucky namanera Editor:

José Luis romeu Duration:

92 minutes Cast:

Karra Elejalde Candela Fernández Bárbara Gonzaga nacho Vigalondo Year:

2007

218 Spain

Critique Award-winning short-ilm director nacho Vigalondo’s feature length debut is an expertly-crafted and riveting addition to the science iction genre. Vigalondo writes, directs and appears in Timecrimes and has laid down an impressive calling card; this intricately-constructed tale also contains elements of the thriller, crime and action genres and delivers on all fronts. Featuring just four characters, three locations and a pared-back plot, it is an exercise in tightly-focused storytelling with a healthy dose of tension, fantasy and black humour. Whilst it shares the theme of temporal paradoxes seen in recent ilms as diverse in style as Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004) and Gareth Carrivick’s Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009) Vigalondo’s movie feels entirely fresh, and further strengthens the canon of contemporary Spanish genre movies that have caught the attention of International audiences. The economic script has Héctor unwittingly sucked into a nightmare scenario of multiple versions of him that have created the very situation he walks into. He then spends the rest of the movie trying to extricate himself from it and avert a fatality; every seemingly-innocuous incident is riddled with signiicance. Set over just a few hours, the narrative performs multiple loops on itself with scenes replayed from different angles at different times from Héctor’s altered viewpoints. As Héctor is confronted with his multiple selves, he has to execute a rigorous plan to keep the time-line in order, and Vigalondo anchors the sense of when things occur through clever aural and visual reminders. Brief lashbacks and repeated conversational voice-overs similarly help to secure the narrative in place. The action always stays with the Héctor we see at the ilm’s outset even as he becomes Héctor 1, Héctor 2, and eventually Héctor 3.The ever-decreasing circles he inds himself manoeuvering through continuously increases the tension; once events are set in motion there is no respite. The narrative is complemented by Chucky namanera’s evocative staccato string and piano score that would not be out of place in a Hitchcock thriller. Karra Elejalde plays Héctor with a winning mixture of grim resignation, steely determination and gallows humour as he is thrown headlong into a time-travel conundrum, appearing in virtually every scene and becoming increasingly more bloodied, battered and bruised as events unfold. Alternating only between his house, the surrounding woods and the research facility gives the ilm a russian-doll-like structure; it is a hermetically-sealed Universe with no backstory or character development save for Héctor’s own increasingly frantic desperation. The supporting roles are similarly

Directory of World Cinema

sketchy in depth but essential to the plot – the girl’s confused meetings with the multiple Héctors, the scientist who knows more than he initially lets on, and Clara, absent for most of the running time but pivotal to Héctor’s dilemma. Timecrimes is a creatively- and logistically-impressive feat of writing and direction; physically demanding for the actors, intelligent in its treatment of the fantastic, relentlessly gripping and stylishly inventive; it rewards multiple viewings to garner the sense of just how meticulously Vigalondo and his cast and crew must have worked to produce such an exhilarating puzzle of a movie.

Neil Mitchell

Crime and Thriller 219

FANTASY AND HORROR

Y

Directory of World Cinema

Although it can boast a ifty-year history, Spanish horror has frequently been overshadowed by more popular trends and fashions. During the 1960s and early 1970s British and Italian horror was dominant, with US horror taking pole position in the 1980s. By that point the Spanish horror ilm had effectively ceased to exist, not emerging again until the late 1990s. Unfortunately its rebirth then coincided with the sudden boom in Asian horror, with the Japanese and South Korean horror industry pushing their Spanish counterpart into a secondary position. Even within the domestic cinema scene, horror and fantasy-horror are often overlooked, with only the works of Alejandro Amenábar (Thesis, Open Your Eyes, The Others) and the Mexican-born Guillermo del Toro (El espinazo del Diablo/The Devil’s Backbone; El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth) coming close to the levels of success and acclaim associated with major mainstream igures like Pedro Almodóvar, Vicente Aranda or Julio Médem. However, recent hits such as El orfanato/The Orphanage (2007) and [Rec] (2007) have done much to raise the proile of Spanish horror, establishing Spain as a key contributor to the world of international horror. The irst Spanish horror movie is widely considered to be Jesús Franco’s Gritos en la noche (1962). Although in English the title translates as Screams in the Night, outside Spain the ilm is best known as The Awful Dr Orloff. Unlike most of his contemporaries – who were busy reworking recent landmark hits like Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) or Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) – Franco took his inspiration from another source: Georges Franju’s elegant and controversial horror masterpiece Eyes Without a Face (1960). Although now considered to be one of the inest genre ilms ever made, at the time of release Eyes Without A Face was a commercial and critical failure. Heavily edited, badly dubbed and saddled with a hyperbolic (and meaningless) new title – The Horror Chamber of Dr Faustus – Franju’s ilm was initially dismissed as another cheap ‘mad scientist’ feature. Jesús Franco disagreed, however, and set about creating his own version of Franju’s twisted tale. The young and ambitious director had already begun to weave elements of horror and fantasy into his work, and he based much of his ilm around the most notorious scenes from Eyes Without A Face, together with material drawn from Frankenstein and other popular sources. Although The Awful Dr Orloff was not warmly greeted by the critics, it quickly became a cult favorite, establishing the title character as Spain’s irst horror icon and paving the way for several sequels. Franco would soon become one of Spain’s most proliic ilm-makers, and he would return to the territory he explored in The Awful Dr Orloff on a number of occasions over the following decades. From the start it was clear that The Awful Dr Orloff was primarily intended for international audiences. Despite the slight relaxation of the government’s controls on cinema in the late 1950s, neither the director nor the producers were optimistic about the possibility of reaching domestic audiences, and much of the inancing came from French companies with crucial experience of marketing horror ilms across Europe. This was a pattern that would repeat itself many

Left: The Orphanage/El orfanato, Telecinco.

Fantasy and Horror 221

Directory of World Cinema

times over the next two decades, as Spanish ilm-makers tried to defray their costs (not to mention the dificulties of ilming in a heavily-conservative dictatorship) by signing deals with Italian, French and occasionally British production companies. The most obvious example is the spaghetti westerns, which, despite their Italian background, were ilmed mainly on Spanish locations, before returning to shoot the interiors at Cinecittà in rome. As well as the inancial considerations, the Spanish ilm industry also beneitted from the presence of experienced foreign technical staff. The good Dr orloff (and some of his disciples) went on to appear in several sequels – not all of them directed by Jesús Franco and some a distinct improvement on the original – but it was not until the late 1960s that the nascent Spanish genre tradition began to thrive. 1968 saw the release of The Mark of the Wolfman, the irst ilm to feature Waldemar Daninsky, El hombre lobo – the Wolfman. Played by former weightlifter Paul naschy, Waldemar Daninsky is a tragic igure in the same vein as Lon Chaney Jr’s Laurence Talbot: doomed to commit unspeakable deeds until he can ind his true love, the only one who can end his painful existence. Spain’s most popular horror icon, Daninsky has appeared in more than a dozen movies, and always played by naschy, who frequently wrote the scripts himself, under his real name of Jacinto Molina. released in Technicolor and 3-D, The Mark of the Wolfman was a big success in Spain, taking full advantage of the government’s more favourable approach to domestic cinema. For the next decade, Paul naschy would be a mainstay of Spanish horror, appearing in dozens of ilms and playing almost every popular genre icon, including Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Dr Jekyll versus the Werewolf, 1971), Dracula (Count Dracula’s Great Love, 1972), the Mummy (The Mummy’s Revenge, 1972), the Hunchback (The Hunchback of the Morgue, 1973) and even Satan himself (Vengeance of the Zombies, 1973). During this period the main inluences on Spanish horror were Britain and Italy, resulting in a great many Hammer-style gothic horrors – often set in the present day to avoid the expense of a period setting – and lurid psycho-thrillers, with a little nudity and blood thrown in for titillation. Although these ilms were sometimes hampered by low budgets and amateurish acting, the results were occasionally surprising and often entertaining. narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s La residencia/The House That Screamed (1969) stars Lilli Palmer as the headmistress of a nineteenth-century school for wayward girls, with Christina Galbó playing the latest inmate. Beneath the school’s brutal regime lurk a number of secrets, including the disappearance of several of the girls, written off by the headmistress as runaways. By adopting the trappings of the period-set gothic horror ilm, Serrador (perhaps wisely) distracts attention from his political message: that oppressive, heavily conservative regimes actually foster and breed the very things they are attempting to stamp out, like immorality, liberal sexuality and rebellion. Eugenio Martín cast Hammer’s twin icons, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, in his Pánico en el Transiberiano/Horror Express (1972), a wildly entertaining ilm about two British scientists trying to deal with an alien monster while hurtling across the tundra on the Trans-Siberian Express. Although initially ignored in its home territory, Horror Express has gone on to become a cult classic. The success of George A romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) inspired a slew of Spanish zombie movies, including Amando De ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead (1970) and the three sequels that followed. In each of the ilms, long-dead Templar knights rise from their graves to feed on human blood. De ossorio’s living characters are lat and frequently irritating, but the Blind Dead are a marvelous creation, clad in rotting robes and slowly but relentlessly pursuing their victims, despite their sightless eyes. More obviously indebted to romero is Jorge Grau’s No profanar el sueño de los muertos/The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974). Set against picturesque British countryside, Christina Galbó and ray Lovelock ind themselves confronting both the living dead – brought back to life by a new agricultural machine – and the forces of law and order, led by Arthur Kennedy’s brutal and vindictive police sergeant. Although the plot

222 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

requires a number of unlikely leaps of logic, Grau provides plenty of grim, atmospheric sequences, and more than enough gore – provided by Italian effects master Giannetto De rossi – to compete with its transatlantic cousins. Arguably the inest Spanish horror ilm of the 1970s is narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s Who Can Kill a Child? (1976). on an isolated Spanish island something diabolical has happened to the children: overnight they have become murderous, slaughtering their parents and all other adults as if it were some new and exciting game. Unfortunately, English holidaymaker Lewis Fiander and his heavily pregnant wife Prunella ransome decide to step away from the tourist trails and visit the island. Intense, original and surprisingly restrained, Serrador’s ilm has enjoyed considerable critical acclaim over the years, despite a US version that was cut by 40 minutes and saddled with a cash-in title (Island of the Damned). Who Can Kill a Child? represented the zenith of contemporary Spanish horror, but it could not prevent the genre from slipping into a decline in the last years of the decade. Like its British counterpart, domestic horror found it increasingly dificult to compete with the ilms coming from America: Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and George A romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), for example. Alongside the terrors of the Leatherface clan and romero’s apocalyptic vision, the tragic tales of Waldemar Daninsky began to pale into insigniicance. naschy himself was able to secure Japanese inancing for two more horror movies, including another Waldemar Daninsky movie, The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983). However, like many Spanish horror ilms of the period, these ventures were rarely commercially successful, and he was forced to explore other avenues, including portraying his famous creation in a children’s movie (Buenas Noches Señor Monstruo, 1982) and directing documentaries on Spanish culture for Japanese television. For the most part, Spanish horror in 1980s consisted of low-budget takes on successful American ilms. Typical of the period are Claudio Fragrasso’s Spanish-Italian co-production Leviatán/Monster Dog (1984) and Juan Piquer Simón’s Slugs (1988). Both ilms had the potential to score with international audiences – Monster Dog stars shock-rocker Alice Cooper while Slugs, muerte viscosa/ Slugs is based on a bestselling Shaun Hutson novel – but were severely hampered by low budgets and effects dificulties. Both were eventually dumped direct-to-video. It was not until the late 1990s that Spanish horror began to resurface, in an environment largely dominated by Pedro Almodóvar. Its future directions were suggested by the early works of the Chilean-born Alejandro Amenábar, including the Hitchcockian (simulating a) snuff movie thriller Thesis (1996) and the excellent Open Your Eyes (1997) – but with much fewer success than the irst one – which took elements of science iction, horror, drama and romance and welded them into a brilliant, genre-defying whole. one of the irst new horror ilms to secure both critical appreciation and commercial success was Jaume Balagueró’s Los sin nombre/The Nameless (1999), an adaptation of ramsey Campbell’s novel. Like many of his contemporaries – including Alejandro Amenábar and nacho Cerdà – Balagueró had already attracted attention for his award-winning short ilms before making his feature debut. A grimly atmospheric tale of a mother trying to save her missing child from the clutches of a murderous cult, The Nameless is one of the most ambitious genre debuts of the last 20 years, supported by solid acting and the cold, murky cinematography of Xavi Giménez. Balagueró put his talent for atmosphere and effective shocks to good use in his next two ilms, Darkness (2002) and Frágiles/ Fragile (2005), both well-crafted English-language ghost stories. neither one received the attention they should have from both fans and distributors, so the director returned to his homeland to co-direct (with Paco Plaza) his next feature, [Rec] (2007). A frenetic and brutal zombie ilm shot entirely on handheld cameras, [Rec] was Balagueró’s biggest hit so far, and one of the most popular Spanish horror ilms of recent years. It was also the irst to get the Hollywood remake treatment, resulting in Quarantine (2008), while an oficial sequel, also directed by Balagueró and Plaza, appeared in 2009.

Fantasy and Horror 223

Directory of World Cinema

Following in the wake of Balagueró’s early works, a large number of atmospheric, understated Spanish horror ilms appeared, including Paco Plaza’s uninspired El Segundo nombre/Second Name (2002), a semi-sequel to The Nameless based upon another ramsey Campbell book. More interesting is norberto López Amado’s Nos miran/ They’re Watching Us (2002), the story of a detective trying to understand the connections between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Similar themes appeared in Juan Antonio Bayona’s effective if over-praised El orfanato/The Orphanage (2007), produced by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro himself delved into the classic ghost story with The Devil’s Backbone (2001), a stately chiller set during the Spanish Civil War, before using the same time period for his ambitious fantasy-horror hit Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). After attracting attention with the critically-acclaimed Session 9 (2001), US director Brad Anderson came to Spain to direct El maquinista/The Machinist (2004) using a predominantly Spanish crew and Christian Bale in the lead, playing a stick-thin and haunted machinist who has not slept in over a year. While Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe were reworking Open Your Eyes for US audiences, Alejandro Amenábar was making his irst English-language ilm, The Others (2002). Set in the Channel Islands following the Second World War, the ilm stars nicole Kidman as an overwrought mother who believes that the family home is haunted. Her two children, played by Alakina Mann and James Bentley, suffer from an allergy to sunlight that keeps their sprawling mansion shrouded in shadows and half-light twenty-four hours a day. With Kidman’s excellent, authentic performance and handful of reliable character actors, Amenábar’s ilm manages to be both scary and emotionally affecting. Although often accused of ripping off M night Shyamalan The Sixth Sense (it does not), The Others was a box ofice success, quickly becoming the most successful Spanish horror movie ever made. Since then Spanish horror has continued to thrive, whether it is producing offbeat, original works like nacho Cerdà’s Los abandonados/The Abandoned (2006) or ilms intended for the international mainstream, such as The Nun (2005) or La caja Kovak/The Kovak Box (2006). Crucially, ilms like The Others or [Rec] have demonstrated the commercial potential of the Spanish horror ilm, a key factor in securing international distribution. At the same time Spain is beginning to play an increasing role in the production of American and European genre ilms, supplying skilled technical staff and inances to a number of non-Spanish directors, including Americans Stuart Gordon (Dagon, 2001) and Brad Anderson, and Mexicans Guillermo del Toro and rigoberto Castañeda (KM 31: Kilómetro 31/KM31, 2006). In an era when European horror has begun something of a resurgence, Spain has managed to take the lead, despite strong competition from both France and the United Kingdom. With an ever-growing catalogue of successful, original genre ilms, that situation looks set to last.

Jim Harper

224 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The Day of the Beast El día de la bestia Studio:

Sogetel Iberoamericana Films Producción MG SrL Director:

Álex de la Iglesia Producer:

Synopsis Ángel Berriatua, a Basque priest, confesses by saying that he will commit the greatest evil possible because, inally, he has discovered that the Antichrist will be born on 25 December 1995, in Madrid, where he hopes to ind and kill him. From the Basque country he travels to the Spanish capital, which is in a state of apocalyptic violence. There he meets José, the heavy metal fan, and Professor Cavan, a presenter of a programme about occult sciences called the Dark Zone. Finally, after making a pact with the devil, there are signs, with the apparition of a male goat, that everything will come true. This then leads them in a desperate race against time, searching for signs of the birthplace of the devil. Eventually, they ind and kill him but they cannot tell anyone because nobody would believe them.

Andrés Vicente Gómez Screenwriter:

Jorge Guerricaechevarría Álex de la Iglesia Cinematographer:

Flavio Martínez Labiano Art Director:

José Luis Arrizabalaga Biaffra

Critique In his second ilm, Alex de la Iglesia, reiterates something that he had done in his irst ilm, Acción Mutante/Mutant Action (1993), and which subsequently will become one of his most recognizable styles: a sense of humour through the absurd. This time the depiction of all the characters, from the Jesuit priest, the fan of heavy music, the sham presenter of a programme of esoteric science, the violent owner of the inn, the innocent virgin, to the grandfather

The Day of the Beast/El día de la bestia, SoGETEL.

Fantasy and Horror 225

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Battista Lena Editor:

Teresa Font Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Álex Angulo Santiago Segura Armando De razza Terele Pávez Filming Locations:

Aránzazu (Basque Country) Estella (navarra) Madrid Torrejón del rey (Castilla-La mancha) Year:

1995

who walks naked through the house, constitute a universe of the absurd whose function is to emphasize the proposition of the supposed birth of the devil as revealed through the numerology of the Apocalypse. This is also contrasted with the violent reality experienced in Madrid. This is one of the triumphs of the ilm. De la Iglesia has managed to construct a story full of contrasts between the improbable and recognizable that produces a surrealist model which accompanies a good part of his cinematographic production. This idea of realism is reinforced by the director throughout the ilm by the portrait of a very identiiable Madrid that combines emblematic places with the marginal. This is exempliied by the renowned Capitol building, with its famous Schweppes neon sign, or the Kio Towers at the Gates of Europe, perfectly combined with the ruined buildings and the alternative radical concert hall. Likewise, there is a political reading, identiied with an extreme right wing who, acting as servants of the devil, are dedicated to the violent murder of the homeless. In fact, the wrong done by the priest is minimized when compared to that done by the right-wing groups during this Madrid winter, and this is how, through them, the devil appears and materializes. now we ind that along with the realism and the absurd is added a political metaphor in the discourse of the Basque ilm-maker. The depiction of Madrid and the characters used to construct the story, the increasingly-frenetic rhythm of that day and a half, and with the aid of a potent sound track, makes for a movie that does not lose one moment of interest. Another of the virtues is its ascription to a recognizable genre, yet dificult to classify. on one hand belonging to the horror genre and not without some of the fantastic genre and, on the other hand, to the satanic comedy subgenre, and some people even include it in the B-movie genre. In many ways it is unclassiiable, but has something of everything mentioned above. This mixture of genres, along with studied inter textual relations to comics, television, ilm and advertising, makes it one of the emblematic ilms of Spanish cinema in the 1990s and has been a source of inspiration for other ilm-makers like Juanma Bajo Ulloa, Santiago Segura, Javier Fesser, Miguel Ángel Bardem, Chema de la Peña, Miguel Ángel Lamata, etc., all of them creating a model of so-called Spanish freak cinema with many highs and lows in quality and audience.

Agustín Gómez Gómez

226 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The Devil’s Backbone El espinazo del diablo Studio:

El Deseo Director:

Guillermo del Toro Producers:

Augustín Almodóvar Pedro Almodóvar Bertha navarro Screenwriter:

Guillermo del Toro Antonio Trashorras David Muñoz Cinematographer:

Guillermo navarro Art Director:

César Macarrón Composer:

Javier navarrete Editor:

Luis de la Madrid Duration:

106 minutes Cast:

Marisa Paredes Eduardo noriega Federico Luppi Fernando Tielve Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

2001

Synopsis In the last days of the Spanish Civil War, a young boy named Carlos is left at an orphanage for the children of left-wing republican ighters. He makes new friends but also attracts the attention of Jaime, the resident bully, who does his best to make Carlos’ life dificult. Even more disturbing is the mournful presence of ‘the one who sighs’, a being believed to be the ghost of Santi, a boy who disappeared. As well as the children, there are several adults present, including an elderly Professor and the matron who runs the orphanage. Jacinto, a former inmate of the orphanage himself, acts as general handyman and caretaker but, during the night, Jacinto tries to open the orphanage’s safe, which he believes holds a substantial amount of gold. As the War comes closer and closer, Jacinto’s greed makes him increasingly dangerous; forcing the children to defend themselves, with the assistance of ‘the one who sighs’.

Critique Mexican director Guillermo del Toro irst came to international attention through his critically-acclaimed debut feature Cronos/ Chronos (1993), a revisionist vampire tale starring ron Perlman and Federico Luppi. Capitalizing on this early success, del Toro moved to Hollywood to direct Mimic (1997), a well-crafted horror ilm that pits Mira Sorvino and Jeremy northam against giant cockroaches in the new york subway system. Since then del Toro has successfully charted a course between big-budget, studio-backed features – including Blade II (2002) and Hellboy (2004) – and more personal, Spanish-language ilms, such as The Devil’s Backbone (2001). Like the later Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Devil’s Backbone is set during the Spanish Civil War and focuses on children; in Pan’s Labyrinth the main character is a young girl, while The Devil’s Backbone recounts the story of a boy left at an orphanage. Much of The Devil’s Backbone can be treated as a political allegory, from the unexploded bomb that sits in the courtyard to the young children who represent the future of Spain. The greedy, violent Jacinto easily becomes the kind of thug who would come to rule Spain for decades, whose only ambitions are the acquisition of wealth and power, regardless of what he has to do to achieve these goals. raised at the orphanage himself, Jacinto has become increasingly resentful of his lowly origins, illed with an angry determination to rise above them. However, although the war is always present and comes to play an increasingly important role in the ilm, del Toro’s concerns are smaller and more personal: a single murder, unnoticed by everyone except a traumatized child. While the adults worry about the war and the approaching enemy, Carlos is frightened of Jaime, the local bully. Aside from its other themes, The Devil’s Backbone is also a ghost story, and del Toro handles these elements expertly, not least because he takes the time to establish and draw the key igures

Fantasy and Horror 227

Directory of World Cinema

The Devil’s Backbone/El espinazo del diablo, El Deseo, Miguel Bracho.

in the story. Unlike the bright, blistering sunlight of the day, the night time transforms the orphanage into a silent, twilit world of shadows and darkness: the perfect setting for ‘the one who sighs’. Waterlogged and still surrounded by the murky waters where his body lies, Santi hides in the shadows, watching events unfold in the world of the living, and also acting as the viewer’s eyes and ears. As with The Sixth Sense (1999), Santi becomes less threatening when it is made clear that he bears the other children no ill-will, although his sunken eyes and mournful sighing continue to be somewhat disturbing. Perhaps most importantly, del Toro’s ghosts are clearly intended to serve as a reminder of the true cost of human violence and greed, something that is often overlooked in the conlicts of nations and continents. As a inal detail, the Spanish cartoonist Carlos Giménez, promoter of the reform of the Spanish comic – and who belonged to the Grupo de La Floresta –, completed the storyboard of different sequences and collaborated in the setting and decoration of diverse scenes. In fact, the movie has many points in common with Giménez’s Paracuellos (1975–) comic, of which del Toro is a great admirer, and where the life of some postwar Franco children in households of Social Aid is recounted.

Jim Harper

228 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The House That Screamed La Residencia Studio:

Anabel Films Director:

narciso Ibáñez Serrador Producers:

Arturo González Manuel Pérez. Screenwriter:

Luis Peñaiel [narciso Ibáñez Serrador] (based on Juan Tébar’s Dulce, queridísima mamá) Cinematographer:

Manuel Berenguer Art Director:

ramiro Gómez Editor:

Mercedes Alonso. Duration:

101 minutes Cast:

Lilli Palmer Cristina Galbó John Moulder Brown Cándida Losada Filming Locations:

Comillas (Cantabria) Year:

1969

Synopsis Theresa arrives at Madame Fourneau’s residence for women, an out-of-the-way reformatory known for its severe discipline towards rebellious students or those with a dark past. The Director lives with Luis, her son, a teenager isolated by his mother due to his increasing interest in the girls. She tells him again and again that someday he will ind a woman like herself. Irene is Fourneau’s right hand, an intern with a special sense of rigour and cruelty which she imparts to the rest of the students behind the Director’s back. one night, the youngest of the interns is mysteriously murdered in the greenhouse. She is the latest in a series of disappearances that have taken place in the last few months, adding to the atmosphere of extreme tension that prevails in the residence. Luis’ obsession for the interns leads him to Theresa. They start seeing each other furtively, provoking Irene’s jealousy and rage. Theresa is terriied and tries to escape, but is cruelly murdered. Fourneau decides to investigate and discovers her own son is the culprit. Luis mutilated the bodies in an attempt to build the woman his mother wanted for him.

Critique The House That Screamed was narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s debut. The production was stimulated by the popularity and success he achieved in his previous works on television. These were based on original scripts and literary adaptations from the great masters of horror. The gloomy, mysterious and oppressive environment, combined with some hints of criticism, was decisive. This style had already been used successfully in Historia de la Frivolidad (History of Frivolousness) (1967) and especially in Historias para no dormir (Stories for not Sleeping) (1966–68). recovering their essence, The House That Screamed had a dense gothic atmosphere, derived from the use of different tools and techniques from previous psychological horror ilms and references from authors and ilm-makers such as Poe, Bradbury and Hitchcock. It was one of the few horror ilms made in Spain and immediately won the status of classic. Incest, necrophilia, lesbianism, sadomasochism and voyeurism are all main themes in the story. Less-than-desirable subjects for a residence for women in which authority, rectitude and religion are the predominant values. This is precisely one of the unique characteristics of the ilm: the contrast or double truth in what is being described. The psychological terror is focused on the sexual repression of the students (supposedly-innocent girls exposed to the adults’ irrationality), guided by a Director whose teaching methods are more than questionable. This suffocating environment is similar to the formal structure of jail ilms, usually with a welldeined hierarchy among the protagonists, described in scenes about power abuse and the humiliation of the subordinates. In La residencia, there are several scenes showing physical and psychological violence, led by Madame Forneau as the leader and Irene as her right hand over unfortunate victims such as Theresa.

Fantasy and Horror 229

Directory of World Cinema

Extreme eroticism was rare in late-sixties Spain, where political censorship imposed its own interpretation. Ibáñez Serrador managed to include a high level of eroticism using scenes that were apparently not part of the main argument. This actually helped to include sequences with an unprecedented level of eroticism, although correct and permissible in the eyes of the censor, e.g. the scene in which the students shower wearing their nightgowns, which become transparent and reveal their feminine forms. The director elegantly used this game of suggestions to involve the spectator by allowing them to let their imagination run wild (e.g. the parallel montage in which a student has sexual intercourse with one of the school’s employees, while the rest of the students, aware of the situation, attend a sewing class, and the action of inserting the red string through the needle is used as a visual metaphor of copulation). The mise-en-scène was designed in great detail, incorporating elements traditionally associated with gothic terror (mansion, darkness, candlelight, fog, etc.). The House That Screamed has a classic structure supported on an impeccable production in which camera movement plays a central role. The presentation is somewhat colourful, providing aesthetic elements such as fade in and fade out, scenes in slow motion and still shots, especially in the murder scenes. The ilm was a great success nationally and internationally. From the beginning, the idea was to distribute it beyond the Spanish borders. This explains the incorporation of international artists in the project (Lilli Palmer, John Moulder Brown, Mary Maude). Many were actually surprised to learn that this was a national production. It became a cult movie that marked a milestone in the internationalization of Spanish production and a convincing contribution to the horror genre.

Julio Moreno Díaz

Mutant Action Acción Mutante Countries of origin:

Spain France Studio:

CIBy 2000 El Deseo Director:

Álex de la Iglesia

230 Spain

Synopsis In a dystopian future, a group of disabled ‘mutant’ terrorists, selftitled Mutant Action, engage in terrorist acts against a society ruled by the it and the beautiful. Led by the half-faceless, unscrupulous ramón yarritu, the group kidnaps Patricia, the daughter and heiress of a powerful businessman orujo. on the way to the ransomexchange location, the mine planet Axturias, ramón – far more interested in receiving the whole of the ransom money than maintaining the ‘mutant ideology’ – tries to eliminate his fellow terrorists. When the terrorist spaceship crashes on Axturias, miles away from the meeting point, ramón carries the now Stockholm-syndrome deluded Patricia through the bleak landscape. The presence of oroju’s daughter raises the lust of the all-male inhabitants of the planet, who see women as the most valuable and impossible-to-ind ‘product’ on Axturias. In the meantime, not willing to give away the

Directory of World Cinema

Mutant Action/Acción Mutante, El Deseo.

Producers:

Agustín Almodóvar Pedro Almodóvar Esther García Screenwriters:

Jorge Guerricaechevarría Álex de la Iglesia Cinematographer:

Carles Gusi Art Directors:

José Luis Arrizabalaga (Arri) Arturo García otaduy (Biaffra) Composer:

Def Con Dos Editor:

Pablo Blanco Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Antonio resines Álex Angulo Frédérique Feder Fernando Guillén Filming Locations:

Bardenas reales (navarra) Bilbao (Basque Country) Madrid Year:

1993

ransom money to the terrorists, orujo contracts Kaufmann to help him kill ramón during the ransom exchange. Chased by orujo, the surviving members of Acción Mutante and a mad miner family interested in Patricia, ramón inally arrives at the meeting point, where all the characters converge for a inal bloody showdown.

Critique The 1990s was a decade marked by the diversity of artistic discourses and the development of the Spanish ilm industry. Álex de la Iglesia’s irst feature ilm, Mutant Action is one of the indicators of these changes brought about by the Spanish generation of ilmmakers that emerged in the 1990s. It reveals a fascination towards different genre conventions, narrative structure and exaggeration, relecting inluences both from Hollywood and ‘body genres’, as well as cult cinema, comic books and television. The deployment of such (mainly non-literary) inluences translates into a new type of cinephilia, distinct from previous auteur ilm traditions in Spain. Produced by Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar, the tone of the ilm carries some of the irony and eccentric comedy value of Almodovar’s 1980s’ works. However, even if backed by Spanish cinema’s one-time enfant terrible, Iglesia’s counter-position towards auteur cinema reads as evident throughout the ilm. Sophisticated European-friendly expression gives way to horror and sci-i ilm references, grotesque humour and slapstick violence. An example of such iconoclastic reading can be seen in an early scene of the ilm, during the wedding party (turned kidnap-stage) scene, with the terrorist group mass-murdering the rich and beautiful wedding guests – including Almodóvar’s habitués rosy Palma and Bibi Andersen – to the sound of bubblegum-pop-hit ‘La Fiesta’, sung by 1960s yé-yé singer Karina. The Spanish social context of Mutant Action reads as evident throughout the ilm. It can be perceived as the allegory of the social inadequacies of late-1980s’ Spain, the television celebrity-driven

Fantasy and Horror 231

Directory of World Cinema

escapism, and the continuous threat of Basque terrorism. Also the disabled central character’s constant presence, always reminding the audience of their condition as ‘mutant garbage’ ighting to get revenge on a hostile society, seems a reaction against the modern Spain. However, Mutant Action’s self-relective style, hybridism and excess, soon dissipate any attempt to connect to the ilm in a sober way, even when such social issues are visibly present. Far more ironic and detached, Álex de la Iglesia creates a clear suspension of the realism in which such themes were usually portrayed. The director engages instead in an ironic detachment on such themes, re-working these through its hyperbolic visuals and unreal action. With such ilmic characteristics and ironic readings of Spanish society, Mutant Action is synchronous with the apolitical and pragmatic Spanish youth culture of the 1990s. The ilm generated some cult following in certain (youth) audiences, particularly on urban sub-cultures and ilm-festival-goers, and precedes the far more mainstream-acceptance of Iglesia’s landmark work El Día de la Bestia/Day of the Beast (1995).

Nuno Barradas Jorge

Synopsis

The Orphanage El orfanato Studio:

rodar & rodar Cine y Televisión Producciones Cinematográicas Telecinco Director:

Juan Antonio Bayona Screenwriter:

Sergio G Sánchez Producers:

Guillermo del Toro Mar Targarona Joaquín Padro Cinematographer:

Óscar Faura Art Direction:

Íñigo navarro Composer:

Fernando Velázquez

232 Spain

In an isolated coastal region of Spain, Laura, her husband and young son have moved into the now closed Good Shepherd orphanage where she grew up. The son, Simon, is a lonely child with a predilection for imaginary friends. on exploring the coastal caves Simon claims to have met a young boy, whom Laura dismisses as another fantasy creation. After a strange encounter with an elderly social worker and some mysterious incidents Laura begins to be unsettled by Simon’s growing fascination for the boy and the friends he claims to have. During a party to launch the opening of the now renovated building as a centre for special needs children, Laura is attacked by a hooded child and Simon goes missing. Six months later the couple is still searching for Simon; the Police having failed to turn up any leads. As more unexplained incidents occur Laura enlists the help of a medium, much to her husband’s displeasure. With her marriage under strain and her desperation to ind Simon growing, Laura is determined to solve the mystery about his disappearance, in turn uncovering shocking revelations relating to her own past.

Critique Debut director Bayona’s The Orphanage is an elegantly-staged, conidently-directed ghost story with a screenplay also by a debutant, Sergio G Sanchez. Drawing on elements seen in such ilms as The Innocents (1961), itself an adaptation of Henry James’ classic novella

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

Elena ruiz Duration:

105 minutes Cast:

Belén rueda Fernando Cayo roger Princep Mabel rivera Filming Locations:

Barcelona Llanes (Asturias) Year:

2007

The Turn of the Screw (1898), Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2001) and Guillermo Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001), The Orphanage is an assured and intriguing spin on familiar material. The Orphanage was the second-highest grossing ilm at its premiere in the history of Spanish cinema, and was chosen by the Academia de las Artes y la Ciéncias Cinematográicas to represent Spain at the oscars in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. Produced by Del Toro (a close friend of Bayona) and sharing the director’s fondness for the fantastic, Bayona and Sanchez have created a ilm that largely eschews the contemporary fashion for high octane editing, CGI and gore-laden images for a restrained atmospheric air more in keeping with that of its inluences. As much a drama, a mystery and an adult fairytale as it is a horror movie, its themes are as important as any of the scares and chills that it provides. With a narrative concerned with familial love, grief, lost innocence, psychological states and the supernatural – signalled by the opening credits showing hands tearing at wallpaper to reveal what is underneath – the viewer is immediately drawn into a World touched by sadness and buried secrets. Bayona adroitly uses visual symbols to signify what lies ahead, as the irst shot of the adult Laura has her under a bed sheet – that most basic of childhood tools for creating a ghostlike apparition. Later in the ilm, she is seen smeared in lour, once again spectral in her appearance. Belén rueda gives a ine performance as the increasinglydistressed Laura; she has a drained, haunted look throughout, heightened to a state of despair after Simon goes missing: the catalyst for both the supernatural elements of the ilm and for an exploration of longing and grief. This is really a ilm about a mother’s love: Laura is asked how far she will go to be with her son by the medium that performs a ‘psychic summoning’ during the ilm’s second act. Laura’s acceptance of the possibility of otherworldly spirits, much to her husband’s chagrin, sets up the ilm’s climax, which veers from the horriic to an ultimately sad but tender resolution. The revelation regarding the past events at the orphanage reveals a darker interpretation of motherly love. The ilm’s environment and the use of sound conform to the classic ghost stories of the past: the old isolated creaking house, high sea winds, crashing waves, stormy skies and frequent rain; Fernando Velazquez’s grandiose orchestral score heightens the tension and dramatic sequences. The coastline itself is made to look suitably oppressive, more a place of danger and mystery than of sunshine and relaxation. The orphanage becomes a place of dark corners and shadowy corridors rather than a sanctuary and place of warmth. The use of children is another familiar trait, here used both for chilling and empathetic effect. Although The Orphanage may not reach the heights of The Others or The Devil’s Backbone, it is certainly an intelligent genre piece and a thoughtful character study in which the chilling moments come unexpectedly and the graphic images it does contain have more impact precisely because Bayona was not beholden to the fashion for their excessive use.

Neil Mitchell Fantasy and Horror 233

Directory of World Cinema

The Others Los otros Studio:

Cruise Wagner Productions Director:

Alejandro Amenábar Producers:

Fernando Bovaira José Luis Cuerda Sunmin Park Screenwriter:

Synopsis In the days following the end of World War II, overwrought mother Grace Stewart and her two children Anne and nicholas live out an isolated existence in their Jersey home. Her husband Charles joined the Army but has not been heard from since the War ended; the children are optimistic but Grace believes her husband to be dead. nicholas and Anne also suffer from Xeroderma Pigmentosa, a profound allergy to sunlight that means the house must be kept in total darkness during the daylight hours. As she struggles to run the household and look after her family, Grace begins to suspect that there are intruders in the house – she hears a child’s crying, or the sound of footsteps running upstairs. Doors that were locked swing open, and a piano seems to play itself. Some of these threaten her children’s safety, but is the house really haunted, or has Grace inally descended into madness?

Alejandro Amenábar

Critique

Cinematographer:

The Others is Alejandro Amenábar’s third feature and his irst English-language feature, following his debut Thesis (1996) and Open Your Eyes (1997). With a major Hollywood star playing the lead, a small but capable supporting cast and an exceptionally well-written script, The Others went on to become one of the most internationally-successful Spanish ilms ever made. It was also one of a handful of movies; including Jaume Balagueró’s The Nameless (1998) and Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001), that helped to raise the proile of Spanish horror, paving the way for the international success of ilms like El maquinista/The Machinist (2004) and The Orphanage (2007). Frequently characterized as a ghost story in the classic vein, The Others is happy to acknowledge the inluence of its predecessors. The two children – who might be responsible for the haunting, or at least important witnesses to it – are a conscious echo of the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw, and Jack Clayton’s acclaimed movie adaptation The Innocents (1961). Both ilms – along with a number of other ghost stories, including Hideo nakata’s Dark Water (2002) – use an unstable mother igure as a focus for the haunting. There are nods to several other ilms along the way – the gardener’s name is taken from Peter Medak’s The Changeling (1980), for example. Even the title itself is a reference to Thomas Tryon’s acclaimed period ghost story The Other, set in the 1930s and ilmed in 1972. The ilm most often mentioned as an inspiration is a more recent one, however: M night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), primarily on the strength of a key plot development. Whereas Shyamalan uses this twist – which was already well-worn by the time it appeared in Carnival of Souls in 1962 – to undermine everything the audience has seen so far, in The Others it is an entirely logical development that builds on everything we know about Grace and her family. Unfortunately this multitude of references and allusions also

Javier Aguirresarobe Art Director:

Benjamín Fernández Composer:

Alejandro Amenábar Editor:

nacho ruis Capillas Duration:

100 minutes Cast:

nicole Kidman Fionnula Flanagan Christopher Eccleston Alakina Mann Filming Locations:

Jersey (Channel Islands) Madrid oheka Castle (Long Island) Palacio de los Hornillos, Las Fraguas (Cantabria) Santander (Cantabria) Year:

2001

234 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

The Others/Los otros, Sociedad General del Cine, Las Producciones del Escorpión.

serves to underline the ilm’s only major law: there really is little here that is original. A number of scenes are strongly reminiscent of other ilms, like the séance, drawn largely from The Changeling. Unlike Open Your Eyes, The Others seems to be an exercise in genre and form, but the ilm is redeemed by Amenábar’s capable handling of the material and excellent performances, most obviously nicole Kidman’s careful, authentic portrayal of the overwrought Grace. As the seemingly-supernatural events escalate, so does Grace’s hysteria and paranoia, urged on by the increasingly sinister behaviour of the housekeeper and her associates. Amenábar wisely avoids shocks and loud noises, drawing most of his suspense from character interactions and discreetly-used sound effects – the sound of footsteps upstairs, for example, or the disembodied sound of a child crying. Like robert Wise’s classic The Haunting, The Others employs almost no special effects but still manages to create a tangible atmosphere of suspense that quietly – and at times almost imperceptibly – builds into terror. It might not carve out new territory for the genre, but The Others does at least prove it is possible to breathe new life into old conventions.

Jim Harper

Fantasy and Horror 235

Directory of World Cinema

Pan’s Labyrinth El Laberinto del Fauno Country of origin:

Mexico Spain Studio:

Tequila Gang Estudios Picasso Telecinco Director:

Guillermo del Toro Producers:

Belén Atienza Álvaro Augustín Alfonso Cuarón Edmundo Gil Elena Manrique Bertha navarro Guillermo del Toro Frida Torresblanco Screenwriter:

Guillermo del Toro Cinematographer:

Guillermo navarro Art Director:

Eugenio Caballero Composer:

Javier navarrete Editor:

Bernat Vilaplana Duration:

112 minutes Cast:

Ivana Banquero Sergi López Maribel Verdú Doug Jones

236 Spain

Synopsis In post-Civil-War Spain, under the dictatorship of General Franco, young ofelia’s mother, Carmen, marries Francoist-army captain Vidal, whose child she is carrying. Vidal’s job is to hunt down the revolutionary guerrilla army that is working against Franco’s operations. Vidal’s own housemaid Mercedes is a key agent for the guerrillas. one day, ofelia stumbles into a labyrinth where she meets the Faun, who tells her that she is an incarnation of Princess Moanna. In order to return to her father’s kingdom, she must fulill three tasks. For the irst task ofelia must retrieve a key from a toad that is living inside a ig tree. For the second task, ofelia must use the key to obtain a weapon that is under the protection of the Pale Man. However, she disobeys the orders of the Faun and eats two grapes. The Faun is furious with her for disobeying him and refuses to tell her the inal task that will take her back to her kingdom. That night ofelia’s mother dies in childbirth and the Captain discovers that Mercedes is a rebel. While Mercedes manages to escape, ofelia remains locked in the room. The Faun returns to ofelia, giving her a inal chance to prove her obedience. The third task is to take the newborn baby into the labyrinth. The Faun tells her that the door to the eternal world will open when she sheds the blood of an innocent child – her brother. ofelia refuses and the Faun disappears. Vidal enters the labyrinth, takes the child from her and shoots her. As he reaches outside, he is surrounded by the rebels who take his son from him and shoot him. At the end ofelia enters the eternal world of which she is the princess, since she did shed the blood of an innocent – herself. She is seated beside the King and the Queen and is hailed by the Faun and the fairies.

Critique In Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro’s use of fantasy serves a purpose that is contrary to the tropes of escapist cinema and literature. There are three orders that are visible in this ilm: Vidal’s fascist group, the revolutionaries and ofelia’s imaginary world. Like the guerrillas, the imaginary world becomes another way of deterring the order created by Vidal. Del Toro is thus playing on the concept of the underworld – using it to refer to the imaginary world as well as the political underworld. A key similarity between the world of the rebels and that of ofelia lies in the question of choice. The very creation of the alternative order is a manifestation of this. In her refusal to obey the faun’s inal command and sacriice her brother, ofelia rejects the Christian order that was an undercurrent of the Spanish Civil War. The difference between the two worlds is made clear because in the imaginary world she becomes Princess Moanna in spite of her deiance, perhaps because of it, whereas, in the real world, it kills her. Del Toro has created a logic that is not governed by the laws of the real world, but is logic nevertheless. The logic of exactitude in Vidal’s world where every activity is preceded by a visual reference

Directory of World Cinema

Filming Locations:

Beltiche (Aragón) El Espinar and Segovia (Castilla y León) Sierra de Guadarrama (Madrid) Year:

2006

to the pocket watch is in contrast to a logic where time is measured by the moon and hourglasses. While a chronology dominates the real world, del Toro introduces multiple dimensions of time in the imaginary world which has a past where Princess Moanna lived with her father the king, a present where the faun is trying to test the princess’s essence, and a future that is introduced when she is invited to share the throne with her father and mother. Using the metaphor of the labyrinth, del Toro also deies the laws of historiography. The very physical structure of the labyrinth is at variance with the decidedly linear appearance of history in traditional history-writing tropes. Historiography here is a coming together of the political and the personal. It is a more visceral approach to history, one where different layers exist simultaneously. Finally, it does not halt or attempt to cure history in its narrative and this is most evident in the way the ilm ends with the image of a dying child.

Kuhu Tanvir

The Phone Box La Cabina Studio:

radio Televisión Española Director:

Antonio Mercero Producer:

José Salcedo Screenwriters:

Antonio Mercero Jose Luis Garci Cinematographer:

Federico G Larraya Art Direction:

Antonio Sanz Editor:

Javier Morán Duration:

35 minutes Cast:

José Luis López Vázquez Agustín González Goyo Lebrero

Synopsis In a bland square in Madrid, some workers, who are wearing a strange uniform, are installing a phone box. Some moments later, an anonymous citizen, after taking his son to the school bus, gets trapped in the box for no understandable reason. As the day goes by, all kind of strangers go there to see the strange event: some of them try to free him; others make fun of him… Everyone looks interested in this little man. After a distressing delay full of surrealistic moments, the trapped man is taken to a strange factory full of thousands of phone boxes. In each one, a single corpse is trapped, in some strange ritual. The movie ends with a new phone box in another square of the city.

Critique The Phone Box is probably one of the most complex and stimulating medium-length movies in the history of Spanish Cinema. Developed just three years before the death of Dictator Francisco Franco, a lot of critics have understood this ilm as a strange political fairy-tale about the isolation of the society during the 1960s. In any event, his powerful and provocative content is wide open enough to stop it being classiied only in a concrete socio-historical context. The ilm uses very long shots, suggesting an extremely distressing concept of time. Inside and outside the phone box; everything looks slow and oppressing, never ending. The buildings of the town are recorded as inhuman giants, skyscrapers crossing an apocalyptic skyline, not interested in the pathetic feelings of the poor man. At the same time, the phone box is surrounded by a really disturbing crowd, composed by all kind of strange characters who are directly connected with the Spanish satirical tradition. Mercero is successful in the portrait of the cruelty of some speciic Spanish characters, mostly in the ones who are related to the romantic literary school:

Fantasy and Horror 237

Directory of World Cinema

Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1972

dumb police, evil small boys who understand the catastrophe as a kind of twisted game, etc. Some of them, following the rules of the ‘absurd’, dare to reproach López Vazquez for his clumsiness and his foolishness at being trapped inside the phone box. But, without any doubt, this movie is speciically brilliant in the second part, focused on the travel from the initial square to the evil Factory. Mercero shows an accurate and thrilling direction, mixing nostalgic, borrowed, elements, with the codes of the horror movies. The nature of evil is not only related to the absurdity of the whole situation, but with the feeling of loneliness and helplessness with which López Vazquez imbues the main character. The torture becomes something unpredictable and random (he is trapped, as were all the other lonely skeletons who ill their own and forgotten phone boxes), and the audience is forced to look for an impossible pattern for the victims: maybe the haircut, maybe the suits…? Anyway, the inal shot – which shows a new and open phone box – suggests an eternal cycle, a killing process impossible to understand. The Phone Box is one of the most important masterpieces in a powerful horror tradition that was developed by Spanish public television in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Fairy tales for not-sleeping (1966–1982) or ¿Es usted el asesino?/Are you the murderer? (1967), both of them directed by narciso Ibáñez Serrador. The Phone Box is the irst one in using the absurd as a way of shocking the audience, and it was followed by other interesting products such as the medium-length movie El televisor (The TV) (1974). Mercero himself would repeat this kind of product with La habitación blanca (The White Room) (2000). In any event, the original movie would become one of the most powerful experiences launched by the television in this decade, and it is important to understand the dialogue between TV and Cinema in the 1970s.

Aaron Rodríguez

[Rec] Studio:

Filmax Directors:

Jaume Balagueró Paco Plaza Producer:

Julio Fernández Screenwriters:

Jaume Balagueró Paco Plaza Luis Berdejo

238 Spain

Synopsis Perky anchorwoman Ángela and her unseen cameraman Pablo tags along with a ire crew during a typical night on the job. The excitement starts when the crew is called out to a small apartment building where a woman has been heard screaming. After assisting the police to gain entry to the apartment, they discover an elderly woman apparently in the middle of some kind of seizure or it. Without warning, the woman suddenly throws herself at one of the policemen and begins biting and tearing his face. When the team inally manages to subdue the woman and evacuate the wounded oficer they discover that the building has been completely sealed up from the outside. Speaking from behind layers of plastic sheeting, a faceless oficial informs them that quarantine precautions are now in place and advises them to remain calm until a medical investigator arrives and assesses the scene. no-one will be allowed to leave until then, not even the injured policeman, who is now in a critical condition and in desperate need of medical attention.

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Pablo rosso Art Director:

Gemma Fauria Editor:

David Gallart Duration:

75 minutes Cast:

Manuela Velasco Ferrán Terraza Jorge-yaman Serrano David Vert Filming Locations:

Barcelona Year:

2007

Unfortunately, whatever affected the old woman has begun to affect other occupants of the building, and soon the policeman is not the only one ighting for his life.

Critique Ever since the releases of his debut feature, cult favourite The Nameless (1998), Jaume Balagueró has been arguably the leading igure in the world of contemporary Spanish horror. While his subsequent ilms – Darkness (2002) and Frágiles/Fragile (2005) – have not always matched the quality of his debut, Balagueró has shown himself to be a consistently interesting and unusual director with a lair for eye-catching, disturbing imagery. Balagueró’s fourth theatrical horror ilm, [Rec] is a substantial departure from his previous two efforts, both stylish ghost stories. In place of atmosphere and supernatural chills we have full-blooded and bloody neo-zombie action, with a level of graphic violence almost entirely absent from the director’s earlier ilms. [Rec] also sees Balagueró returning to his native language for the irst time since 1998, perhaps due to the dificulties surrounding his English-languages features (both Darkness and Fragile suffered lengthy delays, with the latter still unreleased in the US at the time of writing). This change can also be seen in To Let (2006), a visceral psycho-thriller that formed Balagueró’s contribution to the Spanish TV series Películas para no dormir/6 Films to Keep You Awake. This time he shares the credit with Paco Plaza, another alumnus of the Filmax-Fantastic Factory stable, responsible for many of Spain’s best horror ilms including Brad Anderson’s The Machinist (2004). Plaza made his debut with the lacklustre ramsey Campbell adaptation Second Name (2002), before winning acclaim for his revisionist werewolf tale Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt (2004). [Rec], Castelao Productions (Filmax).

Fantasy and Horror 239

Directory of World Cinema

Although [Rec] is frequently described as a cross between 28 Days Later (2002) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), such comparisons do not really get to the heart of the movie. Certainly, the handheld camerawork could have come from Blair Witch and the fast-moving, virus-infected creatures are obviously the Hispanic cousins of the rage-infected Londoners. However, like most zombie movies made in the last 40 years, [Rec] is heavily inluenced by the ilms of George A romero, most obviously by Night of the Living Dead (1968), but also by his less-well-known 1973 ilm The Crazies. Like [Rec], The Crazies inverts the night of the Living Dead setup to have the uninfected trapped not by zombie hordes but by faceless government forces, and in uncomfortably close proximity to the creatures. It is interesting to note that romero’s next zombie movie- 2007’s Diary of the Dead, released just a few weeks after [Rec] – would use the same handheld camera approach. With most of the action taking place in one conined location, [Rec] manages to generate a surprising level of tension and claustrophobia. Caught between the bloodthirsty creatures inside and the radiation-suited igures outside, who warn them not to approach the windows or attempt to leave, the occupants quickly begin ighting, taking their anger and fear out on each other. The residents turn on the lone surviving policeman resolutely trying to obey his orders, the policeman turns on the camera crew, and everybody turns on the poor Japanese family accused of being somehow responsible for the events taking place. Milking the external threat and internal tensions for all they are worth, Balagueró and Plaza keep things moving at hysteria pitch for most of the ilm’s lean 75-minute running time. The results are not without laws – the characters are one-note sketches and there is little here that is actually original – but [Rec] is quite an unpleasant horror ilm. It was followed in 2008 by the English-language, shot-for-shot remake Quarantine, while Balagueró and Plaza continued their story in the respectable [Rec] 2 (2009).

Jim Harper

The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks La Torre de los Siete Jorobados Studio:

J Films Director:

Edgar neville

240 Spain

Synopsis Madrid, the late nineteenth century; the archaeologist Don robisón de Mantua is murdered by Doctor Sabatino after having discovered a subterranean citadel in the sewers of Madrid, which had been used in the past by those wishing to escape the orders of expulsion declared on all Jews in Spain. This citadel now inds itself inhabited by an evil band of hunchbacks led by the very same Doctor Sabatino. one evening, the ghost of Professor de Mantua appears to the young Basilio Beltrán, entrusting him with the task of protecting his niece Inés from the evil Doctor Sabatino. In order to complete his mission, Basilio Beltrán will have to confront Doctor Sabatino and bring about his destruction; the love of the young Inés will be his compensation.

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Luis Júdez German López España Screenwriters:

Edgar neville José Santugini Cinematographers:

Enrique Berreyre Andrés Pérez Cubero Art Director:

Canet Cubel Editor:

Sara ontañón Duration/Format:

85 minutes/B/W Cast:

Antonio Casal Isabel de Pomés Julia Lajos Guillermo Marín Year:

1944

Critique The world in which the story of The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks unfolds is clearly set within the parameters of fantasy; a world in which the normally inexplicable happen. one of the most recurring themes in fantasy stories concerns the possible communication between the animate and the inanimate; in the case of The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks the dramatic suspense is initiated when Doctor de Mantua’s ghost appears before the eyes of the young Basilio entrusting him with the protection of his niece Inés. only Basilio’s character can see and speak to the ghost of Doctor de Mantua. Superstition? Basilio says of himself, ‘Soy supersticioso’ (‘I am superstitious’). Madness? others say of him, ‘Este joven debe estar loco’) (‘This young man must be mad’). Sensibility? The ghost of Don robisón De Mantua feels intuitively, (‘Vosotros, los jóvenes, sois especialmente sensibles a las percepciones extrasensoriales’) (‘you, young man, are especially sensitive to extrasensory perceptions’). Whether through superstition, madness, or sensitivity, the young Basilio not only listens to the ghost’s words but takes them on. This is probably due to the fact that the words of Doctor de Mantua profess the love he feels for his niece Inés, rather than avenging her murder at the hands of Doctor Sabatino one year before. These words expressing the truth of love will be Basilio’s guide throughout his mission. A mission which will lead Basilio, as it did the mythical orpheus, to descend into the subterranean world. Beneath Madrid he must rescue his love Inés from the clutches of the evil hunchbacked Doctor Sabatino in an underground citadel where hunchbacks dwell, not only to hide their deformed bodies from the staring eyes of others but also from their crimes. The scenery of this underground citadel, very reminiscent of Escher’s drawings, with stairs and galleries going off in all directions, is expanded on by Edgar neville and with a clear lack of linear direction the city seems to plunge itself into the absurd. In this citadel the story of Edgar neville could have slipped into the sinister; let us not forget that all narrative elements belonging to fantasy also produce sinister sensations. The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks contains various examples of these elements: the labyrinthine appearance of the space seen beyond the galleries; the mirror which does not relect reality; the inanimate ghost of Doctor de Mantua and the hypnosis-induced automatism of Inés; could all have employed just for hair-raising ends, but this is not the case. With The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks there is never any doubt over whether what is happening is real or fantasy. Basilio believes what Doctor de Mantua’s ghost says, whether due to superstition, madness or sensibility, but it is the truth of his mission and promise, together with the love which he professes for Inés, which make it possible for Basilio to ind his way without drowning in the anxiety of the sinister.

Begoña Siles Ojeda

Fantasy and Horror 241

EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY

Directory of World Cinema

Las Hurdes/Land without Bread (Luis Buñuel, 1933) is, without doubt, the Spanish experimental ilm that has gone most clearly beyond the transnational circuits of cinephilia. However, it would be mistake in thinking of the work as an isolated example in Spanish production. Perhaps the irst experience of experimental documentary ilms are the two ilms of Ernesto Giménez Caballero made in 1930: Noticiario de Cine club and Esencia de verbena. Both of them introduce elements that have to do with the framing, camera movements and avant-garde editing, altering the realistic perception proposed by the classic images of the news. In the decade of the 1930s, Carlos Velo applied some avant-garde ilm techniques in such titles as Almadrabas (Tunny Fishery) (1934) or Felipe II y El Escorial (1935), but perhaps a phenomenon notable in this period is the amateur ilm, with igures such as Domènec Jiménez, ramón Delmiro Decaralt or ramón Biadiu. The last important igure of this irst moment is José Val del omar. Most of his work in this early period has been lost, but the existence of a ilm such as Vibración en Granada (Val del omar, 1935) already shows his tendency to play with experimental cinema resources. This is a clear record of what will be his two major works: Aguaespejo Granadino (Water-mirror from Granada) (1955) and Fuego en Castilla (Tactilvisión del páramo del espanto) (Fire in Castile[Tactile Vision of the Horror Moor]) (1960). Val del omar combines formal and technical research with a documentary approach to Andalusia and Castile that shifts between the myth and anthropology. In the early 1960s Jacinto Esteva begins his ilm-making, with Lejos de los árboles/Far From Trees (1970), a ilm on which he worked for seven years, expanding the universe of Land without Bread to show the brutal portrait of Franco’s Spain rooted in rituals and manners characteristic of the Middle Ages. In the same vein, but during the Democracy period, Rocío (1980), a ilm by Fernando ruiz Vergara still had problems with the censors for its approach to the traditions of the Virgen del rocío. ruiz Vergara in his shooting uses ilmic and videographic elements for sheer production necessity, but their conjunction gives a more violent look to the ilm. The inal years of Franco and the Transition are, at present, the most proliic in the production of experimental documentaries. In these years, Basilio Martín Patino made Canciones para después de una guerra/Songs for After a War (1971), Queridísimos verdugos/ Dearest Executioners (1973) and Caudillo (The Leader [Franco]) ,(1974) and Pere Portabella made El sopar (The Dinner) (1974) and Informe general sobre unas cuestiones de interés para una proyección pública (Activity in the Waiting Room) (1976): both are ilmmakers that, with different resources, explore the limits of realistic representation and staging. The end of the dictatorship provokes a burst of documentary practices that openly proposed playing with language in a relective way, experimenting with the new freedom not only by addressing issues that dictatorship had not allowed in the past 40 years but also experimenting with the cinematic possibilities of language: El desencanto/The Disenchantment (Jaime Chávarri, 1976), El asesino de Pedralbes/The Murder of Pedralbes (1978), Ocaña, retrat intermitent/Ocana, an Intermittent Portrait

Left: The Silence Before Bach/Die stille vor Bach, Sherlock Films.

Experimental Documentary 243

Directory of World Cinema

(Ventura Pons, 1978); Numax presenta... (Joaquim Jordà, 1980), Animación en la sala de espera (1981) and Cada ver es [a play on cadaveres – ‘corpses’] Ángel Garcia del Val, 1981) are some examples. Changes in the ilm legislation in the early 1980s, and the problems that some of these ilms had with the law, are the main reasons that, during the following years, production was very limited and marginal. Titles like El encargo del cazador (The Hunter Assignment) (Joaquim Jordà, 1990), La seducción del caos (Chaos Seduction) (Basilio Martín Patino, 1991) or Tren de sombras/Train of Shadows (José Luis Guerín, 1997) are exceptions. It is no coincidence that the last two are fakes (with a clear relective intention) and the irst two are ilms funded by, and to be broadcast through, television. It is the beginning of another transition, from ilm to visual media and from celluloid to video and, above all, to digital systems. In the late 1990s and thanks to the accessibility that comes with the digital video, there is a rebirth of experimental documentary practices. The new reality is to demonstrate not only unorthodox, but highly promiscuous hybrid products. With the new century, digital video systems have captured the silver screen and, in turn, the museum and gallery are becoming more open to display movies on their walls. Today the experimental documentary crosses boundaries and a work like Mones com la Becky/Monkeys Like Becky (Joaquim Jordà, 1999) is able to be inanced by the regular system of ilm government support, and then have a greater presence in the museums than in the theatres. Joaquim Jordà and Basilio Martín Patino are perhaps the most signiicant cases of ilmmakers from earlier periods who came to receive wide recognition in recent years. But the most remarkable in the period is the emergence of a number of new voices from various ields that bring new perspectives. Lluís Escartín Lara (Mohave Cruising, 2000), Virginia García del Pino (Lo que tú dices que soy [What you say I am], 2007) and Andrés Duque (Paralelo 10 [Parallel 10], 2005; Color Perro que huye [RunawayDog Colour], 2011) work with a transnational lavour, while Maria Cañas (El cerdo perfecto [The Perfect Pig], 2005) explores national myths. Cinematic tradition itself is the starting point of Isaki Lacuesta’s Cravan v. Cravan (2002) or Las variaciones Marker (Marker Variations) (2007), in Andrés Duque (Iván Z, 2003) and oriol Sánchez ‘(Fragmentos. Primera impresión en Súper 8 [Fragments. First Impression] 1998), while the observational limits of orthodoxy are at stake in the work of Óscar Pérez (El sastre [The Tailor], 2007). Finally, the last decade has not been lacking in either the Spanish audiovisual investigation of the irst person, both in the family past (Retrato [Portrait], 2005, by Carlos ruiz and Los materials, 2010 from the collective Los Hijos), and in the present, through the diary, where Elías León Siminaini has proved a maker of high allegorical intent (Límites 1ª persona [Limits 1st Person]. The different ways to invoke the ordinary life has led to the emergence of Internet sites which mix personal stories with the producers’ storytelling powers: Daniel Cuberta (www.danielcuberta.com) or Alberto González Vázquez (www.queridoantonio. com), ranging from pop comment to political points, using different techniques from the observational to the stop-motion. We are well on the edge, media and formal, of experimental documentary. The remarkable thing is that the picture is large and diverse, and perhaps more importantly, is available to spectators.

Josetxo Cerdán

244 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Birdsong El cant dels ocells Studios:

Andergraun Films Capricci Films Eddie Saeta Televisió de Catalunya (TV3) Director:

Albert Serra Producers:

Luis Miñarro Montse Triola Screenwriter:

Albert Serra Cinematographers:

Jimmy Gimferrer neus ollé-Soronellas Editors:

Ángel Martín Albert Serra Art Director:

Jimmy Gimferrer Duration:

98 Minutes Cast:

Victòria Aragonés Lluís Carbó Mark Peranson Lluís Serrat Batlle Year:

2008

Synopsis The three wise men are making their way to see the newborn Jesus Christ. However, they remain uncertain of which direction to travel, and encounter serious dificulties in the shape of a mountain and the hilly terrain that predominates during their journey. Christ has been born to Mary and Joseph, who remain isolated in a very small house and who concentrate on tending a young goat. The three wise men ind their saviour and worship and lavish gifts upon him, before moving on to discuss their respective dreams whilst resting in a forest. They then resume their ongoing travels.

Critique ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.’ So runs the quote at the start of roberto rossellini’s Francesco giullare di Dio/Francis, God’s Jester (1950), which in many ways is a key precursor to Albert Serra’s Birdsong. As in rossellini’s ilm, Serra treats his three wise men as holy fools, as sainted innocents. But importantly he takes them seriously as such, inding in their quest (a quest that deines the horizons of the narrative in having no clear beginning or ending) something of a metaphor for life itself: a protracted, ongoing journey characterized by overcoming successive quotidian struggles and obstacles rather than building carefully towards a clear-cut goal that somehow completes the picture and the life. This already implies the extent to which Serra strips away all the visual and narrative baggage typically associated with Christian religious stories and iconography. As he did with his previous work, Honour of the Knights (2006), the director takes a sacred text and pares it down to leave almost nothing beyond the absolute reality of igures in a landscape. Indeed, the whole ilm could be read as a documentary of the performance of a famous story, an amateur theatrical presentation that explores the marked preconceptions that such a tale carries with it and have come erroneously to deine its ostensible reality. This is stressed most overtly in the numerous extended takes (there are only 81 shots in total, in a narrative whose duration runs to almost one hour and forty minutes) that simply depict the physically-inirm protagonists wandering through a parched, mountainous terrain and struggling to negotiate its hills and valleys. These aged and overweight characters, two of whom are played by the earlier ilm’s Don and Sancho Panza, appear to be cast into their grand adventure almost against their will, and certainly without their having any real knowledge of what they are undertaking or quite why they are undertaking it. In this, Serra goes further than rossellini in stressing a marked physicality as a means, ultimately, of penetrating beyond the purely phenomenological. It is noticeable that, when the three wise men inally achieve their goal and ind the newborn Jesus two-thirds of the way into the ilm, the composition stresses stillness and ixity,

Experimental Documentary 245

Directory of World Cinema

Birdsong/El cant dels ocells, Andergraun / román yñán.

with one of the men merely lying prostrate before the infant and his parents, and his companions similarly immobile behind him. Serra singles this scene out with the only non-diegetic music in the whole ilm, and the effect is one of stressing the soul in light at the precise moment when the body becomes static. It is a subtly-transcendental moment amid such contextual banality and domesticity: at once a most radical presentation of a canonical image and at the same time the most authentic in that the viewer is given complete freedom to project him or herself into the image (or not) and to make of it what they will. Working not only with the same actors but also the same key crew members, on locations found immediately prior to production using Google Earth (in fact Iceland and the South of France), Serra has one again fashioned a ilm whose extremes of art cinematic narration and methodology make it a potentially dificult

246 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

experience. However, unlike other minimalist auteurs like Lisandro Alonso, there is a playful, humorous quality to Serra’s work that undercuts any portentousness or authorial self-aggrandizement. Afirmative comedic vitality comes as naturally to this director in this story as it did to Buñuel in Simón del desierto/Simon of the Desert (1965), and it conirms him among the most fascinating voices in modern world cinema.

Adam Bingham

Contactos Director:

Paulino Viota Producer:

Paulino Viota (uncredited) Screenwriters:

Javier Vega Santos zunzunegui Paulino Viota Cinematographer:

ramón Saldías Editors:

Paulino Viota Guadalupe González Güemes Duration:

64 minutes Cast:

Guadalupe González Güemes Eka García José Miguel Gándara Camino Gárriz Filming Locations:

Madrid Year:

1970

Synopsis recently arrived in the city, Tina rents a room at a hostel called Villanueva. Javier (an unknown actor), a member of an organization which is resisting Franco, is also living in this hostel. The two of them begin an intimate relationship. Fearing that they might be discovered by the owner of the hostel, they are forced to be secretive. Shortly afterwards Tina and Javier begin work at a restaurant. The oppressive political environment, the terrible work conditions, and the tension from their hidden relationship begin to affect the characters. The relationship between Tina and Javier goes through a number of ups and downs, and Javier leaves the organization.

Critique With a negligible budget and few technical means (just a rented camera), this young cinematographer inished his irst feature length ilm in a little more than two weeks. Contactos (Contacts) is a ilm compendium taken from the productive singularities of a marginal cinema that confronted ilm models concerning Franco’s dictatorship. Contactos was ilmed without administrative intervention and control, and made under a high degree of secrecy, using 16mm ilm in black and white (The soundtrack was dubbed in after ilming at a small Madrid sound studio), and without beneit of commercial distribution. However, if Contactos is a synthesis of the material production conditions of the independent and political cinema of this period, the ilm distances itself from this type of cinema in its discursive conscience. Instead of referring to conventional narrative codes to show the oppressive ambiance of a dictatorial regime, the ilm takes shape by using some of the most radical aesthetic propositions of the moment. In fact, the title of the ilm was taken from an electronic piece by the well-known composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The ilm develops through a vaguely mathematical base of symmetries and rhythms. The regularity of camera placement relative to the action (Contactos was ilmed in only four natural settings), generally straight-on frontal and eluding any hint of perspective, as well as hardly any movement on the part of the camera (limited to some of the panoramic lateral takes), confers upon the ilm a formal sobriety closely connected to the concept of

Experimental Documentary 247

Directory of World Cinema

Contactos/Paulino Viota, Paulino Viota.

serialization which Stockhausen and other eminent representatives of the musical vanguard of the 1970s had lately been elaborating. But the reference to Stockhausen is not the only one that appears at the outer limits of the cinematographic sphere. The interior scenes of the hostel ilmed from the outside, are exact translations of the famous ‘empty boxes’ of Jorge oteiza, a famous Basque artist. We also note two decisive points in the characterization of Contactos as being nearer to the centre of the ilm universe. on the one hand, there is the Straub & Huillet cinema and – more speciically – the materialistic vision of the life and works of Johan Sebastian Bach made in 1968: according to Viota, ‘Contactos is Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach without Bach, where the musical genius of the cantor is replaced by the oppressive atmosphere of the Franco regime.’ on the other hand, there is the cinematography by the Japanese director yasujiro ozu, whom Paulino Viota met during his passage through television shortly before ilming Contactos. The temporal architecture of the ilm is also noteworthy. The systematic destruction of its chronological framework contrasts with a scrupulous temporal respect for the interior of the scenes. In one of the sequences most cited by the critics, Javier goes around the block and disappears from the scene. From the perspective of a pair of panoramic views, the camera waits patiently for the character to inish his walk nearly three minutes later. There is an evident contradiction between the abstract time of the montage and the concrete time of the shot. on the one hand, the radical decentralization of time and space in sequences gives shape to an experience governed by fragmentation (similar to the daily evolution of a clandestine subject- which is always under threat). on the other hand, the strict documentation of the action in each scene, aims at the heart of time. This time is the time ‘which was stolen from us during the dictatorship’, as Santos zunzunegui, the script writer for Contactos, has noted.

Javier Moral (Paulino Viota and Manuel Asín reviewed this text) 248 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Dream of Light El sol del membrillo Studio:

María Moreno Igeldo zine Produkzidak Euskal Media Director:

Víctor Erice Producers:

Carmen Martínez María Moreno Cinematographers:

Javier Aguirresarobe Ángel Luis Fernández Composer:

Pascal Gaigne Editor:

Juan Ignacio San Mateo Cast:

Antonio López García María Moreno Enrique Gran María López Duration:

133 minutes Year:

1992

Synopsis Dream of Light is a ilm about the painting of a canvas by Spanish artist Antonio López García. The artist’s ‘model’ is the quince tree in the courtyard of his studio (a tree the artist himself had planted). Following a strict chronological order over eight weeks in the fall of 1990, Erice records the process of the painting and the many obstacles which frustrate its completion. The precision of the ilm is remarkable for something which began as nothing more than an invitation to Erice to visit the artist’s garden when he was to begin a new painting. Erice’s concern with respecting reality compelled him to include in the ilm whoever happened to be in the space of the artist’s studio and courtyard. At the end of the ilm, the camera is placed irmly in the courtyard and assumes its role as a character in the ilm, along with the painter and the tree.

Critique Dream of Light did not begin as an idea for a movie. After spending some time during the summer of 1990 with the painter Antonio López García while he was painting urban landscapes, and after hearing about the painter’s dream (the one that Antonio López would subsequently narrate in the ilm), Erice felt moved to start this new ilm when Antonio López invited him to come and view the start of a new painting project. The director arrived with a small team for what he later termed ‘una película abierta’ (‘an open ilm’). He noted in one interview that: ‘More than the idea of making a movie, there was the will to live a new experience.’ Dream of Light offers a host of ‘supporting characters’ (including the ilm camera) interacting with the two protagonists of the ilm – the painter and the tree. In a short piece of writing that accompanies the press book on the ilm, Erice takes note of the way the camera imposed its own limits while also capturing things that could not be shown in the painting, like the sound and movement around the artist. The result is a rich tapestry of conversations and everyday events not fabricated for the purpose of a ilm. In the painter’s own words: ‘Every autumn I stand next to the tree with my ishing rod. And if I do not get a bite, the purpose is to be here.’ The setting is crucial for the mood of this unusual ilm, which is neither completely a documentary nor a ictional story. The Mediterranean courtyard, like the one attached to the painter´s studio, is hidden from the demands of the outside gaze. In Dream of Light, the courtyard is a place of work, but at the same time it is the site of a series of quotidian tasks – the artist’s wife cuts his hair; an old school friend and fellow artist Enrique Gran comes by to chat; the artist’s daughters come by to gather the ripe quince in their aprons to carry home as ingredients for jam. The many shots of cityscapes and clouds in the ilm emphasize the sense of real time passing, while they also serve to remind us of all that might distract the artist and pull him from the illusory

Experimental Documentary 249

Directory of World Cinema

shelter of his garden. Trains pull out of a station along a jumble of tracks, passing by neighbourhoods where laundry is hung out to dry, and where shadowy igures in impersonal city apartments watch blue-lit television screens. The artist has a plan for a painting, but nature has her own plan. This rare ilm both preserves and extends the language of the cinema. It offers a profound meditation on the process of art, the vicissitudes of time, and the need for humour and patience in life. The accumulation of present moments (and some memories) that makes up Dream of Light has wisely been called a ‘being with’ that transcends the need for completeness.

Linda Ehrlich

In the City En la ciudad Studio:

Messidor Films Director:

Cesc Gay Producers:

Marta Esteban Gerardo Herrero Screenwriters:

Cesc Gay Tomás Aragay Cinematographer:

Andreu rebés Art Director:

Daniel Gimelberg Composers:

Joan Díaz Jordi Prats Editor:

Frank Gutiérrez Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Mónica López Eduard Fernández María Pujalte Alex Brendemülhl

250 Spain

Synopsis In the City is a panoramic portrait of a group of friends from Barcelona’s middle class. Through their web of problems, lies and secrets, Cesc Gay offers a sincere generational portrait. The story is constructed around the situations derived from their sentimental problems. Sara’s hidden inidelity results in a silent and gradual loss of passion between her and Mario. Irene tries to hide her frustrated homosexuality to maintain her ‘perfect’ marriage while Manu, her husband, tries to reveal the real Irene. Sofía, unable to face her reality, creates her model relationship from a leeting love with a French gigolo. Tomás tries to overcome his feelings for Ana, a teenager who unexpectedly understands him better than his exwife. They all seem happy on the surface when they get together, while the devastating truth is kept quiet for private, solitary moments. Keeping up appearances by containing their emotions seems to be the only way of being able to continue with their lives. Gay frames these stories in Barcelona, a desolate, hive-like city, which hides the forbidden secrets of its citizens.

Critique In the City showcases Cesc Gay’s personal trademark – an intimate approach to human daily life. His ilms are articulated around the idea of personal solitude, offering a collection of scenes in which no one sees, but everyone suffers. From the beginning of the ilm, these snapshots are part of an album that gradually becomes familiar to the audience. Cesc’s voyeuristic idea of observing the most obscure and hidden human thoughts is complemented by a realistic approach, overcoming the border between reality and iction by creating a private shared space. Within this space, nothing is hidden, and the ictional trick is observable. Thus, in line, perhaps, with Woody Allen comedies, Cesc creates a universe where the audience is able to ind themselves. We, the audience, see everything. Even the most intimate moments are described by masterful shots with simple editing.

In the City/En la ciudad, Messidor Films.

Filming Locations:

Barcelona Year:

2003

on the one hand, this way of ilming allows the director to move further towards his goal of total audience inclusion in the story’s construction. on the other hand, it requires a higher implication from actors in creating the ictional individuality. Each character is created from irst principles by means of gestures, glances, silences, and by showing us their solitary moments. They are aided in this by the camera being placed on the other side, the side of the listener, and not the speaker. The anonymous story becomes important, helping to create a collective memory as well as a social panorama. The stories of Sofía, Mario, Sara, Irene and Manu are left without an end, and without a moral judgment. Cesc’s approach is a modernist presentation of life ‘as it is’, replete with speciic situations, but not offering a moral judgment in any case. The different relations described by the ilm are not good or bad, they are simply happening as they occur in real life. They are elements of reality lowing in front of the audience’s eyes. This modernistic approach is completed by the fact that most of the stories are left incomplete, fundamentally moved by the spontaneity of the characters. Thus, In the City is a window on real, contemporary urban life, as characterized by the relativism of the individual. Cesc’s approach is common to certain other Spanish directors that work outside mainstream in Spanish cinema, while simultaneously enjoying international recognition. other examples include Jaime rosales, José Luis Guerín and Víctor Erice. Thus In the City becomes a paradigm of the auteur’s Spanish cinema, characterized by a sensible, personal view.

Almudena Escobar López

Experimental Documentary 251

Directory of World Cinema

Land Without Bread Las Hurdes. Tierra sin pan

Synopsis A bitter documentary about one of the most impoverished regions of Spain in the 1930s, Las Hurdes in the north of Extremadura, whose inhabitants lived as if they were in the Middle Ages among disease and misery.

Director:

Luis Buñuel Producer:

ramón Acín Screenwriter:

Luis Buñuel Pierre Unik Julio Acín Cinematographer:

Eli Lotar Editor:

Luis Buñuel Duration/Format:

29 minutes/B/W Cast:

Inhabitants of the region of Las Hurdes Filming Locations:

Las Hurdes (Extremadura) Year:

1933

252 Spain

Critique Some aesthetic currents have characterized twentieth-century art for its commitment to ‘perverse reality’; a reality that denounces the ugly through its mere existence. This is the case of Land without Bread, a ilm that attempts to express the cry of horror that emerges from a mortally-wounded reality and is circumstantially conined to the Las Hurdes region of Extremadura. Like Theodor Adorno, who argues that art must not represent reality as it is in its immediate deformity but should discover the most adequate forms and devices to enable it to liberate the aesthetic beauty that it embodies, this ilm by Buñuel marshalls a host of devices that function as cinematographic operations which seek not to falsify the reality of the Hurdanos, as has often been interpreted, but to reveal the truth of the world in which this reality is rooted: a primitive world in which deformity is the imposed norm. The inhabitants of Martilandran, a village located in the heart of Las Hurdes, are rapidly transformed into the protagonists of the ilm: a ragged, ilthy girl holding her mother’s hand; other children suffering from goitre, with their bulging necks and patheticallyswollen faces; or a young mother with her son in her arms, aged by the disease and with an enormous lump in her neck – all form a pathetic gallery of almost deformed characters. All of these closeup shots show the faces and bodies of this scrupulously-ailmic human bestiary, which are transferred to cinematographic images. Indeed, the ugliness of the protagonists unequivocally reveals the most wretched aspects of the existential condition of human beings. In a later sequence, a donkey is stung to death by a swarm of bees. The scene concludes with a close-up of the dead donkey’s glassy eye being devoured by the insects: a shot that comes straight from his Un Chien andalou (1929), speciically the scene that shows the decaying head of a donkey resting on the keys of a grand piano. All of these scenes of Land without Bread show that the ilm is not so much an attempt to objectively portray the reality of Las Hurdes but to induce this reality through formalized procedures to create images that will shake up the viewer. In this sense, the ilm perseveres in its ethical intent to remind us of the horror of our existence. Subsequent images once again transform the bodies of the Hurdanos into the protagonists of the ilm; bodies which, after being bitten and inoculated by the viper’s poison or the anopheles mosquito, irst suffer all types of seizures to later

Directory of World Cinema

ind themselves in an increasingly weakened, immobilized state. This radical manifestation of the corporeal reaches its peak with the appearance of dwarves and cretins, particularly a terribly ugly, deformed human igure with anthropoid facial muscles reminiscent of Ignacio zuloaga’s painting El enano Gregorio el botero (Gregorio the Dwarf Bootmaker) (1911). In both the cinematographic and pictorial representations, the stocky dwarves rise above a sterile land, exhibiting themselves as they are: monstrous bodies, bodies that are emphatically scandalous in their contradictory humanity, in images where the realistic and the materialistic are exacerbated and prolong their naturalism in a sort of unique surrealism. Surrealism thus encounters the ugly through ilmic devices that Buñuel had already used in his irst two ilms, Un chien andalou and L´Age d´or/The Golden Age (1930), albeit with images robed in the apparel of iction. yet the Buñuelian iconography of Land without Bread also reveals itself as the heir of popular carnivalesque culture interested in bodily representation; a body in which there is nothing perfect nor complete for having violated in it the natural proportions; a body that is, in short, grotesque. This concept of the grotesque, which prevails in the work of François rabelais, is brought to life in Buñuel’s ilm through a series of images of diverse personages who, as we have seen, are marked by protuberances, anomalies and the exaggerated oriices of their bodies. Land without Bread is thus a rewriting of and a dialogue with the carnival, transforming the ilm into another chapter in the history of the grotesque.

Pedro Poyato

The Silence Before Bach Die stille vor Bach Studio:

Films 59 Director:

Pere Portabella

Synopsis Johann Sebastian Bach moves to Leipzig with his family, where he is to take the post of Cantor in the school of Saint Thomas. Taking this anecdote as the starting point for the storyline, the ilm unfolds a series of associations related to Bach’s music, ranging from Mendelssohn discovering his musical scores one century later, to more contemporary perspectives recreating many distinct everyday situations. More than just a story of the great baroque composer, a relationship between music and image is created composing a free-lowing cinematographic score of its own, Bach being the leitmotif to invite improvised interpretation.

Producers:

Pasqual otal Pere Portabella Screenwriters:

Pere Portabella Carles Santos Xavier Alberti

Critique After hearing Beethoven’s Ninth directed by richard Wagner, the anarchist Bakunin exclaimed that if there ever was anything worth saving from the world’s destruction then it was this German genius’ score. Pere Portabella, quoting the romanian intellectual Emile Cioran through the voice of one of his characters, says something similar in reference to Bach: ‘It is the only thing which reminds us

Experimental Documentary 253

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Tomàs Pladevall Art Director:

Quim roy Editor:

oskar García Gómez Duration:

102 minutes Cast:

Álex Brendemühl Féodor Atkine Christian Brembeck Filming Locations:

Barcelona Dresden and Leipzig (Germany) Year:

2007

that the world is not doomed. What is more, without Bach, God would be of a second-order.’ Thanks to Beethoven’s music, on the one hand, and Bach’s, which is our interest, on the other, the world has meaning. Moreover, as the title The Silence Before Bach stresses, before the baroque musician came on the scene, all was silence. It is with the similar silence of a blank page, or screen, that Portabella chooses to begin and end the ilm; the insurmountable music of Bach serves to ill this emptiness. The truck driver played by Álex Brendemühl uses music for the same redeeming ends. He spends his time travelling from country to country in his enormous truck, ‘where you just seem to annoy everyone else on the road’, and under ‘enormous’ pressure. He tells one of his fellow truck drivers that, in order to handle such a heavy burden and be able to breathe, he had taken up playing chamber music at home. ‘you have to be able to escape’, he points out. He gives Germany as an example: ‘a country made of football fans’, where, ‘when they’re not playing and not singing, they shout, but really shout; when they’re not shouting, they play and sing.’ Music again seems, from an everyday sort of sense, the way to a better, more ‘breathable’ world. We could say, as did the philosopher Eugenio Trías, that music, ‘is a sensory gnosis … a kind of knowledge which cures us from our maladies.’ nevertheless, how is it that music itself produces this ‘sensory gnosis’, while at the same time this ‘knowledge’ can also have its opposite effects? After all, it is the Ninth which was played, each 20 April, to commemorate Hitler’s birthday in exaltation of German patriotism. ‘There is embryological evidence’, says Trías, ‘that allows us to claim that music responds to the maternal voice.’ According to the philosopher, music has its roots in the voice which is, ‘iltered via water’; the water dripping off the naked body of a woman in the shower (the cellist Georgina Cardona) in The Silence before Bach is wholly justiied. Portabella runs the camera over this nakedness just after having shown a group of choir boys singing; this scene, in turn, moves to another where the heavy rain, from which the truck driver takes shelter to play his bassoon in a roadside motel, takes centre stage. The Silence before Bach plays with this maternal pregnancy of music. Bach is everything; before and after the silence. His time spent in Leipzig, his later discovery by Mendelssohn and his stillfelt effect on today, all respond to the all-encompassing rhythm of sound. The cinematographic world of Portabella closes in around this ‘sensory gnosis’. outside of which only silence reigns.

Salva Torres Martínez

254 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Train of Shadows Tren de sombras: El espectro de Le Thuit Studio:

Films 59 Grupo Cine Arte Institut del Cinema Català (ICC) Director:

José Luis Guerín Cinematographer:

Tomàs Pladevall Editor:

Manel Almiñana

Synopsis Train of Shadows surprises the viewer with a ‘revisiting’ of (found) footage of a silent home movie shot in the upper normandy region of France in the 1930s. Guerín immerses the viewers in a nostalgic black-and-white (silent) world only to suddenly throw them into colour and staged recreations. Train of Shadows presents a palimpsest that inspires us to contemplate the fragile nature of the cinematic image (even as we later learn that the supposedly found footage has been painstakingly designed by the director himself). This complex ilm is at once rigorous, poetic, opaque, audacious, and thought-provoking.

Critique The frame story of Train of Shadows can be mentioned in passing although it is far from the most important part of this remarkable ilm. Apparently, a Parisian attorney, Gérard Fleury, died seventy years earlier, leaving several reels of a home movie, shot during the summer of 1930, which were found later. We are informed that what we will view is the restored and re-edited footage by this amateur ilm-maker.

Train of Shadows/Tren de sombras: El espectro de Le Thuit, Grupo Cine Arte.

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Héctor Fáver Joan Antoni González rubén Guillem Pere Portabella Duration/Format:

88 minutes/B/W & Colour Year:

1997

Despite the speciicities of an earlier historical period and class distinctions, there is something oddly familiar about what we see unfolding before our eyes in the ‘found footage’ that shows kids splashing in a makeshift pool and adults mugging for the camera. Train of Shadows is also full of playful citations: from the very early Lumière ilm L’arroseur arrosé/The Gardener Gets Watered (1895); Truffaut’s Les mistons/The Brats (1957) (the girl on a bicycle, the tennis match); renoir’s Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1937) (the girl on a swing); Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953) (the girl’s hand in the mouth of the gorgon); Hitchcocks’s Vertigo (the large tree trunks like sequoiahs); the ilms of ozu (laundry hanging); the ilms of Mizoguchi (the low rowboat on the lake); and perhaps early Antonioni (the street sweeper). And one could even imagine ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955) (car lights racing towards us) and Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) (shooting up toward the light through the leaves). Just as we have adjusted to the silence of the black/white ilm, suddenly we are thrown into the present, in colour and with radios blaring and the sound of cars passing by – a vague tapestry of sounds. A clock ticks in a poignant montage of empty rooms – rooms we had earlier seen full of life. Train of Shadows offers a rich repast of silences which are full of the promise of voices. In fact, if we were to watch the ilm and try to recall it a week later, we might even remember that we had heard many voices throughout! Through his use of freeze frames, detailed close-ups, slow motion, textured images, and reframing, Guerín reminds us of the leeting, and yet resilient, nature of the moving image. In his own writing, the director refers to this as ‘dialogue with History.’ Another experimental, nonlinear technique Guerín uses in Train of Shadows is the juxtaposition of two different ilmstrips to create a new mix of relationships, with characters looking at or past each other. To underline the overlap of the past and the present, Guerín shows us the family in the car waving goodbye over and over. A later split-screen effect shows the young girl and the older woman, offering us a glimpse into the future. In fact, at this point, an actual story seems to be happening: a love triangle involving jealousy and spying from behind trees. In these ways, Guerín’s ilm (which comes at the centenary of the birth of the cinema) nods towards the genres that have made up the irst hundred years of that art form (melodrama, the detective ilm, Hitchcock’s poetic horror mode, and so on). It invites us to contemplate the traces the moving image has left on society over the past century. Train of Shadows ends with a long take of the same present-day street we had seen before but now we realize that, at its far end, a river is lowing constantly. We suddenly realize that what we have experienced over the past 80+ minutes are characters without recorded voices, yet personages whose inner worlds are revealed through posture, spontaneous gestures, inward gazing, and the pace of their strides. Moving images, photographs, silence (and sometimes sound), landscapes, pensive thoughts, destruction, and restoration all interact, but no one layer ever takes precedence for long.

Linda Ehrlich

256 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Umbracle Spain Studio:

Films 59 Director:

Pere Portabella

Synopsis A man wanders through an uncanny, poeticized Barcelona where non-communication prevails. Umbracle is a collage of situations juxtaposed with the urban landscape. Archive material, erotic encounters, slapstick, and a street kidnapping combine to produce a mosaic of the sensorial, of the discordant, of the iterative, of incongruous echoes of sounds and moving images, the mechanized reproducibility of assembly lines and ilm itself in the face of time frozen in taxidermy form.

Producer:

Pere Portabella

Critique

Screenwriters:

Umbracle is the third of an ad-hoc trilogy of full-length experimental features that independent Catalan ilm-maker Pere Portabella directed in the late 1960s and early 1970s (the other two being Nocturn 29, 1968, and Vampir-cuadecuc, 1970) that constitutes both a critique of the Francoist regime and an interrogation of the formal properties of cinematic representation. The introductory sequence points up its characteristics: the grainy texture of the celluloid (the ilm was shot with 16 millimeter stock) suggests a throwback to the silent era, a connection reinforced later by insertion of archival material. Actor Christopher Lee – associated with the Dracula of the Hammer Horror movies of the 1960s – and a vigilant security guard of the zoology Museum in Barcelona’s Parc de la Ciutadella circle one another. Moving between the glass cabinets of stuffed birds, the two men silently and suspiciously negotiate a disputed territory through the blurred glass of the vitrines. The audio track, meanwhile, resounds with an increasingly intense, insistent choral humming. At least two of Umbracle’s key elements emerge in this sequence. The irst is the discordance between sound and image that pervades the entire ilm. The second is the presence of Christopher Lee, whose disquieting strangeness owes much to his familiarity. Lee had appeared in Portabella’s previous ilm, the extraordinary metailmic Vampir-cuadecuc which used the set and the principle actor of Jesús Franco’s Count Dracula. Umbracle, like its predecessor, offers an avant-garde engagement with the popular: archive material featuring the celebrated stars of silent ilm comedy (Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton); a coy reference to spaghetti westerns; the camp, hammed-up horror ilms in which Lee starred; the appearance on stage of a pair of circus clowns who recall connections between ilm slapstick; and the ancient popular traditions of carnival and commedia dell’arte. Discordance is the key element in Umbracle. Its dissonant soundtrack (the dialogues are largely inaudible, mufled, drowned out), its asynchronic quality, is symptomatic of the ilm’s dissidence. While Portabella eschews conventional narrative, Umbracle does have a central action around which its movements revolve. The anonymous, enigmatic character played by Lee is witness to a kidnapping. A group of thugs snatch a pedestrian on the street and bundle him into an unmarked car before driving off. The scene

Joan Brossa Pere Portabella Composer:

Carles Santos Cinematographer:

Manel Esteban Duration/Format:

84 minutes/B/W Cast:

Christopher Lee Jeanine Mestre Filming Locations:

Barcelona Year:

1972

Experimental Documentary 257

Directory of World Cinema

is reproduced, shot from different angles, overlaid by the insistent and hysterical ring of an unanswered telephone, the inexorable sensation of a sinister police state at work. This sequence – the individual moment of action – generates ripples deployed throughout the ilm; ripples whose acoustic counterpart produces echoes. It is in this sense that – precisely and paradoxically in the discordance, in the absence of synchronicity – a correlation between the audio and visual tracks emerges. Umbracle is a mosaic of fragments, of images and sounds, of machine-like reproduction, a cacophony of iterated acoustics, lowing from a singular event. Umbracle – as is true of all Portabella’s work – emphasizes not only the material circumstances of the ilm-making process but also the very materiality of ilm itself. The texture of the celluloid, its surface properties, is echoed in the human body and in the cityscape of Barcelona. The character played by Jeanine Mestre is shot as a igure of erotic desire, as a ilmic body, whose lesh is made textual; the materiality of the ilm and that of her corporeal presence suggest a haptic relation. Mestre is, moreover, subject to other kinds of cinematic reverberations in Umbracle’s Buñuelesque ixation with her legs, feet and footwear (recalling perhaps that Portabella was one of the producers of Viridiana). The metailmic nods and winks in the form are there too – explicitly so – in the diegesis. Immediately following the kidnapping, the ilm introduces three critics (román Gubern, Joan Enric Lahora and Miguel Bilbatua) whose self-relexive interventions on censorship, marginal and underground cinema respectively reinforce Umbracle’s ilmic discourse. But just as there is reverberation, there is also fossilization: the stuffed birds in the museum, the scientiic specimens in jars, frozen in time by formaldehyde, and that emblematic igure of the undead, Dracula embodied by Christopher Lee. In this symbolic, iterative structure is where the politics of Umbracle lie, as much as in the distancing strategies employed.

Steven Marhs

Synopsis

Un chien andalou Un perro andaluz Countries of origin:

Spain France Director:

Luis Buñuel

258 Spain

Due to its absence of narrative structure, the ilm lacks a conventional plot. It is composed of two larger scenes in which appear various scenes of strong visual impact, mainly featuring a man and a woman. The woman is played by the same actress, while the man in the irst scene (where the famous scene of the eye cut by a knife takes place) is played by Luis Buñuel, who disappears immediately after this dramatic event. The male character is then played by Pierre Batcheff, who becomes Simone Mareuil’s partner in the second, longer series of scenes. These unfold without any logical argument, following a kind of free association of ideas based on Dalí’s and Buñuel’s dreams and obsessions. But beyond this personal source they try to represent, in a universal way, the hidden truths of human desire, done in an almost documentary

Directory of World Cinema

Screenwriters:

Salvador Dalí Luis Buñuel Producer:

Luis Buñuel Art Director:

Pierre Schildknecht Cinematographer:

Albert Duverger Editor:

Luis Buñuel Duration/Format:

17 minutes/B/W Cast:

Simone Mareuil Pierre Batcheff Luis Buñuel Salvador Dalí Filming Locations:

Paris Le Havre, Seine-Maritime (France) Year

1929

way, showing their torn and violent aspects when the viewer’s gaze is relieved of any veil or the excuse of iction or narrative.

Critique The ilm attempts to illustrate the supposed impossibility of a fortunate and happy encounter between man and woman taking place. The lack of harmony is speciied by the violent initial aggression, inspired by the Marquis of Sade, of Buñuel himself, with his razor over the beautiful female face. From here, the ambiguities in the construction of an imaginary construction of the male and female positions are constant, thus making the representation of any physical, sexual relationship impossible. A male cyclist is dressed as a woman, with the typical ridiculous additions of a Parisian convent-school girl’s uniform, and with a diagonal striped box, which represents the female, as opposed to the male tie. This female-dressed man also has his hand in a strange and equivocal black hole, which becomes, through a cross-fade, a woman’s armpit hair. Immediately after, by this chain of images, an androgynous-looking woman appears on the screen, groping around with a cane a severed hand that is lying in the street – which refers to a fantasy that explains the horror of castration. This inability to build a recognizable story concerning the events that accompany the ups and downs experienced by the couple, together with the dificulty of staging a performance of male and female, leads both characters to jump over the marriage bed, which they both trample, and, immediately after, the man leaps on the woman, attacking her with unleashed violence. only the more conventional repression seems to stop this relentless attack, impulsive and wild, as the man stops to get his hands on a rope from which hang two pieces of cork, two Marist priests and two grand pianos with donkeys putrefying on top: references to the law, religious morality and decaying bourgeois aesthetics. This allusion to the repression, as dictatorial superego, is expressed in the authoritarian male character who appears as pig, as a parent or teacher who punishes the man who takes a childish attitude, and played, in a mirrored situation, by the same actor, Pierre Batcheff, demonstrating that this is not a third person, but a sinister double of himself. There is nothing more than death, suggested by Acherotia Atropos the butterly and the skull drawn on it – the image also used by Jonathan Demme in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). In the inal scene, ‘En primavera’ (‘Spring’), a supposedly romantic but satirical title that appears an ominous desert landscape, the couple appear, buried up to the chest. Both are shown, as described by the original script, ‘ciegos, con los vestidos desgarrados, devorados por los rayos del sol y un enjambre de insectos’ (‘blind, with his clothes torn, eaten by the sun’s rays and an insect swarm’). It is therefore a vision of desire and its realization, a general characteristic of the so-called avant-garde, and especially of Surrealism, although qualiied from an essentially Spanish tragic perspective.

Luis Martín Arias

Experimental Documentary 259

Directory of World Cinema

Water-mirror from Granada Aguaespejo granadino (aka La gran siguiriya) Director:

José Val del omar Screenwriter:

José Val del omar Cinematographer:

José Val del omar Art Director:

José Val del omar Composer:

José Val del omar Editor:

José Val del omar Duration/Format:

23 minutes/B/W Year:

1953–1955

260 Spain

Synopsis The ilm shows different views of Granada relected in a mirror of water, as expressed in the term ‘aguaespejo’ (‘Water-mirror’). The landscapes of the Sacromonte, the Alhambra and the Generalife follow one another at different moments of the day. The water of the fountains and jets and the stone of the landmarks alternate with the image of the gypsies who are depicted as a telluric strength. These gypsies’ faces show the ecstasy brought by the night when the moon rises. Then the images turn green, evoking mystery. The poetic voice-over inishes with an appeal: ‘Pero que ciegas son las criaturas que se apoyan en el suelo, Dios, Dios, Amor, que ciegas, estando tú tan abierto’ (‘How blind are the creatures that lean on the loor, God, God! Love, so blind, whereas you are so open’).

Critique Aguaespejo granadino (Water-mirror from Granada) is one of the titles of José Val del omar’s trilogy Tríptico elemental de España. This trilogy also consists of Fuego en Castilla, ilmed in Valladolid between 1957 and 1960, and De Barro – Acariño galaico, on which he worked between 1961 and 1967, although he did not actually inish it. He is an unclassiiable artist that met the cream of the artistic avant-garde while in France in 1921. Afterwards, Val del omar took part in the government’s educational policy of the Second Spanish republic between 1932 and 1935, when he went all over Spain with the Pedagogical Missions. The result was some forty documentaries – almost all of them were lost – and thousands of photographs. During Franco’s repressive era, he advocated including technical innovation, formal heterodoxy and a poetic voice into the aforementioned ilmography. Aguaespejo granadino must be placed in this context. It is a ‘polyhedral’ script. The analogies between the shapes in the ilm and an editing that uses the music to set the rhythm have a lot to do with the European ilm avant-garde. However the ilm approach is very close to the Spanish Generation of ’27 because of its thematic references, such as the gypsies, also important in Lorca’s work, or the signiicance of lamenco music to the soundtrack, that is present, for example in the alternative title of the ilm, La gran siguiriya, that refers to the seguidilla, a popular Andalusian dance and music. The use of Noche en los jardines de España by Manuel de Falla also associates this ilm with the cultural universe prior to the Spanish Civil War. The narrative structure of Aguaespejo granadino depends to a large extent on the use of different technical innovations developed by Val del omar himself: the acceleration and deceleration of images; the use of colour ilters that give, for example, a green shade to one of the most intense passages of the documentary; and the use of time-lapse photography. All these technical innovations are elements at the service of a global vision. The most outstanding technical innovation is an approach that anticipates the modern sound design: in a time when synthesizers did not yet exist, the author was able to process up to 500 sounds by using the

Directory of World Cinema

Water-mirror of Granada, The Great ‘Siguiriya’/Aguaespejo granadino (aka La gran siguiriya), Archivo Mª José Val del omar, Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga.

diaphonic-system technology that he invented. Images and, above all, sound try to stimulate the audience with a clearly thoughtful purpose. Val del omar elaborated this approach long before relexive documentaries were a reality by the end of the 1960s. Furthermore, a poetic voice provides the narration with a symbolic unity. For example, during the last few minutes, over a long shot with long depth of ield of the Fountain of the Lions in the Alhambra, the voice-over states: ‘Aguaespejo de la vida. Subir, subir y subir’ (‘Aguaespejo of life. rise, rise and rise’). Then, it moves onto an extreme close-up of one of the jets of the fountain. The camera rises in a panoramic position until it leans on a low shot. And then, by cutting out, it shows a general view of the Alhambra using light pulsations to photograph it. The mystic sense of the narration becomes a reality through this voice-over. The ilm Aguaespejo granadino shows that José Val del omar became a director at the wrong moment in Film History, as the irst interwar artistic avant-garde had already inished and the 1960s’ and 1970s’ artistic movements had not yet begun. His work is a unique combination of art and documentary.

Inmaculada Sánchez Alarcón Experimental Documentary 261

RECOMMEN READING Allinson, Mark (2001) ‘not Matadors, not natural Born Killers. Violence in three ilms by young Spanish directors’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, pp. 315–30. Allinson, Mark (1997), A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, London & new york: IB Tauris. Beck, Jay & rodríguez ortega, Vicente (2008) Contemporary Spanish cinema and genre, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bentley, Bernard PE (2008) Companion to Spanish cinema, Woodbridge; rochester, ny: Tamesis. Besas, P (1985) Behind the Spanish Lens: Spanish Cinema under Fascism and Democracy, Denver, Co: Arden Press. Buckley, CA (2002) ‘Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis: Art, Commerce and renewal, in Spanish Cinema’, Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, 21, pp. 12–25. Buñuel, Luis (2003[1983]) My Last Sigh. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Brémard, Bénédicte and Sicot, Bernard (eds.) (2006) Images d’exil. En el balcón vacío (1962), film de Jomí García Ascot. Paris: Université Paris X-nanterre, Publidix/Centre de recherches Ibériques et Ibéro-Américaines (CrIIA), Groupe de recherches résistances et Exiles (GrEX). Cabello-Castellet, George; Martí-olivella, Jaume & Wood, Guy H, (eds) (2001) Cine-Lit 2000: Essays on Hispanic Film and Fiction, oregon: oregon State U. Cabello Castellet, George, Martí-olivella, Jaume & Wood, Guy H, (eds.) (1992) Cine-Lit: Essays on Peninsular Film and Fiction, Portland: P State University, oregon State University, reed College. Camí-Vela, María (2005) Women Behind the Camera: Interviews with Spanish Women Film-makers 1990–2004, Madrid: ocho y Medio. Caparrós Lera, José María & De España, rafael (1987) The Spanish Cinema. An Historical Approach, Barcelona: Centre for Cinematic research. D’Lugo, Marvin (2006) Pedro Almodóvar, Chicago: Illinois UP Davies, Ann, (ed) (2011) Spain on Screen: Developments in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, new york: Palgrave Macmillan. Deveny, Thomas G (1999a) Cain on Screen: Contemporary Spanish Cinema, 2nd edition, Metuchen, n.J.: Scarecrow Press. Deveny, Thomas G (1999b) Contemporary Spanish Film from Fiction, Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. D’Lugo, Marvin (1997) Guide to the cinema of Spain, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.

ENDED

Directory of World Cinema

Dixon, WW (2000) Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, Albany: State University of new york Press. Edwards, Gwynne (2003), A companion to Luis Buñuel, Woodbridge, UK; rochester, ny: Tamesis. Ehrlich, Linda (ed) (2007) An Open Window. The Cinema of Víctor Erice, Lanham/Londres: The Scarecrow Press. Elsaesser, Thomas (1987) ‘Dada/Cinema?’, in rudolf Kuenzli (ed.), Dada and surrealist ilm, new york, Willis Locker and owens. Epps, Brad & Kakoudaki, Despina (eds) (2009) All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema. Minneapolis & London: Minessota UP España, rafael de (1994) Dictionary of Spanish and Portuguese Film-Makers and Films. Witltshire-Westport: Flicks Books/Greenwood Press. Evans, Peter William (1995) The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and Desire, oxford: oxford Hispanic Studies. Evans, Peter William (2000), Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition, new york: oxford University Press. Faulkner, Sally (2006) A Cinema of Contradiction: Spanish Film in the 1960s, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University. Faulkner, Sally (2004) Literary adaptations in Spanish cinema, London. rochester, ny: Tamesis. Feenstra, Pietsie (2011) New Mythological Figures in Spanish Cinema (1975–1995): Dissident Bodies Under Franco (Film Culture in Transition), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Feenstra, Pietsie and Hermans. Hub. (eds.) (2008) Miradas sobre pasado y presente en el cine español (1990-2005). Université Paris III. Sorbonne nouvelle. UFr d’Études cinématographiques et audiovisuelles. Amsterdam: rodopi, Foro Hispánico 32. Ferrán, ofelia & Glenn, Kathleen M (eds) (2002) Women’s Narrative and Film in Twentieth-Century Spain: A World of Difference(s), new york: routledge. Fouz-Hernández, Santiago (2007) Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, London; new york: IB Tauris. Gibson, C. (1966) Spain in America, new york: Harper. González requena, Jesús (2007) Douglas Sirk. La metáfora del espejo, Madrid: Cátedra (1st edic. 1987). Gubern, román (1999) Proyector de luna: la generación del 27 y el cine, Barcelona: Anagrama.

recommended reading

263

Directory of World Cinema

Gubern, román & Hammond, Paul (2009), Los años rojos de Luis Buñuel, Madrid, Cátedra. Gubern, román, et al. (eds) (1995) Historia del cine español, Madrid: Cátedra. Hawkins, Joan (2000) Cutting Edge. Art Horror and the Horrific Avantgarde, Minnesota: The University of Minnesota Press. Higginbotham, V (1988) Spanish Cinema under Franco, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Holohan, Conn (2010) Cinema on the Periphery: Contemporary Irish and Spanish Film, Dublin; Portland, or: Irish Academic Press. Hopewell, J (1986) Out of the Past: Spanish Cinema After Franco, London: British Film Institute Jordan, Barry & Allinson, Mark (2005) Spanish Cinema: A Student’s Guide, Bloomsbury (USA): Hodder Arnold Publication. Jordan, Barry & Allinson, Mark (2000), Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies, London: Arnold. Jordan, Barry and Morgan-Tamosunas, rikki (1998) Contemporary Spanish Cinema, Manchester; new york: Manchester University Press. Kinder, Marsha (2001) ‘Violence American Style: The narrative orchestration of Violent Attractions’ in D Slocum (ed) Violence and American cinema, new york: routledge, pp. 63–102. Kinder, Marsha (1993) Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain, Berkeley; London: University of California Press. Kuenzli, rudolf (ed) (1987) Dada and surrealist film, nueva york: Willis Locker and owens. Labanyi, Jo (ed) (2002) Constructing identity in contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice, oxford: oxford University Press. Larson, S & Woods, E (ed) (2005) Visualizing Spanish Modernity, oxford; new york: Berg. Lázaro-reboll, Antonio & Willis, Andrew (2004) Spanish Popular Cinema, Manchester; new york: Manchester University Press. Marsh, Steven (2006) Popular Spanish Film Under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State, Basingstoke, England; new york: Palgrave Macmillan. Marsh, Steven & nair, Parvati (2004) Gender and Spanish Cinema, oxford: Berg. Martin-Márquez, Susan (1999) Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema, oxford: oxford UP. Maule, rosanna (2008) Beyond Auteurism: New Directions in Authorial Film Practices in France, Italy and Spain since the 1980s, Bristol, UK & Chicago, USA: Intellect. Mínguez, norberto (2002) Spanish Film and the Postwar Novel: Reading and Watching Narrative Texts, Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Mira, Alberto (2010) Historical Dictionary of Spanish Cinema, Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. Mira, Alberto (ed) (2005) The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, London; new york: Walllower. Molina-Fóix, V (1977) New Cinema in Spain, London: British Film Institute Monegal, Antonio (1994) ‘Introducción’ in Federico García Lorca, Viaje a la luna, Valencia: Pretextos. Morton, J (1986) ‘A-z of Film Personalities’, in V Vale & A Juno (eds) Incredibly Strange Films, San Francisco: rE/Search Publications, pp. 186–205. Morris, CB (1980), This Loving Darkness. The Cinema and Spanish Writers 1920–1936, nueva york: oxford University Press. newman, K (ed) (1996) The British Film Institute Companion to Horror, London: Cassell. 264 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Pavlovic, Tatjana (2003), Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies: Spanish Culture from Francisco Franco to Jesus Franco, Albany, n.y.: State University of new york Press. Pavlovi, Tatjana, et al (eds) (2008) 100 Years of Spanish Cinema, new york: WileyBlackwell. Pérez Perucha, Julio (1983) ‘Dalí y el cinema: una relación frustrada’, in Contracampo, 33, verano-otoño, pp. 18–21. Pérez-Sánchez, Gema (2007) Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to LA MOVIDA, new york: State University of new york Press. Perriam, Chris (2003) Stars and masculinities in Spanish Cinema: From Banderas to Bardem, oxford; new york: oxford University Press. Puyal, Alfonso (2003) Cinema y arte nuevo. La recepción fílmica en la vanguardia española (1917–1937), Madrid: Biblioteca nueva. Quintana, Ángel (2005) ‘Modelos realistas en un tiempo de emergencias de lo político’, Archivos de la Fimoteca, 49, pp. 11–31. reboll, Antonio L & Willis, Andrew (eds) (2004) Spanish Popular Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press. resina, Joan ramón (ed) (2009) Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema, new york: State University of new york Press. richardson, nathan E (2002) Postmodern Paletos: Immigration, Democracy, and Globalization in Spanish Narrative and Film, 1950–2000, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London. Sánchez-Biosca, Vicente (2004) Cine y vanguardias artísticas. Conflictos, encuentros, fronteras, Barcelona: Paidós. Sánchez-Conejero, Cristina (2007) Spanishness in the Spanish novel and cinema of the 20th–21st century, Albany: Suny Press. Sanchis roca, V (1996) Violencia en el cine. Matones y asesinos en serie, Valencia: La Máscara. Sánchez Vidal, Agustín (1982) Luis Buñuel. Obra literaria, zaragoza: Heraldo de Aragón. Schaefer, Claudia (2003) Bored to Distraction: Cinema of Excess in End-Of-TheCentury Mexico and Spain, Albany: State University of new york Press. Slocum, D (2001), Violence and American cinema, new york: routledge. Smith, Paul Julian (2007) Spanish Visual Culture: Cinema, Television, Internet. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Stone, rob (2001) Spanish Cinema, Harlow: Longman. Talens, Jenaro & zunzunegui, Santos (eds) (1998) Modes of Representation in Spanish Cinema, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Torres Hortelano, Lorenzo J (2010) ‘realism and Stylization. Man and Wilderness in Spanish Film of the 60’s and 70’s’, in Cine y... Revista de estudios interdisciplinarios sobre cine español. Texas: Department of Hispanic Studies at Texas A & M University. Triana-Toribio, nuria (2003) Spanish National Cinema, London: routledge. Virmaux, Alain & odette (1999) Artaud/Dulac, París: Paris Expérimental. Willem, Linda M (2003) Carlos Saura: Interviews, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Willis, A (2003), ‘Spanish horror and the light from ”art” cinema, 1967–1973’, in M Jancovich, A Lázaro-reboll, J Stringer, & A Willis (eds) Defining cult movie, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 71–83. zunzunegui, Santos (2005) ‘Prefacio’ in Pedro Poyato (ed) Historia(s), motivos y formas del cine español, Córdoba: Plurabelle.

recommended reading

265

SPANISH CINEMA ONLINE Academia de las artes y las ciencias cinematográficas de España http://www.academiadecine.com/home/index.php Website of the Film Academy. The main objective of the Academy is national and international promotion of Spanish cinema, to defend their professional and analyse Spanish ilm and the industry. Blog del cine español www.elblogdecineespanol.com organized by a movie buff, contains comprehensive information about Spanish cinema. news, interviews, promotion, everything you need can be found here. Cahiers du Cinema/España http://www.caimanediciones.es/ As it says in its headline: ‘the world’s most popular magazine, now in Spanish…’ Although the scope of its relections is international, the magazine pays close attention to Spanish productions. Cine de Aquí http://www.cinedeaqui.es/ Spanish and Latin ilms are addressed in Cine de aquí, a website in progress; premieres, interviews, news and specials. Cine e historia http://www.cinehistoria.com/ Website of educational interest. Try the dissemination of the history of the twentieth century in Spain through cinema. It contains news and search engines of actors and movies.

Directory of World Cinema

Cine español en Wikipedia http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cine_espa%C3%B1ol#Enlaces_externos Full survey of the history of Spanish cinema. Contains information and links of great interest. Cine Ibérico http://www.cineiberico.com/ Dedicated to Spanish cinema with an extensive database of movies, people and businesses. Contrapicado.net http://www.contrapicado.net/ Magazine specializing in ilm criticism. It includes critical thinking and analysis of all types of movies as well as reports from the most signiicant ilm festivals nationwide. De película (RNE, Radio 1) http://www.rtve.es/podcast/radio-nacional/de-pelicula/ Late night programme with all the latest news on ilm, conducted by yolanda Flores. With podcast. Días de cine http://www.rtve.es/television/dias-cine/ The best ilm TV programme on Spanish television. With podcast. Dirigido por http://www.dirigidopor.com/dirigidopor/Principal.html over the years it has become the oldest journal in the ield of ilm themes. Egeda http://www.egeda.es/ Management body that represents and defends the interests of Spain’s audiovisual producers, and it recognizes and protects the existing Law on Intellectual Property. The Grouping is authorized to operate by the Ministry of Culture and it is non-proit. El Séptimo Vicio (RNE, Radio 3) http://www.rtve.es/radio/20080818/septimo-vicio/139155.shtml Since 1999, one of the best radio programmes on Spanish radio, focusing on the indie scene. With podcast. FAPAE http://www.fapae.es/ The Federation of Spanish Audiovisual Producers Associations is a non-proit organization that integrates virtually all ilm production companies, television and advertising in Spain. FAPAE deals with the representation and defence of professional and business interests of the audiovisual production sector with all kinds of people, agencies and entities.

Spanish Cinema online

267

Directory of World Cinema

Festival de cine español de Málaga http://www.festivaldemalaga.com/ Film festival held annually since 1998 in Malaga, Spain, which not only projects the most important releases of the year of Spanish cinema, but also rewards the best ilms of the year with honorary awards. Festival internacional de Gijón http://www.gijonilmfestival.com/ one of the most fashionable ilm festivals around the national scene. Since 1996, Gijón has been home to the best independent cinema worldwide. Festival internacional de San Sebastián http://www.sansebastianfestival.com/index2.html The Festival of San Sebastian is the most important of those held in Spain and all Spanish-speaking countries, as well as one of the longest running and most prestigious in Europe. It is, in fact, one of the largest cultural events in the country. Film-Història Online http://www.pcb.ub.es/ilmhistoria/ Fundada por Josep María Caparrós Lera en la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Estudio de las relaciones entre cine e Historia, utilizando el ilm como fuente de investigación y medio didáctico de las Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, profundizando en su contexto socio-histórico (cinematic contextual history). Festival internacional de Sitges http://sitgesilmfestival.com/cas/ The Fantastic Film Festival of Sitges (there is now, also, the International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia) is one of the most recognized ilm awards in Europe and is considered one of the most important in fantasy cinema. Filmoteca Española http://www.mcu.es/cine/MC/FE/index.html Archive which houses Spanish ilm heritage. Its mission is to recover, research and preserve the audiovisual heritage and promote awareness. Filmotech www.ilmotech.com oficial Sales Page of national ilms. national ilms can be obtained online legally. The Management of Audiovisual Producers rights has created the Filmotech portal, on which can be viewed free trailers and full titles for one euro. ICAA – Instituto de la cinematografía y de las artes audiovisuales http://www.mcu.es/MC/2009/MuestraCultura/Cine.html Website with information and promotion of Spanish cinema. It displays the most signiicant events in which Spanish cinema has an important role. Information of conferences, associations, institutes which promote the products made at home, etc. is kept updated. IVAC – Instituto Valenciano del audiovisual y la cinematografía http://ivac.gva.es/ IVAC website. Today IVAC collates all matters relating to the audiovisual and cinema in Valencia, with measures to promote the establishment and the annual International Film Festival Cinema Jove. 268 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

José Val del Omar http://www.valdelomar.com/inicio.php Dedicated to the great director and experimenter from Granada. Madrid Film Comission http://www.madridilmcommission.com/MFC_Inicio.asp Film Commission for the most important area in Spain for cinema production. Media Desk España http://www.mediadeskspain.eu/inicio.asp Media Desk Spain is one of the ofices established in Spain by the MEDIA Programme of the European Commission initiative to support the European audiovisual sector under the Directorate General for Education and Culture. Ministry of Culture, Spanish Government (datos de películas calificadas) http://www.mcu.es/cine/CE/BBDDPeliculas/BBDDPeliculas_Index.html Web page of the database of Spanish ilms which allows access to all kinds of information about ilms for commercial exhibition in cinemas. Updated regularly. Nuestro cine www.nuestrocine.com/ Webpage dedicated to Spanish cinema, with biographies, ilmographies, releases, reports and rankings. Películas de España http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor%C3%ADa:Pel%C3%ADculas_de_ Espa%C3%B1a Wikipedia article that summarizes hundreds, even thousands, of ilms of Spanish cinema, all in alphabetical order. There are oficial links to the ilms reviewed. It is extremely useful. Seminci – Festival Internacional de Valladolid http://www.seminci.es/indexweb.php La Seminci or International Film Festival of Valladolid is a ilm festival held in the Spanish city of Valladolid. It is an extraordinary example of social and alternative cinema. It has a great reputation. RNE – Cine español http://www.rtve.es/noticias/cine-espanol/ national radio website in Spain dedicated to Spanish cinema. It contains news, videos, audios and photos of Spanish Cinema. It is updated instantly Secuencias. Revista de Historia del Cine http://web.uam.es/servicios/apoyodocencia/ice/secuencias/ Is a bi-annual publication dedicated to the movie studios. Edited by the Autonomous University of Madrid. Semana de Cine Experimental de Madrid http://www.semanacineexperimentalmadrid.com/10/secciones/portada.php 2010 saw its twentieth anniversary. The Experimental Film Week of Madrid aims at promoting cinematographic research and serves as a platform for those engaged in the experimental genre to show their work annually.

Spanish Cinema online 269

Directory of World Cinema

Shangrila Ediciones http://www.shangrilaediciones.com/ Shangrila editions was created with the aim of creating an independent publisher that encourages relection on the cinema, literature and the audiovisual. There are texts of special interest which are updated periodically. Spanish Cinema: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MrC/spanishilmbib.html A huge list of resources from the University of California (Berkeley) that includes general works and articles and books on individual ilm-makers. Trama y Fondo http://www.tramayfondo.com/ Trama y Fondo is focused on textual analysis from various perspectives (anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, ilm theory, etc.); a space that has ilm-related materials and its management from various ields such as semiotics, psychoanalysis and anthropology. The website highlights both a forum and online store, where you can ind back issues of its bi-annual journal Yahoo http://es.movies.yahoo.com/ Website devoted to general information about movies. It contains an important section devoted to Spanish cinema.

270 Spain

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE Questions 1. In what important Jaime rosales movie is there a terrorist attack on a bus? 2. What is the name of the leading Spanish ilm director associated with avantgarde art and ilm? 3. What ilm has been interpreted as a remarkable example of opposition to Franco in the 1960s? 4. name two major foreign directors who have tried to portray the life of Don Quixote 5. What is the most ilmed city in Spanish cinema? 6. What genre is most related to the intellectual Fernando Fernán-Gómez? 7. Which Catalan director has ilmed a movie in Tokyo? 8. Which is the most internationally-known experimental documentary in Spanish cinema? 9. Which Spanish director has recently used the technique known as polyvision? 10. What famous monster is portrayed in the irst ilm by Victor Erice? 11. name the usual producer of Pedro Almodóvar’s ilms? 12. name the title of the irst Spanish ilm awarded an oscar? 13. Which two famous actors are in Bigas Luna’s A Tale of Ham and Passion? 14. Which of Luís García Berlanga’s ilms is related to the USA’s European recovery Programme after WWll? 15. Which actress stars with Andrés Pajares in the movie Ay, Carmela? 16. What is the name of the prizes that are awarded to the best Spanish ilms of the year? 17. Which Spanish character is known as the ‘Stupid Arm of the Law’? 18. Which city is most present in All About my Mother? 19. Who is the screenwriter of The Executioner? 20. What is the most common label for Spanish productions from after the 1970s to the 1990s? 21. Who is the director of Main Street? 22. What is the name of the ilm festival held in Valladolid? 23. Which Spanish ilm-maker has revived the Spanish musical ilm? 24. Who was popularly known as ‘el ruiseñor’ (‘nightingale’) and was also known from Italian cinema? 25. What historical period is relected in Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque?

Test your Knowledge

271

Directory of World Cinema

26. What is the name of the popular young actress who was revolutionizing the country with her songs in the 1960s? 27. Who is the most important composer of Almodóvar’s soundtracks? 28. Which actress and ilm-maker stars in Victor Erice´s El sur? 29. What movie from the 1950s stars the very young Pablito Calvo? 30. Which Spanish actor hangs from a building on the Gran Vía in Madrid? 31. Which city in the north of Spain has the only Spanish category A ilm festival? 32. Which is the only Spanish ilm awarded the Palme d’or in Cannes? 33. Which famous ilm critic was the writer of The Spirit of the Beehive? 34. Who directed the adaptation of Miguel Delibes’ novel The Holy Innocents? 35. Which famous poet stars in Jaime Chávarri’s Disenchantment? 36. Which famous director of rTVE made The Dog in the Manger? 37. Sin novedad en el Alcázar shows images from which war? 38. What is the title of the ilm that debuts Alejandro Amenábar? 39. Who is the movie star actor that cannot leave a phone booth? 40. Which Hollywood actress starred The Other? 41. What ilm festival specializes in Spanish cinema? 42. In what 1929 ilm is one eye cut with a knife? 43. Which ilm by Basilio Martín Patino relects on the Civil War through songs? 44. What is the title of the directing debut by Alex de la Iglesia. 45. Which Fernando León de Aranoa ilm relects on the family? 46. What 1940s movie depicts the Carnival? 47. Which recent documentary links the igure of a baroque musician to the future of Europe? 48. By what name is known the cultural madrilean environment in which Almodóvar took his irst steps as a director? 49. What is the latest experimental movie to adapt Don Quixote? 50. Who wrote the novel that inspired El bosque animado?

272 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Answers 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Solitary Fragments. Luis Buñuel. The Hunt. Chaplin and Capra. Madrid. Black comedy. Isabel Coixet. Land without Bread. Jaime rosales. Frankenstein. Agustín Almodóvar. Begin to Beguine. Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Welcome Mr. Marshall (1952). Carmen Maura ‘Goya’ Torrente Barcelona rafael Azcona Cine de la Transición (The Transition to Democracy Cinema) Juan Antonio Bardem SEMInCI Carlos Saura Joselito. II Spanish republic. Marisol. Alberto Iglesias. Iciar Bollaín. The Miracle of Marcelino. Santiago Segura. San Sebastián. Nazarín. Ángel Fernández Santos. Mario Camus. Leopoldo Panero. Pilar Miró. Guerra Civil. Thesis. José Luis López Vázquez. nicole Kidman. Festival de Cine de Málaga. Un chien andalou. Songs for After a War. Acción Mutante. Family. Domingo de Carnaval. The Silence Before Bach. ‘La Movida’. Honour of the Knights (Quixotic). Wenceslao Fernández Flórez.

Test your Knowledge

273

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS The Editor Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano is Senior Lecturer at Universidad rey Juan Carlos (Audiovisual Language and Analysis and Film Theory). Publications: Directory of World Cinema: Spain (ed., 2011), Film Locations: Madrid (2011), ‘Primavera tardía’ de Yasujiro Ozu: cine clásico y poética Zen (2006). A regular contributor to the journal Trama & Fondo (www.tramayfondo.com). research: textual analysis of all kinds of World cultural texts. The Contributors José María Álvarez Monzoncillo is Vice-Cancellor and Professor of Communication Studies at Universidad rey Juan Carlos where he is director of the Master of Television Journalism programme (UrJC-rTVE), coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Film, Television and Interactive Media UrJC and director of the research Group InFoCEnT. He has worked for numerous national and international agencies in the communications ield. Publications: El futuro del ocio en el hogar (2004), Alternativas de Política Cultural (2007) y La televisión etiquetada: nuevas audiencias, nuevos negocios (2011). Nuno Barradas Jorge works in visual culture and Multimedia at the Institute of Film and Television Studies, The University of nottingham, UK. He is doing research on Santiago Segura’s Torrente ilms, contemporary Spanish and Portuguese cinema, Latin American Cinema, cult ilm and Multimedia Arts. He is editor of the journal Scope. Igor Barrenetxea Marañón is a member of the Association of Contemporary History and member of the Association of Historians of Cinema. A specialist in the relations between History and Cinema, he is currently working at the Institute Europe of the regions-Basque Foundation. Adam Bingham has a PhD in Film Studies/Japanese Cinema from the University of Shefield, where he taught for three years. He now teaches ilm at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, as well as contributing regularly to CineAction, Cineaste, Asian Cinema, Electric Sheep and others. Vanessa Brasil Campos Rodríguez is Lecturer of Film Analysis and Semiotics at UnIFACS (Universidade Salvador). She contributes to Trama & Fondo journals. Publications: Além do espelho.

S

Directory of World Cinema

José Miguel Burgos Mazas is a freelance researcher and is working on the relationship between memory and the recalling of political understanding as a device for capturing and preserving life. Currently, collaborates with three major ilm magazines, Trama & Fondo, Shangrila and El rayo verde, as well as in the ilm club ‘Calle Mayor’ of Palencia. José Cabeza San Deogracias is a Lecturer in Screenwriting and Film Criticism at Universidad rey Juan Carlos. He is also the Visiting researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Publications: The invincible narrative. Hollywood movies in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) (2009). research subjects include history and ilms; Spanish documentaries; screenwriting; and the ilm industry during the Spanish Civil War. María Camí-Vela is a Professor of ilm at the University of north CarolinaWilmington. She has written Women Behind the Camera: Interviews with Spanish Women Filmmakers 1990–2004 (2005). She is a member of the European network for Cinema and Media Studies, the Association of Spanish Women Filmmakers in the Film Industry and the Media, and the Spanish Association of Film Historians. Manuel Canga is editor of Trama & Fondo journal and lecturer at the University of Valladolid. Publications: Fragmentos de Fellini (2010) and La dolce vita (2004). Basilio Casanova is Associate Professor of contemporary art at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Publications: Vida en sombras o el cine en el cine and Leyendo a Hitchcock. He is a member of the Cultural Association, Trama y Fondo. José Luis Castro de Paz is ilm historian and Audiovisual Communication Professor at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. Publications: Un cinema herido. Los turbios años cuarenta en el cine español (1939–1950) (2002), Cine y exilio. Forma(s) de la ausencia (2004), Fernando Fernán-Gómez (2010) or Del sainete al esperpento. Relecturas sobre cine español de los años 50 (with Josetxo Cerdán, 2011), La nueva memoria. Historia(s) del cine español (1939–2000), with Julio Pérez Perucha and Santos zunzunegui. Josetxo Cerdán is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the Universitat rovira i Virgili. He is editor of Imagen, Memoria y Fascinación (2001), Documental y Vanguardia (2005) and Signal Fires: The cinema of Jem Cohen, and the author of Ricardo Urgoiti. Los trabajos y los días (2007). He is involved in a research project, ‘El audiovisual español contemporáneo en el contexto transnacional’, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Jaime Céspedes is Lecturer in Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies and a member of the EA 4028 ‘Textes et Cultures’ research centre at the University of Artois in Arras. He has written La autobiografía española de los años 1990 (2005) and is editor of the CinémAction issue on Cinéma et engagement: Jorge Semprún scénariste. He has been reviewer for this edition of DWC: Spain. Paulo Cunha is PhD student at Coimbra University, researcher at CEIS20 (Centre for 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies) at the University of Coimbra and founding member of the AIM (Portuguese Association of researchers of the

notes on Contributors 275

Directory of World Cinema

Moving Image). research interests are Portuguese Cinema, new Cinemas and Avant-Garde Film. Luis Deltell is Lecturer at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Visiting scholar at Stanford University (2009) and artist-in-residence in royal Academy of Spain in rome. Film-maker with three short movies and two documentaries and has won 30 International Awards. José Díaz-Cuesta is a Lecturer in Anglo-north American Film at the Universidad de la rioja. He has a PhD in representation of masculinities in Steven Spielberg’s monster ilm texts. He also teaches Spanish Film to foreign students. Pablo Echart Orús is a lecturer at the Universidad de navarra, where he is the Chair of the Master Programme in Screenwriting. Publications: La comedia romántica del Hollywood de los años 30 y 40 (2005). Linda C Ehrlich, is Associate Professor at Case Western reserve University She has published articles on World Cinema in Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, Senses of Cinema, Literature/Film Quarterly, Film Criticism, Journal of Film and Video, Ethnomusicology, Cinema Scope, and Journal of Religion and Film, among others. Publications: co-edited with David Desser Cinematic Landscapes, The Cinema of Víctor Erice: An Open Window. Almudena Escobar López is a postgraduate student on the MA Japanese Studies at SoAS. Collaborator on the London Spanish Film Festival and of London’s irst Japanese ilm Festival, zipangu Fest. Pietsie Feenstra lectures at Sorbonne University, Paris III (Department of Film Studies) and is a member of the French research group Théâtres de la Mémoire at the University of Paris III – Sorbonne nouvelle. Publications: Les nouvelles figures mythiques du cinéma espagnol 1975–1995: à corps perdus. Dissident Bodies under Franco); with Hub. Hermans, Miradas sobre pasado y presente en el cine español 1990-2005, and Mémoire du cinéma espagnol 1975-2007. Miguel Fernández Labayen is Postdoctoral research Fellow at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. research: Development of contemporary Spanish ilm culture in a transnational context. He is also the co-director of Xperimenta, Contemporary Glances at Experimental Cinema, and member of the board of the journal Secuencias. Revista de Historia del Cine. Pablo Ferrando García is a Lecturer at Universidad Jaime I de Castellón, Spain, where he teaches Audio-visual narrative and Technology of Communication. He worked for the Valencian Television Channel during (1991–92). Publications: Roma, ciudad abierta and Teoría y Técnica de la producción audiovisual (contributor). Member of the Historians’ Spanish Association of Cinema (AEHC). Magdalena Garrido Caballero has an expertise on cultural studies and International Contemporary History. She is currently working as researcher at Spanish national research Council. Juan Carlos Garrido García is an aspiring freelance writer, interested in American and Spanish cinema.

276 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Fátima Gil is Lecturer of Film History at the Universidad Internacional de la rioja. She is member of a research project inanced by the Science and Innovation Ministery: ‘A history of entertainment in Spain during the Francoist period: culture, consumption and media mass (cinema, radio and television).’ Rafael Gómez Alonso is Senior Lecturer of Visual Culture and Film & Perfoming Arts and Head of Department of Audiovisual Communication I at Universidad rey Juan Carlos. Publications: Cultura Audiovisual. Itinerarios y rupturas (2008). Xiana Gómez-Díaz is a PhD candidate at the Audiovisual Communications and Advertising Department of Universidad Autónoma University de Barcelona. research: ‘women’, ‘television’ and ‘popular music’. Co-creator of the series of short documentaries on popular music in Catalonia Tallers Sonors (2009–10). Agustín Gómez Gómez is Lecturer in the Audiovisual Department of Universidad de Málaga. research: cinema and the art (Picasso Foundation Museum natal House). Publications: coordinator, Profundidad de campo. Más de un siglo de cine rural en España. Luis Mariano González is currently teaching at Connecticut Colleges. research: relationship between culture and ideology in Spain in the 20th and 21st centuries as well as questions of gender, class and ethnicity. Publications: La escena madrileña durante la II República (1931-1939) (1996), El teatro español durante la II República y la crítica de su tiempo (1931-1936) (2007), and Fascismo, kitsch y cine histórico en España (1939-1953) (2009). José Manuel Goñi Pérez is Lecturer of Spanish at Aberystwyth University, Wales. Publications: Análisis estilístico de ‘Cartas de mi sobrino’, Pepita Jiménez (2010). research: north African historical and cultural representation with regards to literature and cinema. Jim Harper is a freelance ilm critic and writer with a passion for cult and cinema from around the globe. Publications: Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies and Flowers from Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film, as well as contributing to two volumes in Intellect’s pioneering Directory of World Cinema series. Marisa C Hayes is a dance ilm director, scholar and founder and co-director of the International Video Dance Festival of Burgundy (France). research on dance ilms has appeared in Repères: Cahier de Danse; the research journal of the French national Dance Biennale; the journal of the Society of Dance History Scholars and The International Journal of Screendance). Her dance ilms have received awards from the new york Dance Films Association. Conn Holohan is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the national University of Ireland, Galway. His publications include Cinema on the Periphery: Contemporary Irish and Spanish Cinema (2010). His current research focuses on migrant spaces in European cinema. Jorge Latorre is Lecturer of Visual Culture at the School of Communication (Journalism, Advertising-Public relations and Audiovisual Studies) of the Universidad de navarra. He has published ive books about History of

notes on Contributors 277

Directory of World Cinema

photography and cinema, the arts, ilm and Media in general and more than 30 articles. Mariana Liz is a PhD candidate at the Film Studies Department at King’s College London. Her research topic is ’European Identity in Contemporary Cinema’, an overview of EU ilm policy, MEDIA programme, analysis of some contemporary European ilms and engagement with the idea of Europe. Francisco Marcos Martín is currently completing his PhD at Universidad de Málaga and the Specialist’s Degree in Cinema History and Aesthetics at the University of Valladolid. His research is based on study of the social history of the cinema. Miguel Marías has been a ilm critic since 1966, writing for many ilm magazines, daily newspapers, radio, TV and Internet. Between 1972 and 1975, he undertook occasional screenwriting for TVE. He is the former Director of the Spanish ilm archive Filmoteca Española(1986–1988) and General Director of ICAA(1988–1990). Publications: Manuel Mur Oti: Las raíces del drama, Sin perdón/Manhattan and Leo McCarey: Sonrisas y lágrimas; plus a booklet on Jacques Tati, and contributions to many collective books. Steven Marsh teaches Spanish Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Publications: Popular Spanish Film Under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State (2006) and co-editor of Gender and Spanish Film (2004). He is currently writing a counter-history of Spanish sound cinema. Luis Martín Arias is Professor in the Department of History and Aesthetic of Film (University de Valladolid). He has taught numerous courses of the textual analysis of ilms. Publications: El cine como experiencia estética(1997), and En los orígenes del cine (2009). Antonio Martínez Illán is Lecturer of narrative Studies at the Universidad de navarra (School of Communication). He has been Visiting Scholar at the University of Bath, England, and The University of Iowa, USA. Book: Seis poemas de Joseph Brodsky (2005). Juan Mas is independent ilm consultant in the ield of VoD rights, Managing Director for national and international markets (1995–2007) and journalist, ilm reviewer and inancial annalist on advertising, theatrical and distribution strategies for the Spanish market at various press agencies and specialized magazines (1990–2008). Isabel Maurer Queipo is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic, Latin American and French media, culture and literature studies at the University of Siegen (Germany). Publications: Surrealism and Film, Intermediality in Latin America, Discours of Dream and Intermediality in Roman Literature and Media, Medial breaks. Ana Melendo Cruz is a Lecturer in Art History and Film at the Universidad of Córdoba. She has an MA in Cultural Management and a PhD in Art History. Her research interest is in Modernity in Italian ilm (M. Antonioni). Publications: Antonioni: Un compromiso ético y estético (2010).

278 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

Neil Mitchell is a freelance writer and critic based in Brighton, UK. He regularly contributes to The Big Picture magazine, The Spectator’s arts blog, Touching From a Distance, Rogue Cinema and others. Co-editor of Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema: Britain and editor of World Film Locations: London (2011). Félix Monguilot-Benzal is a researcher specializing in the history of Hispano/ Italian cinema (cinematographic collaboration between the two countries during Fascism and Francoism, 1939-1943). In 2006 he recovered the movie Frente de Madrid by Edgar neville, considered lost until that time, and he presented it at the ‘Cinema ritrovato’ Festival in Bologna. Javier Moral is Lecturer of Film Production and History of Cinema at Valencian Internacional University (VIU), with a PhD in Cinema and Painting. He is also a regular contributor to different books, research reviews, and ilm magazines. Julio Moreno Díaz is Lecturer in Audiovisual Production at Universidad rey Juan Carlos. research: history of world television and audiovisual production processes in relation entertainment and iction. Manuel Palacio is a Professor at the Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he is also the Dean of the School of Humanities, Communication and Information. He was one the editors of Historia General del Cine and wrote, among others, the books Práctica Fílmica y vanguardia artística en España. Alfonso Palazón is Senior Lecturer of Communication Studies at the Faculty of Science Communication of the Universidad rey Juan Carlos, where he has also been Director of the Department of Communication Sciences. He has worked on various ilm projects as director, producer and screenwriter and is the main investigator for the Intermedia Group (in Multimedia Communication). Nekane Parejo is Lecturer in the Audiovisual Department of Universidad de Málaga. research: History and aesthetics of photography and cinema. Her last published book is Yo fotográfico. Victoria Pastor-González is Lecturer in Spanish at regent’s College, London. She has written and published on European Art Film (Krzysztof Kie´slowski), representations of religion and spirituality, and issues of cultural and national representations in the Spanish media (Benito zambrano and on contemporary Spanish docudramas). Pedro Poyato is Professor at the University of Córdoba, where he teaches History of Cinema and Spanish Cinema and leads a Masters course in Cinematography. He is author of numerous publications on ilm theory and analysis. Publications: Las imágenes cinematográficas de Luis Buñuel (1995), Guía para ver y analizar: ‘Todo sobre mi madre’. Pedro Almodóvar (1999) (2007) and Historias, motivos y formas del cine español (2005). Agustín Rico-Albero is a Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Hertfordshire, where he teaches Spanish language and culture, and regularly contributes to modules in European cinema. His principal research interests are in modern and contemporary Spanish culture, particularly cinema and the media.

notes on Contributors 279

Directory of World Cinema

Carmen Rodríguez Fuentes is Lecturer at the Facultad de Comunicación in Universidad de Málaga where she teaches Spanish Cinema. Luis Miguel Rodríguez Lozano is a ilm programming curator; consultant of the Experimental Film Festival of Madrid and the CEo of Lince Comunicación, a company specializing in the production of ilm festivals and independent ilm distribution. He is doing his PhD on the investigation of the relation between ilm and philosophy. Araceli Rodríguez Mateos is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the Universidad rey Juan Carlos. research: History of Communication, as well as Film and History. Publications: Un franquismo de cine. La imagen política del Régimen en el noticiario NO-DO (1943-1959). Aarón Rodríguez Serrano is a Lecturer of Film Studies in the Universidad Europea de Madrid and regular contributor to Shangrila-Textos aparte and Versión Original. research: Connections between the shoah and the cinema in postmodern societies. Agustín Rubio Alcover is a Lecturer in Film History, Production and Editing at the Universidad Jaime I de Castellón, where he belongs to the research group ITACA-UJI. regular contributor to journals, he has also published El don de la imagen. Un concepto del cine contemporáneo. Inmaculada Sánchez-Alarcón is Lecturer in Documentary Studies at Universidad de Málaga. research covers documentaries and social history of ilm. Publications: The French cinema and the Spanish Civil War (2005) and The Image of Andalusian Women in Spanish cinema (2008). Vicente Sánchez-Biosca is Professor in Film Studies at the Universidad de Valencia and the editor of the journal Archivos de la Filmoteca since 1992. He has been Visiting Professor in Paris, Princeton, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Havanna and member of the Conseil Artistique de la Casa de Velázquez. Publications: NO-DO: el tiempo y la memoria (2001) and Propaganda y cine del bando nacional en la Guerra civil (both with r. Tranche, 2011), Cine y vanguardias artísticas (2004), Cine y Guerra civil española (2006), Cine de historia, cine de memoria (2006). John D Sanderson is a Senior Lecturer on Film and Literature and on Film and Theatre Translation at the Universidad de Alicante, Spain. He teaches in post-graduate courses at the Universities of Málaga, Valencia and Centro de Estudios Ciudad de la Luz (Alicante). Publications: ¿Cine de autor?: revisión del concepto de autoría cinematográfica (2005), Trazos de cine español (2007), and Constructores de ilusiones: la dirección artística en España (2010) with Jorge Gorostiza. Ana Sedeño is assistant Professor in the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the Universidad de Málaga, with subjects in ilm studies and commercial directing. Jean-Claude Seguin is Professor at the University Lumière-Lyon2. He has published many books, including Histoire du cinéma espagnol, La Production

280 Spain

Directory of World Cinema

cinématographique des Frères Lumière, Pedro Almodóvar o la derivas de los cuerpos. He has also written over 100 articles, and has been invited to lecture at various universities (Carlos III, Harvard, Sevilla, etc.) Isabel Sempere has researched the history of Spanish cinema, especially that of the 1940s and 1950s. She is also television archivist for rTVE. Publications: The Film Production in Spain: Vicente Sempere (1935-1975) (2009). Begoña Siles Ojeda is Lecturer of Audiovisual narrative and Spanish Cinema at Universidad CEU-Cardenal Herrera. She has also published two books about the Spanish Director, Pilar Miró, and several articles about the ilms of Spanish ilmmakers Ana Díez and Iván zulueta. David Sterrit is chair of the national Society of Film Critics, chief book critic of Film Quarterly, editorial board member of Cinema Journal and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and adjunct Professor at Columbia University and the Maryland Institute College of Art. His books and writing has appeared in Cahiers du cinéma, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Hitchcock Annual. Kuhu Tanvir is one of the editors of the journal Wide Screen; previously an editor of nDTVMoVIES.com, the vertical web of the Indian news channel; and contributor to the Daily Bulletin of the osian’s Cinefan Festival 2007. She has an MPhil in Cinema Studies from the Jawaharlal nehru University, new Delhi. Salvador Torres Martínez is a cultural arts critic and journalist for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. He has also published several articles in the cinema journal Trama & Fondo. Revista Cultural. Federico Utrera is assistant Professor of Audiovisual Communication at Universidad rey Juan Carlos, and writer, journalist and editor. He has directed a ilm season on Leopoldo Panero in ilm festival of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Astorga (León). Publications: Después de tantos desencantos. Vida y obra poéticas de los Panero.

notes on Contributors 281

GLOSSARY Castizo: ‘pure’ or ‘genuine’. The feminine form is castiza. From this, evolved other meanings, such as ‘typical of an area’ and it was also used for one of the colonial Spanish race categories, the castas, that evolved in the seventeenth century. However, it was mainly used in Madrid for costumes, music, and speech typical of the Madrid populace about the end of the nineteenth century. A person dressed in castizo fashion can be called manolo/manola and chulapo-a. Many zarzuelas are set in a castizo environment. Chulapo-a: Individual from certain typical or traditional Madrid neighbourhoods. It applies especially to Madrid. Conversaciones de Salamanca / Salamanca Conference (1955): Meeting organized by two ilmmakers at Universidad de Salamanca Film Club: Basilio Martín Patino (as director) and the communist Juan Antonio Bardem. Different intellectuals and professionals represented all ideologies. There were some timid criticisms of the situation of cinema in Spain, proposing a more committed and social cinema. Copla: Poetic form of four verses found in many Spanish popular songs as well as in Spanish literature. The form is also found widely in Latin America. The name derives from the Latin copula, (‘link’ or ‘union’). It is known popularly as a musical genre, with the same name, mostly in Andalusia, so ‘Andalusian copla’ is a type of light music that lourished in Spain since the 1940s, with songs of human passions, often of a narrative type – classic stories in which the characters are overwhelmed by a passion that they neither can nor want to control. The support of the Franco regime as a symbol of national identity enhanced the decline of the copla, but nowadays a new generation of young singers are reviving it. Costumbrista / Costumbrismo: Literally ‘dealing with local customs’ (Regionalism). originally a movement of Latin American literature, with an emphasis on the manners and oral traditions of a particular region through which audiences can easily identify indigenous traditions. Españolada: Action, entertainment or artwork that exaggerates the Spanish character. It is a stereotype created by the reduction of Spanish reality to

Directory of World Cinema

Andalusian manners. Applied to ilm, originally, it made reference to epic movies and historical dramas in the irst half of the twentieth century. But, recently, it has been used to refer to a type of ilm made in Spain that tended to be a topical and sexist comedy, shot during the Franco dictatorship, that often extolled stereotypes. Apart from this derogatory aspect, these movies had a tremendous success in Spain. Esperpento: A term recreated by ramón María del Valle-Inclán (1866–1936) who, from its original meaning (‘foolish’, ‘extravagant’, ‘absurd’), applied it to describe the aesthetics and themes of his theatre, characterized by the grotesque distortion of reality, to serve for an implicit criticism of society. Falangist: Belonging to Falange Española de las JonS (Juntas de ofensiva nacional Sindicalista), which spans several political movements and parties in Spain dating from the 1930s – most particularly the original fascist movement – and was founded by José Antonio Primo de rivera. ‘Falange’ means ‘phalanx formation’ in Spanish. The Falange itself was founded by José Antonio Primo de rivera in 1933, during the Second Spanish republic, and was, originally, similar to Italian fascism in many respects. Generation of ’98 / Generación del 98: A group of novelists, poets, essayists, and philosophers active in Spain at the time of the Spanish-American War (1898). The name ‘Generación del 98’ was coined by novelist Azorín in his 1913 essays entitled ‘La generación de 1898’, alluding to the moral, political, and social crisis in Spain produced by the loss of the colonies of Cuba, Puerto rico and the Philippines after defeat in the Spanish-American War of that same year. Goya (Prizes) / Los Goya: Created in 1987, are equivalent to the oscars in Spanish Cinema. Juerguista: Fun-loving persona. originally, ‘juerga’ (‘spree’) in Andalusia refers to a very boisterous party, for singing, drinking and dancing lamenco. La Movida: The Madrilenian groove scene. It was a countercultural (and apolitical) movement that took place mainly in Madrid during the Spanish transition after Franco’s death in 1975. It also emerged in parallel in other Spanish cities, such as Barcelona or Valencia. It was characterized by freedom of expression, transgression of the taboos imposed by the Franco regime, or the use of drugs. The best-known artist from the period is probably Pedro Almodóvar, although La Movida’s main expression was music. Mirador: A weekly magazine of literature, art and politics, founded in Barcelona in 1929 until 1936; essentially Catalan, but with a clear European sense. Had contributions from Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Ilya Ehrenburg and Tristan Tzara. Organilleros: organ grinders, musicians who plays hurdy-gurdy. PSOE: Is the acronym for the Spanish Worker Socialist Party founded in Spain in 1879 and with a Social Democratic ideology. It is, along with the PP (People’s Party, conservative) one of the two major parties. Currently, it has ruled the country since 2004.

Glossary 283

Directory of World Cinema

Rrollo: ‘rollo’, colloquially, means ‘boring thing’ and ‘good mood’ depending on the context. In 1973, in Barcelona, an auto-edited fanzine called ‘El rrollo enmascarado’ was born – the irst underground comic created in Spain from a diverse art collective that would become very important in the future: Ceesepe, El Hortelano, Mariscal, Miquel Barceló and so on. It is usually placed within a broader movement, ‘cultura del rrollo’, as a kind of ‘movida’ before Madrid’s Movida. The Transition / La Transición: The Spanish transition to Democracy occurred when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. The Transition is usually said to have begun with his death in 1975, while its completion has been variously said to be marked by the Spanish Constitution of 1978, the failure of Antonio Tejero’s attempted coup on 23 February 1981, or the electoral victory of PSoE on 1982. King Juan Carlos played an important democratic role in this process. Apart from its more shadowy aspects, it is nowadays considered an exemplary process for young democracies around the World. Zarzuela: the most popular music genre in Spain. It is the Spanish form of operetta, a lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance. The name derives from a royal hunting lodge, the Palacio de la Zarzuela near Madrid, where this type of entertainment was irst presented to the court. The palace was named after the place called ‘La zarzuela’ because of the profusion of brambles (‘zarzas’). The subject matter is varied, but often deals with socio-economic problems of their time, including subtle criticism of the establishment.

284 Spain

F

FILMOGRAPHY

A Man on the Road/Un hombre va por el camino (1949) A Tale of Ham and Passion/Jamón, Jamón (1992) Alatriste (2006) All About my Mother/Todo sobre mi madre (1999) Alone/Solas (1999) Amanece, que no es poco (1988) Anguish/Angustia (1987) Atraco a las tres (1962) Ay, Carmela!/¡Ay, Carmela! (1990) Belle Époque (1992) Bilbao (1978) Birdsong/El cant dels ocells (2008) Biutiful (2010) Black Sky/Cielo Negro (1951) Black Sky/Cielo Negro (1951) Bocage/Las Tres Gracias (1936) Butterfly Wings/Alas de mariposa (1991) Carmen fra i rossi (1939) Chaotic Ana/Caótica Ana (2007) The City of No Limits/En la ciudad sin límites (2002) Contactos (1970) Cows/Vacas (1992) Dark and Bright/Morena Clara (1936) The Day of the Beast/El día de la bestia (1995) Death of a Cyclist/Muerte de un ciclista (1955) The Devil’s Backbone/El espinazo del diablo (2001) The Disenchantment/El Desencanto (1976) The Dog in the Manger/El perro del Hortelano (1996) Domingo de Carnaval (1945) Dream of Light/El sol del membrillo (1992) El bosque animado (1987) The Executioner/El Verdugo (1963) Flamenco (1995) Flowers from Another World/Flores de otro mundo (1999) Furrows/Surcos (1951) The Girl of Your Dreams/La niña de tus ojos (1998) The Holy Innocents/Los santos inocentes (1984)

167 69 147 70 107 87 203 88 127 90 204 245 10 69 72 148 109 168 73 111 247 150 128 225 208 227 185 152 206 249 187 91 130 112 184 132 188

African-American Cinema 285

Directory of World Cinema

Honour of the Knights (Quixotic)/Honor de cavalleria (2006) The House of Bernarda Alba/La casa de Bernarda Alba (1987) The House That Screamed/La Residencia (1969) The Hunt/La caza (1965) In the City/En la ciudad (2003) It Happened in Broad Daylight/El Cebo/Es geschah am hellichten Tag (1958) La vida en un hilo (1945) Land Without Bread/Las Hurdes. Tierra sin pan (1933) The Last Ones in the Philippines/Los últimos de Filipinas (1945) Life Marks/La vida mancha (2003) Locura de amor (1948) Main Street/Calle Mayor (1956) The Miracle of Marcelino/Marcelino pan y vino (1955) The Miracle of P Tinto/El milagro de P Tinto (1998) Mondays in the Sun/Los lunes al sol (2002) Mutant Action/Acción Mutante (1993) My Life Without Me/Mi vida sin mí (2003) The Nail/El Clavo (1944) The National Shotgun/La escopeta nacional (1978) Nobody Will Speak of Us When We’re Dead/Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto (1995) Oh Pain, Little Pain, Pain/Pena, Penita, Pena (1953) The Old Memory/La vieja memoria (1979) The Orphanage/El orfanato (2007) The Other Side of the Bed/El otro lado de la cama (2002) The Others/Los otros (2001) Our Lady of Fatima/Nuestra Señora de Fátima (1951) Pan’s Labyrinth/El Laberinto del Fauno (2006) The Phone Box/La Cabina (1972) Plácido (1961) Poachers/Furtivos (1975) Poniente (2002) Radio Stories/Historias de la radio (1955) Rapture/Arrebato (1979) [Rec] (2007) The Red Fish/Los peces rojos (1955) The Red Squirrel/La ardilla roja (1993) The Remains from the Shipwreck/Los restos del naufragio (1978) The Secret Life of Words/La vida secreta de las palabras (2005) Seven Days in January/7 días de enero (1979) Shirley Temple Story (1976) The Siege of the Alcázar/Sin novedad en el Alcázar (1940) The Silence Before Bach/Die stille vor Bach (2007) Skyline/La línea del cielo (1983) Soldiers of Salamina/Soldados de Salamina (2003) Solitary Fragments/La soledad (2007) Songs for After a War/Canciones para después de una guerra (1976) Speak, Little Mute Girl/Habla, mudita (1973) The Spirit of the Beehive/El espíritu de la colmena (1973) Spell/Embrujo (1946) Strange Journey/El extraño viaje (1964)

286 Spain

153 114 229 115 250 210 171 252 155 75 156 172 174 93 117 230 76 176 95 211 134 190 232 135 234 159 236 237 97 191 119 177 193 238 213 78 194 80 195 136 160 253 99 214 120 138 197 179 140 100

Directory of World Cinema

The Swindlers/Los tramposos (1959) Thesis/Tesis (1996) Things I Never Told You/Cosas que nunca te dije (1996) Timecrimes/Los Cronocrímenes (2007) The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks/La Torre de los Siete Jorobados (1944) Train of Shadows/Tren de sombras: El espectro de Le Thuit (1997) Umbracle/Spain (1972) Un chien andalou/Un perro andaluz (1929) Un rayo de luz (1960) Vida en sombras (1948) Voices in the Night/Las voces de la noche (2003) Voyage to Nowhere/El viaje a ninguna parte (1986) Viridiana (1961) Water-mirror from Granada/Aguaespejo granadino (aka La gran siguiriya) (1953–1955) You Are the One (A Story of the Past)/You are the one (Una historia de entonces) (2000)

102 216 81 217 240 255 257 258 142 181 82 198 122 260 161

Filmography

287

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA SPAIN EDITED By LorEnzo J. TorrES HorTELAno

Though well-loved by moviegoers worldwide, Spanish cinema has thus far suffered from a relative lack of critical attention. Focusing on the vast corpus of films that have left their marks on generations of spectators, Directory of World Cinema: Spain returns the national cinema of Spain rightfully to the forefront with numerous full-colour stills and essays establishing the key players and genres in their sociopolitical context, including civil war films, romances, comedies, and the cinema of the transition. From the awardwinning big-budget productions of Pedro Almodóvar in Madrid to Pere Portabella’s experimental documentaries and the influential Barcelona School, reviews cover individual titles in considerable depth. Essential reading for aficionados of Spanish cinema at all levels, this volume provides an accessible overview of the main trends and issues in Spanish film. Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema aims to play a part in moving intelligent, scholarly criticism beyond the academy by building a forum for the study of film that relies on a disciplined theoretical base. Each volume of the Directory will take the form of a collection of reviews, longer essays and research resources, accompanied by film stills highlighting significant films and players.

ISBN 978-1-84150-463-6

Directory of World Cinema ISSn 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSn 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: Spain ISBn 978-1-84150-463-6 Directory of World Cinema: Spain eISBn 978-1-84150-577-0

00

9 781841 504636

www.worldcinemadirectory.org intellect | www.intellectbooks.com