Global Genres, Local Films: The Transnational Dimension of Spanish Cinema 9781501302985, 9781501303012, 9781501302992

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Global Genres, Local Films

Global Genres, Local Films The Transnational Dimension of Spanish Cinema Edited by Elena Oliete-Aldea, Beatriz Oria, and Juan A. Tarancón

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Elena Oliete-Aldea, Beatriz Oria, Juan A. Tarancón, and Contributors, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Global genres, local films: the transnational dimension of Spanish cinema / edited by Elena Oliete-Aldea, Beatriz Oria, and Juan A. Tarancón. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-5013-0298-5 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures and transnationalism—Spain.  2. Motion pictures—Spain—History and criticism.  I. Oliete-Aldea, Elena, 1978– editor.  II. Oria, Beatriz, 1981– editor.  III. Tarancón, Juan A. PN1993.5.S7G58 2015 791.430946—dc23 2015018850

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-0298-5 PB: 978-1-5013-2016-3 ePub: 978-1-5013-0300-5 ePDF: 978-1-5013-0299-2 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

To Alberto Elena

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments List of Contributors Foreword: Spanish Cinema and the “National/Transnational” Debate:   A Brief Reflection  Barry Jordan

Introduction: Questions of Transnationalism and Genre  Elena Oliete-Aldea, Beatriz Oria, and Juan A. Tarancón

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Part 1  Rethinking Spanishness: The Soft Edges of Early Cinema 1 2 3 4 5

The Tuneful 1930s: Spanish Musicals in a Global Context  Valeria Camporesi

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Historical Films During the First Years of the Franco Regime and their Transnational Models  Vicente J. Benet

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Realism, Social Conflict, and the Rise of Crime Cinema in Francoist Spain  Juan A. Tarancón

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Luis Lucia’s Lola la piconera (1951): Hybridity, Politics, Entertainment  Federico Bonaddio

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Nothing Ever Happens: Juan Antonio Bardem and the Resignification of Hollywood Melodrama (1954–63)  Daniel Mourenza

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Part 2  Broadening Perspectives: Crossing Borders, Crossing Genres 6 7

Carlos Saura’s Stress es tres, tres (1968): A New Spanish Cinema with French and American Influences?  Arnaud Duprat de Montero Violence, Style and Politics: The Influence of the Giallo in Spanish Cinema of the 1970s  Andy Willis

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8

Spanish Gothic Cinema: The Hidden Continuities of a Hidden Genre  115 Ann Davies

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Reframing Empire: Mediating Encounters and Resistance in Spanish Transatlantic Cinema since 1992  Noelia V. Saenz

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10 The Transnational Dimension of Contemporary Spanish Road Movies  Carmen Indurain Eraso

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11 Rural Spain as a Transnational Space for Reflection in Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo (1999)  Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy

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Part 3  Appropriating the Global: Self-­Conscious Transnationalism 12 Isn’t it Bromantic? New Directions in Contemporary Spanish Comedy  Beatriz Oria

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13 Malamadres and Bertomeus: Transnational Crime Film and Television  Luis M. García-Mainar

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14 Local Responses to Universal Sufferings in Isabel Coixet’s Transnational Melodramas  Hilaria Loyo

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15 Transnational Contours and Representation Models in Recent Films about Immigration in Spain  Alberto Elena and Ana Martín Morán

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16 Transnational Identities in Galician Documentary Film: Alberte Pagán’s Bs. As. and Xurxo Chirro’s Vikingland  Iván Villarmea Álvarez

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17 (In)Visible Co-­Productions, Spanish Cinema, the Market and the Media  Vicente Rodríguez Ortega

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Index

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List of Figures 1 2 3 4

Bs. As. (Alberte Pagán 2006). Voyeur’s perspective Bs. As. (Alberte Pagán 2006). Walker’s perspective Luis Lomba in Vikingland (Xurxo Chirro 2011) Eloy Domínguez Serén in Pettring (Domínguez Serén 2011)

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Acknowledgments Research towards this book was partly funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the research project no. FFI2013– 40769–P, “Vistas locales de un cine global: diálogo textual y cultural entre los cines estadounidense, británico y español.” The editors would like to thank all the contributors. Without their knowledge of Spanish cinema and their rigorous and creative work this book would not have been possible. We also appreciate their patience and helpful collaboration in addressing our comments and suggestions. Special thanks are due to the members of our research group. The book has developed through our exchanges and discussions on the issues of film genre and transnational cinema and it could not have been accomplished without their help. Finally, we would like to pay tribute to our colleague Alberto Elena, who passed away during the preparation of this volume. He will always be remembered for his humanity and for the depth and rigor of his scholarship. This book is dedicated to him.

List of Contributors Vicente J. Benet is Professor of Film Studies at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain). Over the last few years, he has focused his research on the history of Spanish film, particularly the transition to sound and also the experimental and avant-­ garde films of the 1960s and 1970s. He is the author of El cine español, una historia cultural (Barcelona: Paidós, 2012) and he was the managing editor of Archivos de la Filmoteca between 1993 and 2012. Federico Bonaddio is Senior Lecturer in Modern Spanish Studies at King’s College London, UK. He has published on a range of subjects in the area of modern Spanish culture, most notably on the poetry of Federico García Lorca as well as popular Spanish cinema. He is author of Federico García Lorca: The Poetics of Self-Consciousness (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2010) and editor of A Companion to Federico García Lorca (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007). His essays include “Idealizing Lola: Two Film Adaptations of the Machado Brothers’ play, La Lola se va a los puertos” (2003); “Dressing as Foreigners: Historical and Musical Dramas of the Early Franco Period” (2004); and “Being Good: Manliness and Virtue in Gonzalo Delgrás’ El Cristo de los faroles (1957)” (2011). Valeria Camporesi is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Art History and Theory of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). Her main research interests concern a general revision of the “national identity” concept in European media history. She has published extensively on the transnational history of Spanish cinema. Her main publications on the subject include: Il cinema spagnolo attraverso i film (ed. V. Camporesi; Roma: Carocci, 2014); Para grandes y chicos. Un cine para los españoles 1940–1990 (Madrid: Turfán, 1994); “Whose Films are These? Italian-Spanish Co-­productions of the Early 1940s,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34, 2 (2014), 208–30; “L’espagnolade autour d’Almodóvar. L’Espagne à l’écran à la fin du millénaire,” in Histoire et culture à l’épreuve du cinéma espagnol (eds V. Sánchez Biosca and P. Feenstra; Paris: Colin, 2014). Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. She is one of the founder members of the Iberian

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Association of Cultural Studies and executive secretary to the Board of the Association for Cultural Studies. Her publications include the co-­edition of Culture and Power (Barcelona: Prensas Universitarias, 1995), Gender, I-deology: Essays on Theory, Fiction and Film (Amsterdam and New York: Rodolpi, 1996), Culture and Power: Business (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias, 1999), Culture and Power: Confrontations (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias, 1999), Culture and Society in the Age of Globalisation (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias, 2005), and she has edited a volume of translations into Spanish of several important articles by Lawrence Grossberg: Estudios culturales: teoría, política y práctica: Lawrence Grossberg (Valencia: Letra Capital, 2010). She is also the author of El cine británico de la era Thatcher: ¿cine nacional o “nacionalista”? (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias, 2006) and Los estudios culturales en España: exploraciones teórico-­ conceptuales desde el “limite” disciplinar (Valencia: Advana Vieja, 2013). Ann Davies is Chair of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland. She is the author of Spanish Spaces: Landscape, Space and Place in Contemporary Spanish Culture (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), Penélope Cruz (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Pedro Almodóvar (London: Grant and Cutler, 2007), and Daniel Calparsoro (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). She is co-­author of Carmen on Film: A Cultural History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). She is editor of Spain on Screen: Contemporary Developments in Spanish Film (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and co-­editor of The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), Carmen: from Silent Film to MTV (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005) and The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). She has also written various articles on contemporary Spanish and Basque cinema. She is currently writing on contemporary Spanish Gothic culture. Arnaud Duprat de Montero is Lecturer at Université Rennes 2. His research is centered on Luis Buñuel’s films and, in terms of actor studies, on Isabelle Adjani and the partnership between Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin. He has published articles on Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière, Raúl Ruiz, Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Saura, Víctor Erice, Jaime Rosales, Isabelle Adjani, Geraldine Chaplin, Ava Gardner, and Vivien Leigh. He collaborated in the 2012 Studiocanal release of the Blu-­ray edition of Cet obscur objet du désir (Luis Buñuel 1977) and has published two books: Le dernier Buñuel (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de

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Rennes, 2011) and Isabelle Adjani, un mythe de l’incarnation (Lormont: Le bord de l’eau, 2013). Alberto Elena was Professor in Media Studies at the Carlos III University of Madrid until his death in April, 2014. Member of the Editorial Boards of New Cinemas and Secuencias, he organized different film retrospectives and was on the jury of a variety of international festivals. His publications include: Satyajit Ray (Madrid, 1998), Los cines periféricos (Barcelona, 1999), The Cinema of Latin America (London/New York, 2003; co-­authored), The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami (London, 2005), and La llamada de África. Estudios sobre el cine colonial español (Barcelona, 2010), as well as various contributions to specialized journals. Luis M. García-Mainar is Senior Lecturer in Film and American Studies in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He is the author of Clint Eastwood: de actor a autor (Barcelona: Paidós, 2006) and his work has appeared in, among other journals, Screening the Past, European Journal of American Studies, Cineaction, and the Journal of Film and Video. He has published on US auteurs, gender, and genre from both a formal and cultural perspective. He is currently working on a book about transnational cinema titled The Introspective Realist Crime Film. Carmen Indurain Eraso has been a Lecturer at the Public University of Navarre and the Spanish Distance Education University in Pamplona (Spain) since 1996. Her research field focuses on film and cultural studies of English-­speaking countries and Spain, on genre (generic hybridization, road movies, and border films), gender, minorities, migration, transnational cinema, and globalization. She has published A Culture on the Move: Contemporary Representations of the US in Road Movies of the 1990s (UMI ProQuest, 2006), and a number of essays on film genre published in Beyond Borders: Re-­defining Generic and Ontological Boundaries; Generic Attractions: New Essays on Film Genre Criticism; American Secrets: The Politics and Poetics of Secrecy in the Literature and Culture of the United States, and in Film Journal, Atlantis and ES. Barry Jordan is Professor of European Cinema and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. His specific areas of academic interest are Hispanic cinemas, European cinema and film theory. His major publications include: Writing and Politics in Franco’s Spain (London: Routledge, 1990); Contemporary

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Spanish Cinema (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998; co-­authored with Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas); Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies (London: Arnold, 2000; co-­edited with Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas); Spanish Culture and Society: The Essential Glossary (London: Arnold, 2002; editor), and Spanish Cinema: A Student’s Guide (London: Arnold, 2005; co-­authored with Professor Mark Allinson). He has also published a comprehensive monograph on Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012). Hilaria Loyo is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Zaragoza where she teaches Film and American Studies. She has published articles on Hollywood film stars, the cultural reception of Marlene Dietrich, and the Carmen myth. She has contributed book chapters on Hollywood female blondes and film genres in volumes like Wendy Everett (ed.), Questions of Colour in Cinema: From Painbrush to Pixel (Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2007), and Antonis Balasopoulos et  al. (eds), Conformism, Non-Conformism and Anti-Conformism in the Culture of the United States (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008). Her latest research project has focused on transnational exchanges, transnational cinema, cosmopolitanism, trauma, and melodrama in the films of Isabel Coixet. She is currently working on a project dealing with Hollywood blondes and transnationalism. Ana Martín Morán is lecturer in Media Studies at the Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid, and holds a PhD in History of Film. Her thesis and some of her published works focus on film production of the North African diaspora in France. She has also published articles in several books and specialist journals on documentary films, Latin American, and North African cinema. She belongs to the Research Project CSO2010–15798 (TRANSCINE), “El audiovisual español contemporáneo en el contexto transnacional: aproximaciones cualitativas a sus relaciones transfronterizas,” financed by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Daniel Mourenza holds a PhD in Cultural Studies awarded by the University of Leeds. His thesis analysed Walter Benjamin’s writings on film in relation to his broader theories on technology and the human body. He is currently teaching in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. His fields of research are visual culture, critical theory, film theory, and

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aesthetics and politics. Mourenza has published a book chapter on Walter Benjamin’s rehabilitation of allegory in Charlie Chaplin and a journal article about the utopian potentials that Benjamin envisioned in technology. Elena Oliete-Aldea is Lecturer at the Department of English and German Studies of the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Her research interests center on film and cultural studies, more specifically on representations of gender and ethnicity in transnational cinema and globalization. She has co-­edited the book Culture and Society in the Age of Globalisation (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias, 2005) and translated a collection of essays by Lawrence Grossberg into Spanish: Grossberg, Lawrence. Estudios culturales. Teoría, política y práctica (Valencia: Letra Capital, 2010). She is currently working on a book on British Raj revival films entitled Hybrid Heritage on Screen: The Raj Revival in the Thatcher Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Beatriz Oria is Lecturer at the English Department of the University of Zaragoza, Spain, where she teaches Film Analysis. Her primary areas of interest include film, television, and cultural studies, and her current research focuses on globalization and comedy. She has published articles on Sex and the City, Woody Allen, and romantic comedy in journals like The Journal of Popular Film and Television, The Journal of Popular Culture or Journal of Popular Romance Studies. She is the co-­editor of Intimate Explorations: Readings Across Disciplines (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009) and the author of the book Talking Dirty on “Sex and the City”: Romance, Intimacy, Friendship (Lanham, New York, Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). Vicente Rodríguez Ortega is Lecturer at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He has a PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University and an MA in Communications from the University of Iowa. His main research interests are cinema and globalization, digital cinema, film genres, Spanish cinema, and urban spaces in film. He is the co-­editor of Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) and the author of La ciudad global en el cine contemporáneo. una perspectiva transnacional (Santander: Shangrila, 2012). He has written numerous book chapters and journal articles such as “Spoof Trailers, Hyperlinked Spectators and the Web” (New Media and Society), “Digital Technology, Aesthetic Imperfection and Political Filmmaking: Illegal Bodies in Motion” (Transnational Cinemas) and “Almodóvar, Cyberfandom

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and Participatory Culture” (A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar, Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2013). Noelia V. Saenz received her PhD in Critical Studies from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Her research focuses on the negotiation of hispanidad, gender, and national identity in contemporary Spanish and Latin American cinema. She has published in Spectator: The USC Journal of Film and Television Criticism and in the anthology A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar, edited by Marvin D’Lugo and Kathleen M. Vernon (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). She currently teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at California State University Long Beach. Juan A. Tarancón is Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He has written on the western, on the theory of film genre, and on filmmakers such as John Sayles or Carlos Saura. His work has appeared in CineAction, Cultural Studies, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, and in various Spanish books and scholarly journals. He is currently researching contemporary westerns, representations of Mexican American culture in film, and the rise of film noir in Spain. Iván Villarmea Álvarez is a film critic, researcher, teacher, and programmer. He holds a degree in Journalism and in Contemporary History, both from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where he also obtained a Master in Art History with a dissertation on Pedro Costa’s films. He holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Zaragoza, where he wrote a doctoral thesis entitled From Post-Industrial City to Postmetropolis: The Representation of Urban Change in Non-Fiction Film (1977–2010). He has published numerous papers on the representation of the city in film, and has co-­edited the volume Jugar con la Memoria. El Cine Portugués en el Siglo XXI (Santander: Shangrila, 2014). Since 2013, he also co-­directs the online film magazine A Cuarta Parede. Andy Willis is a Reader in Film Studies at the University of Salford, England. He is the co-­author of The Cinema of Álex de la Iglesia (with Peter Buse and Nuria Triana Toribio, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), the editor of Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) and the co-­editor of East Asian Film Stars (with Leung Wing Fai, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Spanish Popular Cinema (with Antonio Lázaro-Reboll, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).

Foreword Spanish Cinema and the “National/ Transnational” Debate: A Brief Reflection Barry Jordan The widespread currency of the concept of the “transnational” in film studies scholarship seems increasingly evident nowadays. This can be seen in university study programs and in a growing number of relevant publications since the mid-2000s (see Dennison and Lim 2006; Ezra and Rowden 2006; Higbee and Lim 2010; Shaw and de la Garza 2010; Choi 2012). Moreover, the field now appears to have its own house journal, Transnational Cinemas, founded by Deborah Shaw in 2010. The “transnational” has been eagerly favored by a growing number of film scholars as an appealing antidote to what were regarded twenty to thirty years ago as serious theoretical deficiencies and practical “limitations” of the notion of “national cinema.” This shift in approach was also based in part upon a left-­wing critique of an aggressive, American cultural hegemony, which marginalized “other” culturally distinct forms of cinematic expression. The critique was also made in terms of a failure to take account of the quickening processes of globalization and the enormous diversity and relative invisibility of many film cultures and practices across the world. As one of the leading voices behind this shift, Professor Andrew Higson argued that notions of “national” cinema were simply too narrowly focused, superficial, under-­researched, and prescriptive, incapable of explaining the “actual cinematic experiences of popular audiences” (2002, 53). Likewise, from a Hispanist standpoint, lest we forget, Professor Marsha Kinder also argued in the 1980s and 1990s for a decisive move towards a transnational film studies. It was she who claimed that we had an obligation to “read cinema against the local/global interface” (1993, 7). But this meant taking into account not only external global, diasporic, and exilic film cultures, but also crucially, the structures and workings of devolved, local film industries and cultural exchanges, within nation states, including their linguistic, ethnic, and cinematic similarities and differences in different regions. Arguably, in focusing on the inside as well as the outside of the local/global interface, her work was way ahead of its time in Spanish film studies.

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Nowadays, in Spanish film studies, it is the concept of the “transnational” which is increasingly influential and which seems to underpin and legitimate much of the scholarly enterprise. However, I wonder if the “transnational” is in danger of becoming yet another passing panacea, at times overly prescriptive and superficial like its predecessor (see Jordan 2014). For example, in the jointly-­ written Introduction to the widely acclaimed Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Spanish Cinema, the editors accept as a given, indeed almost as an article of faith, “the transnational nature of Spanish cinema throughout its history” (Labanyi and Pavlović 2013, 1). In their chapter on “Transnational Frameworks,” D’Lugo and Dapena argue that the idea of the national has been used “to describe a series of industrial and artistic practices that are seen as confined to a particular territory (closed to outside influences and immutable to change).” By contrast, they continue, “a transnational film history is structured around the notion of flows . . . movements across borders” and “seeks to illuminate processes of exchange and interpenetration that are given short shrift and often obscured under the national paradigm” (2013, 16). Unfortunately, by hyping the virtues of the transnational and the vices of the national, such a description tends towards caricature. Moreover, we cannot explain the transnational dimensions of filmmaking effectively if we downgrade, marginalize or otherwise try to exclude an account of the “national” and vice versa. As Higbee and Lim argue, “the national continues to exert the force of its presence even within transnational filmmaking practices” (2010, 10). Also, the Companion’s brief account of the national-­transnational binary (15–17) tends to rely rather too heavily on soft targets, i.e. those hackneyed tropes of unity, coherence, identity, and homogeneity, which are now seriously outdated and plainly inadequate to deal with contemporary cinematic and social realities. It no longer makes sense, nor is it correct, to characterize a “national cinema” nowadays as a wholly separate entity, an enclosed space cut off from the outside world, with its own mythic unity, integrity, etc. Nor is it useful to regard the “national” and “transnational” as opposites, as separate or antagonistic to each other. Indeed, the “national” space is no longer the antithesis of the transnational or global but is increasingly determined and marked by global pressures, such as population, financial, and cultural flows to the West. Such movements are not always positive or culturally enriching. They may bring economically beneficial impacts but they also import alien beliefs and cultural practices that are incompatible with Western values. In this context, the “nation” is nowadays already dispersed, decentered, fragmented, networked, repopulated, and seriously

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contested, from within and without. The “national” is also a space, however, where political and cultural struggles continue to be waged between “de-­nationalizing” and “re-­nationalizing” tendencies, in their bid to preserve, reshape or even destroy the “nation.” Indeed, in the Spanish case, Spain’s “Estado de las Autonomías” (“State of Autonomies”) has long been a battleground between the sectarian forces of separatism and regional independence (promoted by Zapatero’s “Segunda Transición” [“Second Transition”] agenda towards a non-­unitary Spain) and those groups which still see vital territorial, political, economic, and cultural benefits in a unified, reformed though still devolved, Spain. As for the notion of the “transnational,” we also need to beware of its celebratory and messianic connotations, as if it were a concept and tool that will free us from our delusions of the “national” and even assuage the negative consequences of globalization. The transnational is not a form of cultural redemption or ideological superiority; it is not transcendent but simply transversal, i.e. a sort of dynamic intersection or junction, a hub linked to other hubs, where sub-­national, national and extra/supranational links, interfaces and forces meet and invariably clash. And as Choi argues (2012), it is also a species of connective tissue that joins up national hubs with overseas interests as well as other local cultural and media networks. This also reminds us that, apart from the benefits of crossing borders, the “transnational” is always exposed to risk and always implies power relations, i.e. losses as well as gains. To sum up, we need to beware of any dogmatic separation or opposition between the national and the transnational. They are both part of the same political, social, and cultural environment and thus interdependent, where the one cannot function or exist without the other. In fact, it might be useful if we simply abandoned the binary opposition altogether and consider what Choi calls an overarching “cinematrix,” which he uses when talking of cinema in South Korea. His intention is to “dismantle the mythic integrity of the national and cinema” (2012, 16), i.e. their bogus, impossible enclosure, while acknowledging the fact that the transnational surrounds and penetrates the national in the manner of a connective tissue, a matrix of plug-­ins and interfaces linking film capital, human resources, markets, entrepreneurs, institutions, nation states, etc. Moreover, in Europe, under the pressures of economic austerity, deflation, currency instability and the enormous mass migrations to the west from ex-Communist Eastern Europe and conflict zones in the Middle East and beyond, the notions of the nation, national identity and the “nation state” are already experiencing a renaissance. The pressures to push back against economic

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collapse in a stagnant Euro zone are growing; the demands for national sovereignty, popular empowerment and real controls over national parliaments and porous borders are re-­emerging from both left and right-­wing political movements. Also, the many failures of naïve, metropolitan, political elites to confront extremist jihad decisively and keep their populations safe from terrorist attacks (as seen in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and the UK in 2013– 15) will undermine the dominant multiculturalist orthodoxy. These overlapping crises are also likely to further erode voter trust in the centralism and outmoded supranationalism of an undemocratic EU super state.

The Spanish film sector on the brink: two perspectives 1. At the Madrid de Cine-Spanish Film Screenings event held in Madrid, June 2013, outspoken Daniel Calparsoro referred to some of the main developments he had witnessed in Spanish filmmaking during his career as a director (see Davies 2009; Smith 2014). The director of features such as Salto al vacío/Leap into the Void (1995), Guerreros/Warriors (2002), Invasor/Invader (2012), and Combustión/Combustion (2013) mentioned that the range and quality of genre cinema had increased and diversified significantly, just as taxpayer-­supported funding opportunities had waxed and waned. Indeed, the seven fat years of a reckless PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español: Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) spending spree (2004–11) have been followed by an iron age of austerity and deep cuts, introduced by the conservative, right-­wing Partido Popular (PP; People’s Party) in 2012, on orders from Brussels. Calparsoro also drew attention to changes in the leisure habits and tastes of ordinary Spaniards, faced with unemployment, job insecurity, lower wages/pensions, falling property prices and pressures on leisure spending. That is, since 2007/8, most Spaniards have become increasingly resistant to spending money on tickets and snacks at the local multiplex. In hard times, if the price is not attractive, the rational choice is to economize and exploit alternative options, such as viewing film in the comfort of one’s own home, on television or via pirate copies, YouTube or maybe streaming services such as Filmin or NetFlix. Moreover, in September 2012, with the massive rise in VAT on cinema tickets from 8 to 21 percent, not only the local film sector, but also American distributors feared that the new measure might wipe out their businesses altogether. In fact, once the film-­going habit disappears, it is extraordinarily difficult to recuperate audiences for film theaters,

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unless the incentives are strong and sustained. Ticket prices in Spain have certainly fallen (from nine to five or six euros) but perhaps this is not enough to stop the rot. Daniel Calparsoro linked a visit to the cinema nowadays to the fate of the Titanic, i.e. a one-­way journey to a watery grave. However, such gloomy predictions are neither inevitable nor helpful. The uncertainty as well as the resilience at the heart of Spanish filmmaking can conjure up welcome surprises. While 2013 was one of the worst years ever for box office, spectator numbers, and market share (apart from Bayona’s Lo imposible/The Impossible [2012]), by comparison 2014 was something of an annus mirabilis for the local cinema. Alongside Torrente 5: Operación EuroVegas/Torrente 5 (Santiago Segura), El niño/The Kid (Daniel Monzón), Mortadelo y Filemón contra Jimmy el Cachondo/Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible (Javier Fesser), and La isla mínima/Marshland (Alberto Rodríguez) a resurgence of commercially successful films was led by the outstanding achievement of Ocho apellidos vascos/Spanish Affair (Emilio Martínez-Lázaro 2013), Spain’s best performing film, which attracted nearly 10 million spectators and 55 million euros in box office. As a specialist in the thriller and action film nowadays, Calparsoro urged younger Spanish directors to avoid the French Nouvelle Vague and the dead end of auteur cinema. There is no longer any funding for it and almost no one wants to produce it. His best advice was simple and very blunt: “Copy the Americans.” By this, he did not mean engage in over-­slavish rip-­offs of successful genre films or the abandonment of artistic endeavor. Rather, in hard times, filmmakers have a duty to entertain as well as challenge and enlighten. However, as Calparsoro seems to suggest, at the moment, scripts with strong audience appeal and entertainment values are paramount and the spectator’s needs must be targeted and served, at home and abroad (see Entrevista a Daniel Calparsoro 2012). 2. Before his shock resignation as President of FAPAE (Spain’s main film and television producers’ association) in July 2013, Pedro Pérez had developed a very simple but effective “mantra” to disarm hostile public perceptions about Spanish cinema. In essence, while he quietly admitted that the domestic film industry remained loss-­making overall and 100 percent dependent on state hand-­outs and the television companies, nevertheless he claimed confidently that “Spanish films perform much better abroad and make money” (in Jordan 2012, 88; see also Jordan 2011, 20–23). To develop this case, Pérez also acknowledged that the film sector had ignored for decades an obvious disconnect between Spanish

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film production and the tastes of local commercial audiences. In fact, this vital connection to the spectator had been undermined by Pilar Miró in the 1980s, due to her chimerical pursuit of a high culture, art cinema, appropriate for foreign festivals but of almost no interest to domestic audiences. However, since the mid-2000s, Pérez was able to argue that the local film sector was capable of making good quality, commercial titles both for the home market as well as for international release, with reasonable prospects for decent box office. And if FAPAE’s own flattering data for the performance of film exports can be trusted, then this appears to be the case (see Jordan 2012). Spanish cinema does indeed achieve better earnings abroad. For example, in 2012, it made 150 million euros overseas compared to 110 million at home. Overall, Pérez’s career contribution to the funding, promotion, and international projection of Spain’s producers and its national cinema is outstanding and extensive. Apart from being an effective cheerleader for the sector and a key contributor to the Film Law of 2007, he will be remembered for having used FAPAE’s administrative muscle to launch the Madrid de Cine-Spanish Film Screenings in 2006, which quickly became Spain’s number one film market and international hub allowing film buyers, sellers, sales agents, and journalists to meet, discuss, and do business. Sadly, in early 2013, it was rumored that Pérez had been implicated in the notorious “caso Gürtel,” a political corruption scandal involving top PP officials. He denied the allegations of involvement, but this toxic connection may explain his sudden resignation from FAPAE in July 2013 and other senior media posts (Días extraños en el cine español 2014). Unfortunately, after fourteen years in post, his departure triggered a deeply damaging chain reaction in Spain’s audiovisual and media institutions, whose reverberations are still creating waves. Pérez was replaced in December 2013 by Ramón Colom, his deputy, but a botched attempt by Colom to restructure the producers’ union and save money (among other odd measures, by closing down the international section) had disastrous consequences. In July 2014, three key senior administrators resigned on the same day (Fabia Buenaventura, María José Vadillo, and Efren Castro). As a result, Colom was forced to suspend the Madrid de Cine event for November 2014, leaving its future up in the air. Coincidentally, in July 2014, the Head of the Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA; Institute of Film and Audiovisual Media) since January 2012, Susanna de la Sierra, also resigned her post, alleging a breakdown of trust with the PP government. Like Colom, she had found Treasury Minister Cristóbal Montoro unwilling to cut the excessive VAT rate on cinema tickets, raise the level of

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production tax breaks significantly above 18 percent or honor the repayment of outstanding producer subsidies from 2011 and 2012. De la Sierra was replaced by Lorena González. At the time of writing, the PP government remains deeply hostile to the Spanish film sector. Moreover, it is not Culture Minister, Jose Ignacio Wert, or Secretary of State, José María Lassalle, who grab the headlines on Spanish film. The government has also been represented by the intransigent and outspoken Montoro, who seems unwilling to negotiate or compromise meaningfully over issues to do with unpaid producer debts or changes to tax breaks. The PP strategy seems to be one of severe and sustained cuts to direct production subsidies, while its delays and cynical aloofness force the film sector to stew indefinitely in its own (mostly self-­inflicted) financial hole. This is not unusual and should not surprise us, given the many decades of sectorial hostility, non-­cooperation and demonization of Aznar and the PP by a pampered film elite, sponsored by the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE; Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and enormous taxpayer transfers. Unfortunately, without a proper resolution, this stand-­off represents extremely poor political service for Spain’s citizens and is potentially ruinous for Spanish filmmaking. In 2013, national spectator numbers fell in Spain by 15 million; this was a terrible calamity that requires further analysis and special measures to reassure audiences. Paradoxically, on the up side, and reflecting a seemingly chaotic and totally uncontrolled production cycle, an unbelievable 231 films were also made in 2013 (135 fiction features, 92 documentaries, and four animations). It is as if the more difficult the conditions become, the more films are getting made, though average film budgets have fallen from three million euros in 2011 to below 1.5 million in 2014. These films included 175 national productions and 56 transnational co-­productions, most of these (thirty-two) with majority Spanish investment. In other words, in 2013, roughly 25 percent of local output was co-­produced with other countries. For the moment, this large block of transnational co-­pro activity represents a major platform and vital lifeboat for the domestic industry. Its strength and longevity will depend on how successful those 56 films are in international markets and how much in net revenues (box office and ancillaries) they can generate for their Spanish and overseas investors. Meanwhile, in a declining home market, with a resistant and falling audience base, and the prospect of a serious drop in taxpayer funding (and thus, presumably, far fewer shoots and jobs), local Spanish filmmaking stands on the edge of a precipice. Will the big television companies, Mediaset, Atresmedia, RTVE, TV3 come to the rescue? They might,

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but only on a handful of very commercial projects, and only if they can still make a profit on their co-­pro investments; if not, all bets are likely to be off.

References Choi, J., “Of transnational—Korean cinematrix,” Transnational Cinemas, vol. 3, no. 1, 2012, pp. 3–18. Davies, A., Daniel Calparsoro. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. D’Lugo, M. and G. Dapena, Introduction (to “Transnational Frameworks”), in Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2013, pp. 15–17. Dennison, S. and S.H. Lim (eds), Remapping World Cinemas: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. London: Wallflower Press, 2006. Días extraños en el cine español 2014, AudioVisual451. Available from: [March 5, 2015]. Entrevista a Daniel Calparsoro 2012 (video file). Available from: [March 5, 2015]. Ezra, E. and T. Rowden (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. London: Routledge, 2006. Higbee, W. and S.H. Lim, “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies,” Transnational Cinemas, vol. 1, no. 1, 2010, pp. 7–21. Higson, A., “The Concept of National Cinema,” in Film and Nationalism, ed. A. Williams. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 52–67. Jordan, B., “Audiences, Film Culture, Public Subsidies: The End of Spanish Cinema?” in Spain on Screen: Developments in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, ed. A. Davies. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 19–40. Jordan, B., “Beating the Crisis in Spanish Filmmaking: The International Co-­production and the ‘marca España,’ ” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 37, no. 1, 2012, pp. 87–109. Jordan, B., Review of “Companion to Spanish Cinema”, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, vol. 11, no. 2, 2014, pp. 203–7. Kinder, M., Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Labanyi, J. and T. Pavlović (eds), Companion to Spanish Cinema. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Shaw, D. and A. de la Garza, “Introducing Transnational Cinemas,” Transnational Cinemas, vol. 1, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3–6. Smith, P.J., “Report on Madrid de Cine-Spanish Film Screenings,” Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, vol. 11, no. 1, 2014, pp. 91–100.

Introduction: Questions of Transnationalism and Genre Elena Oliete-Aldea, Beatriz Oria, and Juan A. Tarancón

The interest in transnational networks has been growing across disciplines over the last decades. Steven Vertovec, for example, has noted how transnationalism pervades the world of academia (2009, 1). Sociology, economics, business, media, and cultural studies—among many other disciplines—have approached their research through a transnational lens in an attempt to come to terms with the interconnectedness of people, cultures, and economies in ways that could not be apprehended if their studies were framed within the constraining paradigm of the national. In the field of cinema, transnationalism seems to be everywhere too. The number of books dealing in one way or another with the various transnational flows affecting the world of cinema has grown steadily over the last decade (Ezra and Rowden 2006; Higson 2006; O’Regan 2009; Higbee and Lim 2010; Shaw and de la Garza 2010; Hjort 2010), and in 2010 Taylor and Francis Group launched the journal Transnational Cinemas. Spanish cinema is not an exception. As this volume shows, Spanish film has always been connected to global developments in filmmaking. However, the ubiquitousness of the transnational in academia in general and in film studies in particular also runs the risk of becoming a handy but empty buzzword that, far from providing an understanding that goes beyond the limitations of the national framework, may result in another totalizing discourse that will reduce the complexity of the cinematic interconnections between different industries and cultures to yet another rigid paradigm. That is, adopting a transnational approach does not free us from asking other questions, finding other angles, establishing the connections that go hidden, and, in general, theorizing both the concepts of the national and the transnational. Furthermore, the success story of the transnational approach does not render the notion of national cinema meaningless or obsolete. On the contrary, national cinemas—the attempts to impose a sense of coherence, stability, and direction on national film production—offer a privileged standpoint from which to pursue questions about the construction of the nation and about how individuals imagine themselves in a global world. The essays included in

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this volume focus on genre as one of the spaces where these interactions between the local and the global occur and in which to explore the symbolic construction of the nation in the contemporary world. As Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie note in Cinema and Nation (2000, 4), national cinemas “do not simply represent the stable features of a national culture, but are themselves one of the loci of debates about a nation’s governing principles, goals, heritage and history.” Cinema has always been characterized by its hybrid, transnational, border-­crossing nature. It made its appearance in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world in which transfers between cultures became more and more visible. Like the rest of the expressions of the new modern cultural industries, its technology and its narrative principles penetrated all cultures with unprecedented facility in what could be interpreted as a challenge to rigid notions of the nation state. However, in the words of Hobsbawm, these were also the years in which the “principle of nationalism” won out (1992, 131). As Julián Casanova observes (2011, 11), after the First World War and the fragmentation of the old multinational empires of Europe, the emphasis was placed on the nation-­state model, on the principle of self-­ determination and the strengthening of border policies. Cinema (not unlike other expressions of popular art like photography or graphic design) was regarded as a valuable instrument of the centralized state in the construction of a national culture. These two sets of forces—one that cuts across physical and cultural borders and another that attempts to rationalize a distinct and coherent national discourse—inform each other and are hard to separate without falling into simplifications. Rather than two conflicting perspectives, the local and the global are to be seen as part of a creative, supranational process through which we deal with concrete challenges or experiences which are also informed by local and global forces. Although national cinemas may be seen as engaging in the formulation of a national identity with clear cultural and physical borders, the narrative and aesthetic resources and the cultural and historical determinants on which the meaning of actual films ultimately rest are inextricably global and local. The discursive construction of a nation cannot be detached from the narrative and aesthetic solutions adopted to represent it. One of the characteristics of modern cultural industries like cinema has been, apart from their rapid dissemination across cultures, the standardization of both their production practices and their language. In the case of cinema, narrative and aesthetic conventions have evolved within the framework of fairly formulaic (or generic)

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practices that have always been negotiated in the encounter between the global and the local. For example, the earliest look at Spain’s national distinctiveness was that of French and US filmmakers that circulated patronizing, stereotypical images of the country marked by an exotic take on Andalusian folklore, Catholic superstitions, and rural backwardness. The conventions they established for the representation of Spain would in turn engage in a dialogue with future attempts to develop a distinctively Spanish cinema rooted in autochthonous theatrical genres like zarzuelas or sainetes in times of conflict between tradition and modernity, thus informing, for example, the cultural policy of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and the debates over the españolada in the 1930s and 1940s. This dynamic has hardly changed; if anything, it has become more complex as cinema developed and spread across the world. The iconic folkloric musicals of the late 1930s and early 1940s, for example, brought together these earlier conventions for the representation of Spain’s singularity as well as new narrative and stylistic formulas from musicals and comedies that had been similarly developed in a transnational sphere. And these conventions articulated with specific local situations. As the essays in this collection illustrate, the same is true of adventure films, romantic comedies, crime thrillers or horror films, among others. That is, for all their transnational, formulaic nature, these are not to be approached simply as imitative products. Filmmakers both replicate and transform the genres upon which they build their stories. Besides, the relationships actual films establish with the traditions from which they derive their lexis are complex and unpredictable. What is more important, films, regardless of their generic resemblances, engage in a context that is always changing as a consequence of concrete political, social and cultural forces, and genre conventions—although developed in a supranational sphere—always derive their meanings from these forces as much as from the histories and traditions they carry with them. These ideas demand a more nuanced approach to issues of transnationalism and genre, one that avoids the temptation of making films conform to rigid, ready-­made accounts of transnational linkages or generic models and that focuses, instead, both on the global and on the conjunctural nature of film language, on how genres evolve in a supranational exchange of recognizable narrative and aesthetic choices while engaging in and responding to specific social challenges. As cinema started to grow into the powerful industry it would turn out to be, governments, institutions, and production companies often saw it as an important instrument for the building of a national narrative. For example, as Joaquín Cánovas Belchi notes (2011, 76), the production company Atlántida

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SACE was created with a view to extol the uniqueness of the Spanish people (although this is to be seen as an internal matter too because it was as an attempt on the part of the conservative Madrid bourgeoisie to neutralize the infrastructure that had developed in Barcelona). Likewise, when cinema became an object of study, journalists and theorists tended to assume that cinema and national identity went together. They either deployed a series of prescriptive ideals about what Spanish cinema should be like or tried to impose certain coherence on what was otherwise a miscellaneous and chaotic panorama exposed to myriad, interdependent industrial, technological, commercial, and aesthetic forces. The editorials from Primer Plano in the years after the Civil War or José María García Escudero’s call for young filmmakers to give Spanish cinema “el estilo nacional que necesita” (“the national style it needs”) (1954, 11) exemplify these tendencies. Notwithstanding different contexts and different agendas, these cases rested on a set of preconceived ideas about the nation. Academic writing on Spanish cinema was very late in coming—save for a few exceptions it was not until the 1980s that Spanish cinema became the focus of academia—and when it emerged it also tended to see Spanish films as an expression of the country’s distinctive national idiosyncrasy. In 1993, precisely in a book that aimed to look at the construction of Spanish national identity, Marsha Kinder questioned the unproblematic pairing of cinema and nation and, in an often quoted line, called to “explore and problematize the concept of a national cinema, claiming that it must be read against the local/global interface” (1993, 7). Far from a dismissal of the national perspective, we envisage this volume as a contribution to the discussion about the interdependence of world cinemas very much in line with Kinder’s groundbreaking book as well as with the recent collections by Jay Beck and Vicente Rodríguez Ortega (2008), and Jo Labanyi and Tatjana Pavlović (2013). Part of the national appraisal of Spanish cinema carried out in the past developed in the context of genre. Yet, generic conventions rest on international interactions that undercut any attempt to put forward a unique and distinctive account of national identity. How we represent the nation to ourselves (or how we imagine our community) is inextricably linked to transnational relations. Space is not even the stable category we thought it was. But, as Kinder observes, the concept of transnationalism is not to be approached as part of a dichotomy. The national and the transnational—or the local and the global—do not designate different, mutually exclusive conditions. It is true that the pervasive forces of globalization have diminished the cultural impact of imagined communities at a national level in favor of what Rob

Introduction

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Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (1996) called a “transnational imaginary.” Nevertheless, the decline of national sovereignty does not mean that the “national imaginary” has completely disappeared. In fact, we need to keep in mind that, as Christian Karner (2011, 25) observes, “there are pluralistic, multicultural conceptions of national identity that are not automatically tantamount to an ideology of postnational utopia.” The local-­global transactions form part of a process that incessantly (re)shapes cultural products in a contingent temporal and spatial context. Transnationalism is not one of several experiences in contemporary life but the very condition of contemporary life. However, it is not a homogeneously shared experience. Although everybody is caught within a complex network of transnational forces, not everybody experiences these forces in the same way. Transnationalism designates a condition that can only be apprehended and made sense of from specific positions that are what they are as a consequence both of local and global forces. As Stuart Hall notes in a different context, this condition is not to be seen as a “rupture between the local and the global, but [as] new local/global re-­articulations” (in Chen 1996, 407). Films are both agents and expressions of globalization. On the one hand, they are an integral part of the “local/global re-­articulation” mentioned by Hall; on the other, they are always appropriated within specific contexts that are also of a global and local nature. This is of enormous consequence because it emancipates us from the totalizing stories that dominated the thinking about globalization—see, for example, John Ralston Saul (2009)—and puts the focus of transnational studies on the many different, contingent experiences of globalization. There is no one-­size-fits-­all formula that can be applied to all films. International cooperation projects like the 1931 Congreso Hispanoamericano de Cinematografía (Spanish American Film Congress), the impact of political refugees, the “cosmopolitan transnationalism”—to use Mette Hjort’s expression (2010, 20)—of auteurs like Carlos Saura and Isabel Coixet or the opportunistic, money-­driven co-­productions of the 1960s and 1970s are all of a different nature and always entail a negotiation of cultural meanings which, as Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim argue (2010, 18), cannot be detached from the power politics of their contextual framework. Our interest lies in the processes of cultural exchange in cinema as well as in the ways in which the representation—and reconstruction—of cultural identities on screen are intrinsically related to the power relations at stake in the constant dialogue between margins, center and spaces in-­between (O’Regan 2009, 514–22). We perceive the transnational as

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a multifaceted concept that includes questions of industry—production, distribution, and reception—as well as issues pertaining to story, narrative, and style. Our approach draws attention to the cross-­fertilization between the Spanish film industry and other cinemas within the framework of genre. Among these, Hollywood is a very significant influence, as Spanish film production was soon tied to the Hollywood film industry for its subsistence, but other film traditions like those of the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy, and Latin American countries also determined either directly or indirectly the development of Spanish cinema. In Spain, film production in general and film genres in particular have always reflected industrial, political, economic, and/or cultural determinants. Generally speaking, before the Civil War Spanish cinema was dominated by comedies, folkloric musicals, and rural dramas, and these films relied on conventions drawn from autochthonous literary traditions and from the European and US films that almost monopolized the screens. In addition to comedies and folkloric musicals, the situation after the Civil War led to the production of historical epics and religious cinema that entered into a dialogue with the social situation of the country. Since the 1960s, several factors contributed to the depreciation of genre cinema. On the one hand, the filmmakers that emerged from the National Film School (Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas) found in the European New Waves and the politique des auteurs a more appropriate language to deal with the challenges posed by Franco’s dictatorship. On the other hand, the proliferation of the so-­called sub-­genres like horror films, spaghetti westerns or erotic cinema and the disparaging reaction of film critics helped create consensus about the insignificance of genre films. When in the 1980s the socialist government set out to bring Spanish cinema up to date by means of grant financing, the emphasis was likewise put on the cinéma de qualité. It was not until the late 1990s and early 2000s that the growth of international co-productions and the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers (i.e. Alex de la Iglesia, Santiago Segura, Alejandro Amenábar, etc.) raised, not only on auteur cinema, but on commercial Hollywood films from the 1970s and 1980s, resulted both in a new appreciation of genre and in a questioning of the concepts of national cinema—a film like The Others (Alejandro Amenábar 2001), for example, was produced by as many as seven production companies from four different countries and featured an international cast. From genre theory we have come to expect order, simplicity, and clarity. We assume that, by erecting boundaries, genre theory will bring order in what is

Introduction

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otherwise a complex and messy scenario, that a precise and unambiguous categorization of films will make visible the rules that underlie films and their ultimate meaning. But films cannot be reduced to the straightjacket of genre categories. On close analysis, historical epics, desarrollismo comedies, horror films or political thrillers, for example, reveal a complex network of relationships that exceed any categorization. It is the activity of researchers that introduces some coherence and stability where there was none by isolating a partial selection of features and concealing everything that interferes with a preconceived model. The complexity of films cannot be captured by genre categories. Still, we need to take into account the simple ways of dealing with films that genre categories offer. The genre phenomenon demands an approach that does not see these views as mutually exclusive and that, instead, works on the tension between the struggle for order and the need to go beyond the limiting knowledge of closed disciplinary categories, an approach that embraces simple solutions while acknowledging their incompleteness, that strives for order but does not disregard its fuzziness, its partiality, and its deceptiveness. Genre is about establishing categories, but it is also about accepting the limitations of those categories. As Juan A. Tarancón argues (2010), this apparent contradiction grants genre its social significance. Films always compel us to constantly reconsider our assumptions about the genre system. This hypothesis-­testing dynamic makes possible a social perspective on films, one that transcends the dominant reductionist approach that regards films simply as an undemanding reflection of society and enables us to explore the ways in which films and society constitute each other. When genre criticism emerged in the media-­saturated, self-­reflexive context of the 1960s, researchers put the emphasis on the underlying structure of genres and their essential characteristics. In general terms, genre theory took as its starting point the patterns of similarity that underlie films and examined them as artifacts that conveyed a set of social, cultural, and political beliefs. Although the view on the social function of genre varied from one scholar to the next, the pioneering work of Judith Hess Wright (1974), John G. Cawelti (1976), Thomas Sobchack (1977) or Thomas Schatz (1977)—just to name a few—did not seem to harbor the idea of hybridity and perpetuated a compartment-­like approach to the genre system; they presupposed the unequivocal existence of a number of genres with a timeless, absolute, and immutable essence that applied to all films of the genre in an identical and uniform manner; and they assumed a homogeneous relationship between genre, film, and audience.

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Following the work of Rick Altman (1984; 1999), James Naremore (1998), and Christine Gledhill (2000), the dogmatism surrounding genre theory started to fade away. In 1984, Altman, for example, took a Derridean turn and proposed to distinguish between and to “accept simultaneously” different approaches to genre (2003, 28). This opened the way to the recognition, first, that not all films participate in the genre system in the same way or to the same extent; second, that films are hybrids that bring together conventions from many different genres; and, finally, that the meaning of a film is not determined by its belonging to a genre, nor is it adopted by the audience in a homogeneous and identical way. What is more, genres change while remaining recognizable. The essence of genre, and its capacity to provide us with a critical awareness of society, lies in this contradiction. We need not a model that strives for coherence and order but one that embraces heterogeneity and contradiction as one of the fundamental characteristics of films. Rather than presenting a straightforward historical account of the different Spanish filmmaking traditions, this book offers the reader a “counter-­history”— or rather “histories”—of Spanish cinema, as the concept of Spanishness is repeatedly interrogated. The very notion of Spain and Spanishness has always been as artificial as contested, and the Spanish (trans)national imaginary has experienced incessant reconstructions of its porous boundaries which have included and excluded a wide variety of hybrid identities in a fractured spatial and metaphorical scenario. Seen under this light, the concept of Spanish cinema is here understood as a hybrid entity right from its beginnings, a cross-­breed which reveals a complex cultural and commercial production that undercuts essentialist views of national identity. Far from providing a comprehensive historical account of Spanish cinema, our aim is to unveil the competing discourses at stake in specific films when examined against the rearticulation of different genres and film traditions. This book adopts a chronological approach to the impact of global film trends and genres and the way they have helped articulate specific national challenges. This perspective reveals that the connections with world cinemas are not a contemporary phenomenon but a feature that has governed Spanish filmmaking since its very beginnings. What is more, taken together, the different essays included in this collection add up to a non-­linear account of the complex national and supranational forces that have shaped Spanish films at different times. More precisely, they expose the tensions and the intricate dialogue between cross-­cultural aesthetics and narrative models on the one hand, and

Introduction

9

indigenous traditions on the other, as well as the political and historical contingencies these different expressions responded to. The volume is organized into three parts that present different manifestations of the transnational cross-­ fertilization of Spanish cinema. This work marks a departure from notions of “evolution” or “progress” in the development of film traditions, favoring instead a non-­linear, non-­deterministic approach to the transnational development of film genres, but the chronological approach is expected to highlight the complex relationships between films, genres, and the cultural—and counter-­cultural— ruptured temporal and spatial contexts in which they are made and received. The structure of the book may thus help readers delve into the generic transformations and rearticulations of cultural discourses at different moments in which the global-­local processes have impinged on Spanish cinema and society. Part I, “Rethinking Spanishness: The Soft Edges of Early Cinema,” covers early Spanish cinema, from the silent era up to the early 1950s, with a special emphasis on the years in which the Spanish film industry consolidated. The essays included in this section represent an alternative view to the often accepted hypotheses that Spain’s political particularity during the early decades of the twentieth century determined the isolation of the film industry and that early Spanish films express an unequivocal and homogeneous view of Spanishness in keeping with these political peculiarities. Contrary to the belief that Spanish early genres—for the most part comedies, period dramas, musicals, and historical epics—presented Spain as a pre-­modern Arcadia cut off from the social changes besetting other neighboring countries, these essays are an attempt to steer the critical discourse away from a narrow national perspective and show how generic dynamics and film language emerge as transnational factors capable of putting forward a more complex assessment of the challenges faced by Spanish society. The essays gathered in this section show how, at times of isolationist, inward-­looking policies, Spanish cinema also rested on generic conventions that transcend limiting concepts of the national and reveal the hidden stories of art and life in Spain. In the first chapter, Valeria Camporesi focuses on a number of musicals made in the 1930s. She explores how the hybridization between elements from Spanish folklore and models from European and US musicals engaged in a new industrial and social situation that was becoming increasingly global. She argues that, on the one hand, these films responded to the industrial and commercial situation created by the new technology, which forced filmmakers to reconsider how to

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entertain culturally diverse audiences throughout the world. On the other, they articulated with the complex process of modernization in which Spain was immersed at the time. The other essays in this section deal with the early years of Franco’s dictatorial regime. Vicente Benet explores the hybridity and the transnational dimension of the historical films of the late 1940s and early 1950s. His concern goes beyond the propagandistic tone of these epic visions of the past to offer a complex analysis of how the films’ heroines, in channeling the hopes and dreams of Spanish female spectators, dramatized the clash between forces of modernity and the conservatism that emanated from Francoist institutions and from other expressions of culture. Juan A. Tarancón analyses the rise of criminal melodramas in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the narrative and aesthetic conventions they adopted. He contends that the realist techniques that had developed for almost two decades in a supranational sphere offered Spanish filmmakers a language to address the endemic social imbalance at home. Tarancón eschews the dogmatism and the reductionism of the generic paradigms often “applied to” hard-­edge mystery dramas to offer an overview of the many political, social, and cultural forces that went into the development of Spanish crime cinema and thus provide the reader with a more complex awareness of the rising social unrest. Federico Bonaddio offers another look at the cinema of the early 1950s. He focuses on Luis Lucia’s Lola la piconera/Lola, the Coalgirl (1951) as a film built upon conventions from two genres—the historical epic and the musical—that transcended national borders but that, in the Spanish context, combined to convey a rather mixed message. By acknowledging how financial issues forced CIFESA (Compañía Industrial Film Español SA) to tone down the politics of the story as well as the tension created by the film’s hybridity, Bonaddio shows how the film undercuts the patriotism that is usually associated with early Francoist cinema. Finally, Daniel Mourenza further explores this decade’s generic richness, approaching Juan Antonio Bardem not as an auteur, but through a generic perspective. He leaves aside the most obvious references to Neorealism to focus on the influence of Hollywood melodrama. He argues that Bardem’s specific deployment of this “global” genre was meant to obliquely represent and confront Spain’s social and political situation at the time, displacing the public conflicts of Francoist Spain onto the private sphere of the individual, thus allowing the “resignification” of Hollywood melodrama in political terms when applied to a specific national context.

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Part II, “Broadening Perspectives: Crossing Borders, Crossing Genres,” maps the “opening up” of Spanish cinema to new influences, trying to shed some light on traditionally under-­researched genres in Spanish film history. Covering Spanish transition to democracy and full-­blown modernity from the 1970s to the 1990s, the chapters included in this section reflect on the transnational nature of Spanish films across a variety of genres long before globalization became a buzzword in academia. Arnaud Duprat de Montero reflects on how the early films of Carlos Saura entered into a dialogue with contemporary foreign trends, thus establishing a complex set of connections between the so-­called Nuevo Cine Español (New Spanish Cinema) and the alternative languages that were developed at the time both in Europe and the US. He rescues Carlos Saura’s film Stress es tres, tres/Stress is Three, Three (1968) from an unfair critical oblivion to analyze the complex network of influences that mark the narrative, and which range from the American road movie to the Nouvelle Vague, from Jean-Luc Godard to Luis Buñuel. In his contribution, Andy Willis also vindicates the importance of a series of films that deserve further critical attention due to their social impact. He explores the international development of the giallo in terms of style and content and the influence it had on Spain in the early to mid-1970s. Although the production of gialli in Spain might respond to the attempt to capitalize on the international success of the genre, Willis contends that, to fully understand these films, they must be seen within the particular context of Spanish culture and society at the time. He focuses on León Klimovsky’s Una libélula para cada muerto/A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1974) and examines the contradictory discourses that it might elicit in a period of mounting social tension. In the following chapter, Ann Davies focuses on the Gothic; another genre traditionally disregarded by academia in the Spanish context. She discusses the continuities between the contemporary Gothic in Spain and earlier cinema from the 1960s and 1970s, emphasizing the connections with the Anglo-American tradition that would in time facilitate the increasing convergence of the contemporary Spanish Gothic genre with the Hollywood style of filmmaking. Noelia Saenz considers the 1992 celebrations of the Quincentenary of the so-­called discovery of America as a pivotal moment in redefining Spanish cinema as a transnational product that transcended its local specificity through the production of generic hybrids that mixed the historical epic and the heritage film. These narratives, which were criticized for perpetuating the imperialist nostalgia of earlier heritage films, are compared with a recent retelling of the

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Columbus story, También la lluvia/Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín 2010), a film that reworks the genre by linking the history of colonization with contemporary neoimperial struggles, presenting a shared history whose legacy informs contemporary global struggles and attracts global audiences. Carmen Indurain Eraso’s chapter leads us to the end of the 1990s by exploring the influence of a genuinely US genre—the road movie—on contemporary Spanish cinema. Its transnational potential is highlighted in the two main tendencies she identifies in the Spanish recodification of the genre: a postmodern and a realistic trend, which are considered through the analyses of Airbag (Juan Manuel Bajo Ulloa 1997) and Fugitivas/Fugitives (Miguel Hermoso 2000), respectively. Finally, Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy’s piece on Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World (1999) centers on the complexities of transnational relations in the context of Spain’s modernizing process during the 1990s. She contends that Bollaín’s film illustrates the emergence of a new filmic trend or genre that deals with the fairly new phenomenon of immigration to the country. She discusses how the representation of the rural landscape of Castille problematizes notions of home, of displacement, and of cultural difference as Spanish society adapted to the reality of globalization. Part III, “Appropriating the Global: Self-­Conscious Transnationalism,” provides a selection of articles which focus on representative film genres that characterize the global-­local panorama of Spanish cinema in the new millennium. Following the patterns initiated in the 1990s, the twenty-­first century offers a wide range of cinematographic productions, both in film and TV formats that make apparent the complexity of Spain’s multiple cultural identities in terms of direction, production, and representation. Beatriz Oria opens the section by interrogating the globalizing effects of US genres on Spanish films, focusing on Spanish self-­constructions of national identity in the context of Hollywood’s influence. She explores how contemporary Spanish comedy is influenced by the Hollywood “bromance,” the most recent turn of contemporary US comedy. Spanish cinema thus establishes a dialogue in which Hollywood’s formal elements are appropriated and combined with vernacular tropes in order to produce texts preoccupied with upkeeping both a local and a global agenda, preserving the marks of Spanish “difference” in the age of global media. Luis Miguel García-Mainar also centers on the significant changes certain genres with a global appeal like the crime, gangster or detective film have undergone in the latest decades due, mainly, to Hollywood’s influence. More specifically, he notices a shift from action to characters’ thoughts and

Introduction

13

emotions in both European and US crime genre, and examines how this trend has permeated the Spanish approach to the genre both in cinema and television. This emphasis on characters’ thoughts and emotions acquires a further dimension in the following chapter, in which Hilaria Loyo explores the melodramatic use of human suffering in Isabel Coixet’s films, which are frequently contextualized in various international currents. She examines how the Catalan filmmaker focuses on the transnational to explore local responses to the universality of pathos, ultimately eliciting new forms of human relationality in today’s globally interconnected world. Alberto Elena and Ana Martín Morán analyse the works of Irene Cardona and Santiago Zannou to comment on the transnational connections at stake in the recent cinema on immigration in Spain. Using generic conventions of the cinema de banlieue or the romantic comedy among others, Elena and Morán contend that these films address new realities of contemporary Spanish society that still lack presence in Spanish cinema. Iván Villarmea Álvarez also addresses the topic of migration and representation of local identities in transnational scenarios from the point of view of the Galician diaspora as portrayed by the Novo Cinema Galego. These films frame the Galician migratory phenomenon in a transnational context, addressing identity issues from a peripheral position, which is transnational in itself: they consciously avoid the center to settle down in the margins, borrowing ideas from global non-­fiction genres such as the travelog, the found-­footage documentary or the correspondence film to enrich their film tradition without giving up its particular idiosyncrasy. Finally, Vicente Rodríguez Ortega closes the book with an analysis of what he calls “invisible co-­productions” to scrutinize the transnational character of contemporary Spanish cinema in connection with the malleability of genres. The chapter analyses the multifarious uses and meanings of the term co-­production within the transnational media and cinematic environment, explaining the variety of factors at play in their identification and circulation, and paying special attention to the ways in which genres are mobilized within these national and transnational mediascapes to frame the very functioning of contemporary Spanish co-­productions. As may be noticed, the transnational character of the book has not been limited to its content, and it includes contributions from authors of varied backgrounds. Hispanists, film scholars, and cultural studies practitioners—not only from Spain but also from other European countries and the United States—provide a unique, multifaceted perspective on film production in Spain. The result is thus a collaborative piece of research greatly enriched by its interdisciplinary approach

14

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and international “spirit.” The collection aims to provide a chronological re-­vision of Spanish film practices through a kaleidoscopic transnational lens which foregrounds both the fractures and amalgamation of hybrid identities and cinematic productions. We hope that this approach acquaints the reader with a dialectical view on the subject that will hopefully stimulate further academic dialogues about the transnational dimension of Spanish cinema.

References Altman, R., Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute, 1999. Altman, R., “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,” in Film Genre Reader III, ed. B.K. Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003, pp. 27–41. Beck, J. and V. Rodríguez Ortega (eds.), Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008. Cánovas Belchí, J., “Identidad nacional y cine español: el género chico en el cine mudo español. A propósito de la adaptación cinematográfica de La verbena de la Paloma (José Buchs, 1921),” Quintana, 10, 2011, pp. 65–87. Casanova, J., Europa contra Europa, 1914–1945. Barcelona: Crítica, 2011. Cawelti, J.G., Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1976. Chen, K.H., “Cultural Studies and the Politics of Internationalization: An Interview with Stuart Hall,” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds D. Morley and K.H. Chen. London and New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 39–408. Ezra, E. and T. Rowden (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. London: Routledge, 2006. García Escudero, J.M., La historia en cien palabras del cine español y otros escritos sobre cine. Salamanca: Publicaciones del Cine-­club del SEU, 1954. Gledhill, C., “Rethinking Genre,” in Reinventing Film Studies, eds C. Gledhill and L. Williams. London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 221–43. Higbee, W. and S.H. Lim, “Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies,” Transnational Cinemas, vol. 1, no. 1, 2010, pp. 7–21. Higson, A., “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema,”, in Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, eds E. Ezra and T. Rowden. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 15–25. Hjort, M., “On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism,” in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, eds N. Ďuričová and K. Newman. London and New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 12–33. Hjort, M. and S. MacKenzie, Cinema and Nation. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Introduction

15

Karner, C., Negotiating National Identities: Between Globalization, the Past and “the Other.” Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Kinder, M., Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Cinema in Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Labanyi, J. and T. Pavlović (eds), A Companion to Spanish Cinema. Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2013. Naremore, J., More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. O’Regan, T., “Cultural Exchange,” in The Contemporary Hollywood Reader, ed. T. Miller. London and New York: Routledge, 2009, pp. 500–25. Saul, J.R., The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World. Toronto: Penguin, 2009. Schatz, T., “The Structural Influence: New Directions in Film Genre Study,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, 1977, pp. 302–12. Shaw, D. and A. de la Garza, “Introducing Transnational Cinemas,” Transnational Cinemas, vol. 1, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3–6. Sobchack, T., “Genre Film: A Classical Experience,” in Film Genre: Theory and Criticism, ed. B.K. Grant. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1977, pp. 39–52. Tarancón, J., “Genre Matters: Film Criticism and the Social Relevance of Genres,” CineAction, 80, 2010, pp. 13–21. Vertovec, S., Transnationalism. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Wilson R. and W. Dissanayake (eds), Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1996. Wright, J.H., “Genre Films and the Status Quo,” Jump Cut, 1974. Available from: [February 26, 2015].

Part One

Rethinking Spanishness: The Soft Edges of Early Cinema

1

The Tuneful 1930s: Spanish Musicals in a Global Context Valeria Camporesi

According to Vicente Benet, the explosively successful encounter between the Spanish musical culture of the early twentieth century and cinema “created one of the most powerful and long-­lasting phenomena of Spanish contemporary culture” (2012, 98), the españolada.1 As he keenly observes, in this peculiar version of the national identity elaborated local traditions and styles converged along with transnational ingredients and models.2 Indeed, in the first decade of sound cinema the cultural and industrial crossbreed between music and cinema was an extraordinarily widespread and successful practice all over the world, and it often involved a re-­elaboration of particularly effective figments of local identity in the context of a new cultural hybrid. This peculiar phenomenon has been detected and analysed from different viewpoints in a great number of national film histories.3 Among them, the musicals made in the USA have been singled out as the prototype that functioned in many ways as a reference for the rest. However, a such ubiquitous model is not to be taken simply as one sweeping cultural archetype. As Rick Altman has effectively argued, it is possible to distinguish three different models of American musical films, the “fairy-­tale,” the “show,” and the “folk” musical (1987, 27). He sees the first one as molded on the “European” model, the second one as epitomized by Hollywood and the third one as somehow authentically American in a broader, more cultural sense. What is astounding about his classification is that quite a few of the determining features he bestows on the American folk musical (1987, 273–85) seem actually to apply, mutatis mutandis, to a large extent, to the Spanish españolada. So when Altman says that “the folk musical preaches a gospel of folk values to an age of mass media” (1987, 322), he is establishing an analytic framework which could fruitfully be applied to other national cases.

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In the following pages, the study of the musical films produced in Spain between the final establishment of sound cinema in 1932,4 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 will be pursued with that inspiring formula in mind. The basic question which this analysis shall try to approach is to what extent those Spanish movies of the early sound era shifted between a Euro-Hollywood pattern and Altman’s “folk musical model,” and how the global/local dialectics apply to them. Not too far in the background lies the intricate question of transnational transactions of formats, texts, and people (directors and actors, as well as technicians) which characterizes the whole history of cinema, and certainly the 1930s, and which will provide some hard facts to be reflected upon. Hopefully, this inevitably short analysis will highlight some basic, distinctive features which will not only make possible a comparison between different national cinemas, but also pinpoint how globalization might have worked in the cinematographic world well before the actual term was universally adopted to describe worldwide transactions of all kinds. Pursuing this line of analysis leads us to revise and reassess the ways in which folkloric musicals are normally studied. As mentioned above, in his widely influential 1987 book on the subject, Rick Altman approached movie musicals with the idea of producing a broad and an all-­embracing analytical framework. Within that context, he defined US folk musicals as movies whose specificity was rooted in the reappropriation of cultural and visual ingredients “borrowed from the American past and colored by an euphoric memory” (1987, 273). According to Altman, a mythical image of the past was an essential trait of folk musicals, but no less important was a strong sense of a geographical identity, normally linked to “the construction of sets based on conventions of American painting, printmaking and photography” as well as on the “use of location photography . . . carefully chosen to recall a cinematic or other pictorial precedent” (1987, 273, 277). Last but not least, music, far from being a simple element of the audiovisual text, functioned as an essential framework that structured the text and helped make sense of the different narrative and stylistic pieces upon which the movie was structured. Notwithstanding the perceptiveness of this analysis, it is particularly intriguing that Altman does not refer back to any kind of authentic essence of local cultures, and repeatedly insists on how those films brought about a rearrangement of existing shards of representation. It may be worth keeping this approach in mind when one turns the attention to Spanish films. A swift look at the musicals made in Spain between 1932 and 1936 suggests a remarkable presence of folk elements very much along the lines so precisely

The Tuneful 1930s

21

described by Altman. Although movies without specific national cultural contents were also profusely produced within the genre, references to local motives, melodies, stars, and settings recurred in most films, and therefore one could safely talk of a strong presence of Spanish elements within a global format. Current historiography normally divides the bulk of that production according to the movies’ adherence to certain patterns that have come to be identified with particular geographic contexts. Therefore, it is deemed possible to find Spanish musicals made either in the European or Hollywood-­style, adopting a Central/South American nuance or striving to appear straightforwardly Spanish, a typology not too different from the one Altman devises for the American version of the genre. This interpretation is certainly very helpful when it comes to establish the basic features of a very complicated panorama. However, for a more nuanced cultural analysis, it is necessary to account more precisely for the confusing and sometimes contradictory elements which usually merge in a particular movie. What is particularly questionable is its failure to take into account the dialogical nature of filmic texts. In the 1930s, cinema audiences all over the world were increasingly aware of and familiarized with mainstream productions from a number of different countries. On the other hand, film production had always been intrinsically global and, contrary to popular belief, this did not change substantially when sound cinema brought to the fore the importance of national languages, or when aggressively nationalistic dictators required cinema and other media to promote patriotic values. For all this, it is reasonable to open up the question of the national cultural identity of a movie a little further, and work on the hypothesis that movies were hybrid compounds including elements from more than one model. This does not mean that films cannot be an expression of a national culture, or that filmmakers did not use and combine discourses rooted in a specific understanding of the local/national culture. What is at stake here is an attempt to define more sharply what happens when those discourses are launched into a broader space and have to preserve their attractiveness in the eyes of a much wider and probably diverse audience. As Benet argues, musical films are extraordinary sources to explore this. According to Román Gubern (1995, 156), in the period under consideration the Spanish film industry produced 109 feature films. Musicals constituted slightly more than 35 percent of the overall production,5 a percentage which reveals a remarkable similarity with what was happening in other developed countries.6 Quite a few of these movies can be described as truly transnational, but this cosmopolitanism was not always evident, and, in some cases, it was

22

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straightforwardly concealed. The transnational connections were often the consequence of the absorption and adaptation of the above-­mentioned international formats, although they were often reinforced by tangible and specific exogenous ingredients. These could be directly inserted in the texts as part of the plots and mise-­en-scène (original stories, settings, accents, costumes, etc.) and/or might be the result of the work and presence of foreign cast and crew. In general terms, settings, characters and production design dwelt upon easily recognizable local features, in particular in the españoladas and the zarzuela adaptations, but also, quite frequently, in urban comedies. On the other hand, and not necessarily in contradiction with the effort to “look Spanish,” a discreet number of the performers (singers, actors, actresses) as well as directors, scriptwriters, set designers, cameramen, etc. who were employed in the production of musicals were either foreigners, as in the case for instance of Doña Francisquita (Hans Behrendt 1934) or María de la O (Francisco Elías 1936),7 or Spaniards with experience abroad. A particularly remarkable case among directors was Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, a French Basque filmmaker with a successful career in Hollywood who directed in Spain what is considered the best musical film of the period, La traviesa molinera/It Happened in Spain (1934), also filmed in English and French.8 Therefore, the provocative label “Euro-American” that Peter Lev (1993) has applied to modern and postmodern “art cinema” to describe the complex relationships between the movies made in the old continent and the movies made in the US might prove useful here in more than one sense, in particular at a moment when popular and classical cinema were at their height. But with an important nuance: in the 1930s the Spanish cinematographic establishment was experiencing an increasing interest in Central and South America, a crucial market which the advent of sound apparently made more approachable. Crucial steps were then taken to strengthen commercial links and to set up a “Hispano” cinematographic network, within which music and dance would play a remarkable role.9 A close analysis of a group of films which can reasonably be said to represent the production of musicals during this period might help to explore how and to what extent the Euro-American connection actually worked within the genre.10 It will thus be possible to go into some detail and at the same time put forward a new way of looking at well-­known individual movies and possibly reassess their cultural meaning. It is hardly debatable that zarzuela adaptations were very popular in the first decade of sound cinema in Spain. They had all been very well accepted in the

The Tuneful 1930s

23

silent era and their popularity only increased with the introduction of sound.11 A basic list of the most relevant cinematographic zarzuelas of the early 1930s would possibly include La Dolorosa (Jean Grémillon 1934), the already mentioned Doña Francisquita (Hans Behrendt 1934), La verbena de la Paloma/Festival of the Virgin of the Dove (Benito Perojo 1935), and El gato montés/The Wild Cat (Rosario Pi 1935), a fairly reasonable selection in terms of representativeness of the subgenre and which allows for different approaches and production strategies. The first thing to be remarked about these films is their unquestionable regional flavor, which is connected to the stage works they are based on: Aragon in La Dolorosa, Andalusia in El gato montés and Madrid in the other two. The aim was not so much to represent authentic customs as to exploit intensely folkloric locations which audiences could relate to the Spain they might be interested in. From an industrial perspective, these movies provided a recognizable depiction of a version of Spanishness that could be projected beyond the local market. La Dolorosa and La verbena de la Paloma for instance could attempt to revive the exotic appeal of the espagnolade in France (the popularity of Grémillon and Perojo in the neighboring country could also help in this direction), while the Jewish producers of Doña Francisquita had probably America in mind (the United States and a few Central and South American countries) when they decided to embark on a Spanish-­flavored adaptation which reminded them of the operettas that originated in Central Europe and were popular worldwide. Something similar applies to El gato montés, directed by the cosmopolitan Rosario Pi,12 who had proven her knack for transnational enterprises of this kind as a producer and scriptwriter. The question was how to pursue the global market without losing Spanish audiences. It is not easy to figure out what the reception of these movies might have been as we can only gather it through the press. However, although the published opinions can hardly be taken to represent what the public response might have been, it can still be useful in order to explore how these movies were perceived in relatively informed circles. Generally speaking, while universal praises went to the surprising subtlety with which Grémillon and his team had managed to build up “una película reciamente ibérica” (“an intensely Iberian film”),13 in the other cases the Spanish press centered its attention mainly on the technical and artistic virtuosity (or lack of it) of the movies, and La verbena de la Paloma, in particular, was catalogued among the best Spanish films of the year.14 These comments reveal that somehow, even in the mind of local critics, what seemed at stake was the effort which was made to update and recycle existing

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patterns of self-­representation and folkloric motifs. The basic question did not seem to be the movies’ degree of adherence to the authentic traits of the local/ national culture, but the way in which they were revived by means of new forms. Although in the case of Doña Francisquita the fact that such a refurbishment had been engendered by a foreign team was singled out and disapproved of in certain media (González and Camporesi 2011), the general feeling is that there existed a fair degree of consensus between producers and filmmakers on one side and those who received the movies on the other upon the idea that folklore and/or local cultures could be successfully adapted to cinema in a way that would result convincing and entertaining to different types of audiences throughout the world. This argument is strongly reinforced when one turns to examine El gato montés. The movie is an adaptation of a musical drama written by Manuel Penella whose theatrical release in Spain had taken place in 1916. Being at the time a critical and popular success in various theatres in his home country and Latin America, it was staged in New York in February 1922 and two years afterwards Paramount produced its first cinematographic adaptation, Tiger Love, under the direction of George Melford with a script of a novice Howard Hawks (American Film Institute 1971). A fairly unremarkable product contradictorily described as “a typical Sheik picture with a Spanish setting” (Reading Eagle, 1925, 10) or “a Spanish Robin Hood tale” (in Rivera and Resto 2008, 36), the Paramount version shows that Hollywood had already created a public for cultural products whose marketing strategies were founded on an exploitation of their Spanish exoticism. Rosario Pi, who produced and directed the new Spanish version, was probably aware of it. Moreover, she thought it fit to reshuffle the original text and adapt its folkloristic subject so that it could convey “ ‘cosmopolitan’ preoccupations” (in Martin Marquez 1999, 66). Another interesting characteristic of El gato montés, shared with Doña Francisquita,15 is that the musical drama it was based on was itself a revision—the golden age of zarzuela and musical drama in Spain being the seventeenth century—so that it somehow encompasses a certain degree of self-­consciousness and modernity in the way in which it relates to traditional motives and clichés. Taking this into account, the movie can be read as an example of a broader process of cultural adjustments. To what extent Morena Clara/Dark and Bright (Florián Rey 1936), the next movie in the short list of selected films which forms the basis of this analysis, represents a step back from that self-­conscious re-­elaboration may be something to think about. Produced under the auspices of CIFESA (Compañía Industrial Film Español SA), the biggest Spanish production company at the time, Morena

The Tuneful 1930s

25

Clara is an adaptation of a musical comedy that depicts the inter-­class love relationship between a gipsy woman and a señorito in the context of a stereotypical Andalusia, complete with popular songs and dances. Imperio Argentina, who at this point was already a well-­known transnational star, plays the main female character. She had begun her theatrical career as a singer and dancer in Buenos Aires, where she was born to Spanish parents, and had later worked not only in Spain, where she established herself, but also at Joinville studios in Paris, as well as in Germany. By 1936 she was at the height of her international career and Morena Clara only added to her fame. The film was released in Madrid and Barcelona three months before the outbreak of the Civil War and within a few weeks it had asserted itself as an absolute blockbuster in its home country and shortly afterwards in Mexico and other South American countries.16 As in the previous examples, one is again confronted here with a peculiar version of españolada which manages to be sufficiently universal in its appeal to attract a culturally diverse audience. The movie’s stylized approach to reality seems to have been not only the cause of its popularity but also, somehow, the link to a global trend in musical cinema, establishing Morena Clara as an example of a “new model of popular cinema,” as Rodríguez Conde observed (1998, 80). The world that this type of movie inhabited was not so far from where other musical comedies, set in a modern, urban environment, and normally considered as worthy of attention, stood. Boliche (Francisco Elías 1933) is one of these movies. It was produced by a company with strong ties with France and, regardless of the questionable management of its revenues,17 it involved an innovative approach to the cinematographic production of musical films, at least in Spain, both as an artistic work and as a commercial product. As Triana-Toribio keenly remarks (2003, 30), Boliche is also a further example of the interest that the industrial establishment in Spain took in maintaining and strengthening its ties with Central and South America, which, in cinematographic terms, meant basically Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. It is precisely the latter which stands at the narrative and cultural center of Boliche, as the movie stars a very popular Argentinian trio of singers, Irusta, Fugazoe, and Demare, who sing and dance popular Argentinian songs. It is partially set in Buenos Aires and tells the story of an Argentinian young man who at one point in his life is required to travel to Barcelona. According to Román Gubern (1995, 147–8), the film “turned out to be one of the bestselling and most exported to America movies of the whole Republican cinema.” Most critics celebrated it as the dawning of a new age of

26

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better quality and more professionalism in Spanish cinema and, although there were voices that remarked its undaunted Spanishness,18 it would be more reasonably catalogued as a miscellaneous cultural product, not so different from the movies described above. The last film which will be addressed here, El bailarín y el trabajador/The Dancer and the Worker (Luis Marquina 1936), is in this regard much more conventional and mono-­cultural than Boliche and the rest of the films analysed. Set in Spain, with Spanish characters, El bailarín y el trabajador is the adaptation of a play by Jacinto Benavente and was produced by a studio with no significant transnational liaisons (Heinink and Vallejo 2008, 48–9; Cerdán 1997, 104–6). In spite of this apparently uncomplicated production, its script, plot, and style echo Euro-Hollywood models quite literally (Sánchez Salas 2014, 85–8). As a text, El bailarín y el trabajador follows the pattern of a light sentimental comedy interspersed with musical numbers, and tells the story of a soon-­to-wed couple that experiences some difficulties due to the young man’s lack of attachment to the work ethics his future father-­in-law, an industrialist who venerates the productivity imperatives, tries to enhance. The modernity of the environment which surrounds the action, although conceived as a mere backdrop for the story, moves to the forefront, especially during the musical numbers, which include an amazing fake commercial as well as more classic, well implemented montage sequences set within the factory. These details, along with the industrial capitalism the movie depicts and glorifies, enhance its cosmopolitan flavor. In this sense, El bailarín y el trabajador is a unique Spanish movie, and remains an isolated example of its kind (Sánchez Salas 2014, 100–1). But at the same time, it can be viewed as a peculiar cultural product that established a particularly penetrating dialogue with its context and described a historically significant longing for a smooth transition to a modernity where global and local elements could be peacefully intertwined. To conclude, it can be said that Spanish musical films made during the Second Republic expose the process of modernization Spanish culture was immersed in at that time. They do so because they occupied that blurred but extremely significant area where the elites and the popular classes engaged in an oblique dialogue on the up-­to-dateness of certain traditional versions of the local culture. Within that dialectical space, a second current of exchanges related to transnational practices, global models, and target audiences broke through. This double movement seems to highlight that certain aspects of what we now call “globalization” were already well in progress in the 1930s and that cinema is

The Tuneful 1930s

27

probably a privileged platform to explore them. This is far from surprising as transnational exchanges of people (professionals) and cultural objects (movies) stand at the very heart of cinema’s industry and aesthetic practices all through its history and throughout the globe. So that, when in the 1930s the cinema industry entered its golden age and reached its peak of popularity in Europe and America, these processes accelerated, and a complex and diffuse change began to take shape. Judging from what our exploration of Spanish musicals in the 1930s points out, it would seem that at that moment a gradual dissolution, or, at least, the possibility of a dissolution of what Bartelson defined as the socio-­cultural “divide between inside and outside” (2000, 189) gathered momentum, so that national and foreign audiences would eventually come to share an identical perception of national-­folkloric identities no matter which country they were originally from.19 Where this leaves the notion of an authentic cinematographic depiction of a local culture is not easy to ascertain, but it is without doubt a question which should neither be neglected nor taken unproblematically.

Notes 1 The term españolada is semantically confusing (see Camporesi 2014b). Here it is taken to mean a folkloric musical as in Labanyi 1999. All translations are the author’s except otherwise noted. 2 Although Benet does refer to these transnational aspects (see Benet 2012, 105–6), the main thrust of his analysis goes into the exploration of the national, as this was what this kind of cinema was supposed to be about. In these pages an attempt is made to shift the focus in order to emphasize instead its debt to international formats. 3 See Creekmur and Mokdad (eds.) 2012, Chion 2002 and Mattl 2007. 4 See Gubern 1993. 5 See Gubern 1995, 129, 156 and Caparrós Lera 1981, 126–7. 6 See Balio 1995, 211–35, Ascheid 2012, 50–2 and De Santi 1999, 432–6. 7 Both these films were produced by studios set up by Jewish refugees who made an attempt to establish themselves in Spain during the Nazi persecutions in Europe. See González and Camporesi 2011. 8 Unfortunately, no copy of this film is available. See Borau 1998, 865–6. 9 The Congreso Hispanoamericano de Cinematografía (Hispanic American Film Congress) of 1931 was particularly important in this regard. See García Carrión 2013, 227–61. For the general picture, see Elena 2005.

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10 The movies analysed are, in chronological order, Boliche (Francisco Elías, Lemoine-Elías for Orphea Films 1933), Doña Francisquita (Hans Behrendt, Ibérica Films 1934), La Dolorosa (Jean Grémillon, Producción Cinematográfica Española 1934), La verbena de la Paloma/Festival of the Virgin of the Dove (Benito Perojo, CIFESA 1935), El gato montés/The Wild Cat (Rosario Pi, Star Film 1935), El bailarín y el trabajador/The Dancer and the Worker (Luis Marquina, CEA 1936), Morena Clara/Dark and Bright (Florián Rey, CIFESA 1936). Four of them (La Dolorosa, La verbena de la Paloma, El gato montés and El bailarín y el trabajador) are reviewed in the Antología crítica del cine español edited by Julio Pérez Perucha and published by Filmoteca Española in 1997. See Pérez Perucha 1997, 92–4, 98–100, 101–3, 104–6. The other three are amply discussed in the historiography of Spanish cinema. See for instance Gubern 1995, 95–156, Caparrós Lera 1981, 235–336, Fernández Colorado 2000, Sánchez Oliveira 2003, 90–6. 11 As no data on box office returns is available for these years (the “control de taquilla” was not established until 1964), objective criteria that would help to determine these movies’ social representativeness are out of reach. According to Heinink and Vallejo (2009, 405–12), nine were made between 1931 and 1940. Joaquín Cánovas Belchí was the first to highlight the importance of zarzuela adaptations in Spanish silent cinema (1993). 12 For more information on this topic, see Fernández Colorado 1997. 13 From an article that appeared on La Vanguardia, February 19, 1935, 8; see also Caparrós Lera 1981, 97–100. 14 See Gubern 1994, 277–80. 15 For a short reconstruction of the process of adaptation of Doña Francisquita, see Camporesi 2010, 75–6. 16 See Gubern 1995, 146–7. According to Juan Rodríguez Conde, in Mexico, the movie was so successful that it engendered a parody for young audiences, Morenita Clara (Joselito Rodríguez and Carlos Orellana 1943), see Rodríguez Conde 1998. For a short appraisal of Imperio Argentina’s transnational career by the early 1940s see Camporesi 2014a, 223. 17 See Heinink and Vallejo 2009, 56–7. For the longer story of the production company Orphea-Film, see Riambau and Torreiro 2008, 486–9. 18 Especially remarkable is the review that appeared in La Vanguardia and which described Boliche’s story as “a series of psychological events that precisely match our race and the character and sentiment of our American kinsfolk as a whole” (December 7, 1933, 13). 19 I have explored how Almodóvar cinema might highlight a similar, globally applicable representation of Spanishness in contemporary cinema in Camporesi 2014b.

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References Altman, R., The American Film Musical. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. American Film Institute, The AFI Catalog of Motion Pictures: Feature Films 1921–1930. Volume 1. Part 1. Berkeley and London: AFI, 1971. Ascheid, A., “Germany,” in The International Film Musical, eds C. Creekmur and L. Mokdad. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp. 45–58. Balio, T., Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. Bartelson, J., “Three Concepts of Globalization,” International Sociology, vol. 15, no. 2, 2000, pp. 180–96. Benet, V., El cine español. Una historia cultural. Barcelona: Paidós, 2012. Borau, J.L. (ed.), Diccionario del cine español. Madrid: Alianza, 1998. Camporesi, V., “Déplacements d’images et sons,” in Lire, voir, entendre. La réception des objets médiatiques, eds P. Goetschel, F. Jost, and M. Tsikounas. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010, pp. 75–9. Camporesi, V., “Whose films are these? Italian-Spanish co-­productions of the early 1940s,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 34, no. 2, 2014a, pp. 208–30. Camporesi, V., “L’espagnolade autour d’Almodóvar. L’Espagne à l’écran à la fin du millénaire,” in Le cinéma espagnol. Histoire et culture, eds V. Sánchez Biosca and P. Feenstra. Paris: Armand Colin, 2014b, pp. 54–65. Cánovas Belchí, J., “La música y las películas en el cine mudo español. Las adaptaciones de zarzuelas en la producción cinematográfica de los años veinte,” in El paso de mudo al sonoro en el Cine Español (IV Congreso de la Asociación Española de Historiadores del Cine), ed. E.C. García Fernández. Madrid: Editorial Complutense/AEHC, 1993, pp. 15–26. Caparrós Lera, J.M., Arte y política en el cine de la República (1931–1939). Barcelona: Siete y Medio/Universidad de Barcelona, 1981. Cerdán, J., “El bailarín y el trabajador 1936,” in Antología crítica del cine español 1906–1995, ed. J. Pérez Perucha. Madrid: Cátedra/Filmoteca Española, 1997, pp. 104–6. Chion, M., La comédie musicale. París: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2002. Creekmur, C. and L. Mokdad (eds.), The International Film Musical. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. De Santi, P.M., “. . . e l’Italia sogna. Architettura e design nel cinema déco del fascismo,” in Storia del cinema mondiale. L’Europa 1. Miti, luoghi, divi, ed. G.P. Brunetta. Torino: Einaudi, 1999, pp. 429–82. Elena, A., “Cruce de destinos: Intercambios cinematográficos entre España y América Latina,” in Historia(s) del cine español, eds J. Pérez Perucha and S. Zunzunegui. La Coruña: Vía Láctea, 2005, pp. 332–76.

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Fernández Colorado, L., “El gato montés 1935,” in Antología crítica del cine español, 1906–1995, ed. J. Pérez Perucha. Madrid: Cátedra/Filmoteca Española, 1997, pp. 101–3. Fernández Colorado, L., “Il suono e la furia. Cinema spagnolo 1929–1939,” in Storia del cinema mondiale. Volume 3: L’Europa. Le cinematografie nazionali. Tomo 1. Turin: Einaudi, 2000, pp. 323–40. García Carrión, M., Por un cine patrio. Cultura cinematográfica y nacionalismo español 1926–36. Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2013. González García, F. and V. Camporesi, “ ‘¿Un progreso en el arte nacional?’ Ibérica Films en España, 1933–1936,” BSAA Arte, 77, 2011, pp. 265–85. Gubern, R., “La traumática transición del cine español del mudo al sonoro,” in El paso del mudo al sonoro en el cine español, ed. E.C. García Fernández. Madrid: Editorial Complutense/AEHC, 1993, pp. 3–24. Gubern, R., Benito Perojo. Pionierismo y supervivencia. Madrid: Filmoteca Española, 1994. Gubern, R., “El cine sonoro (1930–1939),” in Historia del cine español, eds R. Gubern et al. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995, pp. 123–80. Heinink, J.B. and A.C. Vallejo, Catálogo del cine español. Films de ficción 1931–1940. Volumen F3. Madrid: Cátedra/Filmoteca Española, 2009. Labanyi, J., “Raza, género y denegación en el cine español del primer Franquismo: el cine de misioneros y las películas folclóricas,” Archivos de la filmoteca. Revista de estudios históricos sobre la imagen, 32, 1999, pp. 22–42. Lev, P., The Euro-American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. Martin Márquez, S., Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Mattl, S., “Utopies du cinéma parlant ou les Semaines internationales du cinéma de Vienna et la connexion entre l’operetta et le cinéma autrichien,” Austriaca, 64, 2007, pp. 27–38. Pérez Perucha, J. (ed.), Antología crítica del cine español 1906–1995. Madrid: Cátedra/ Filmoteca Española, 1997. Riambau, E. and C. Torreiro, Productores en el cine español. Estado, dependencias y mercado. Madrid: Cátedra/Filmoteca Española, 2008. Rivera Viruet, R.J. and M. Resto, Hollywood—Se habla español. New York: Terramax Entertainment, 2008. Rodríguez Conde, J., “Imperio Argentina,” in Diccionario del cine español, ed. J.L. Borau. Madrid: Alianza, 1998, pp. 80–2. Sánchez Oliveira, E., Aproximación histórica al cineasta Francisco Elías Riquelme (1890–1977). Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2003. Sánchez Salas, D., “El bailarín y el trabajador (L. Marquina, 1936),” in Il cinema spagnolo attraverso i film, ed. V. Camporesi. Rome: Carocci, 2014, pp. 77–102. Triana Toribio, N., Spanish National Cinema. London: Routledge, 2003.

2

Historical Films During the First Years of the Franco Regime and their Transnational Models Vicente J. Benet

Historical film dramas and their reception The gloomy picture Carmen Martín Gaite portrays in Usos amorosos de la postguerra española/Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain (1987) gives us a glimpse of the stifling daily existence most women had to endure in the early years of the Franco dictatorship. The book describes forms of domination that originated in the domestic sphere and which inevitably spread into the social mores of the public sphere. Martín Gaite reveals how these expected patterns of behavior were largely aimed at tightly controlling romantic feelings and relationships, and were subject to complex rituals that ensured women’s subordination to men (Martín Gaite 1988, 39 ff.). Nevertheless, there was a surprising variety of strong female characters in Spanish cinema at this time: powerful, dominating women, historical protagonists and leaders. The historical film dramas produced by CIFESA (Compañía Industrial Film Español SA) and other smaller film studios in the post-­war period, which reached their heyday between the late 1940s and early 1950s, give us an outstanding example of strong female protagonism. The genre has typically been considered as merely one more manifestation of regime propaganda. Indeed, these films portray an epic vision of a glorious past, especially of the Middle Ages and the Spanish Empire, which the Franco regime aimed to integrate as part of its cultural heritage. In addition, they transmitted a strong feeling of nationalism just when Spain found itself politically and economically isolated in the years following the Second World War. This was a very delicate moment, given that the regime was the last totalitarian government left in the heart of Western Europe. But a purely political interpretation of these films, although relevant, limits our understanding of them as a cultural phenomenon. They were not intended to

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agitate and mobilize the masses but rather to subtly permeate the social fabric like a fine mist through narrative strategies or in the way dramatic situations were resolved; hence, the tone was decidedly sentimental and melodramatic. Some of these films, such as Locura de amor/The Mad Queen (Juan de Orduña 1948), met with huge public acclaim. With the highest box office takings of the 1940s in Spain, this film told the tragic love story of Queen Joanna and Philip the Fair. What was unique about this historical film was its enrichment of the narrative with romantic elements that keyed into traditional feminine tastes. As Montero Díaz and Paz point out (2011, 67), the film’s impact and success was in all likelihood due to the fact that it met the expectations of the female audience. A similar formula was used in many other films of the post-­war period such as Agustina de Aragón (Juan de Orduña 1950), La leona de Castilla/The Lioness of Castile (Juan de Orduña 1951), La princesa de los Ursinos/The Princess des Ursines (Luis Lucia 1947), La duquesa de Benamejí/The Duchess of Benamejí (Luis Lucia 1949), Catalina de Inglaterra/Catherine of England (Arturo Ruiz Castillo 1951), Amaya (Luis Marquina 1952), Inés de Castro (Manuel Augusto García Viñolas and José Leitao de Barros 1944), Reina Santa/The Holy Queen (Rafael Gil 1947), Doña María la Brava/Doña María the Brave (Luis Marquina 1948), Lola la piconera/Lola, the Coalgirl (Luis Lucia 1952), etc. In all these films, the woman is an active protagonist, in charge of her destiny, in synch with her passions. The impact of these films on the collective imagination was considerable, and the strong female protagonists were in all likelihood a channel through which the spectators could sublimate their hopes and dreams. A group of female stars coming out of this genre (Amparo Rivelles, Aurora Bautista, Ana Mariscal, Sara Montiel, Maruchi Fresno, etc.) became highly visible in the public sphere, especially through illustrated magazines. They represented the essence of modernity and independence, in stark contrast to the lives of the women who enjoyed seeing them on the big screen. However, the effectiveness of the genre was also due to the skillful blending of highly disparate components. Some came from standard literary and pictorial traditions, while others were related to popular culture and the modern entertainment industry (such as comics) that were widely consumed during the Franco regime. And of course there were influences from other films of this genre, especially those coming out of Hollywood, but we should especially keep in mind the importance that cinéma de qualité had at this time in Europe, especially in France and Britain. The end result was the creation of a type of film that was quite malleable, i.e. capable of fusing the hieratic oratory of a film d’art

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with the excitement of a swashbuckler. Let us take a closer look at the components of this highly successful formula.

Shaping the genre Among the dramatic and iconographic components of this genre, those that derive from the arts and letters of the Late Romantic tradition are of particular importance. The most notable literary influence came from historical stage plays (González 2009, 51; Gies 2005, 57 ff.) and the long theatrical tradition in Spain was still going strong at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Serge Salaün’s words, “No other country (in Europe) has had so many playwrights, composers, actors, theatres, acting troupes, or debuts. No other country . . . has so many theatres with four to seven daily shows” (2005, 9; all translations are the author’s except otherwise noted). Together with popular theatrical models (revista, sainete, cuplé, etc.) and the zarzuela, the romantic drama continued to be an important part of Spanish theater, albeit in an updated version. The violent, passionate dramas of José Echegaray, the kitsch epics of Eduardo Marquina or Francisco Villaespesa, the sensationalist melodramas of Enrique Pérez Escrich, or the sophisticated high comedies of Jacinto Benavente, along with the growing popularity of costumbrismo, were all references the audiences recognized and approved of. These dramas were based on romantic stories centered on great historical figures. They often contained a parallel political thread that brought the character to his or her ultimate demise for having defended lofty ideals. Some of these plays continued to be staged in major theaters in Madrid during the 1940s by directors such as Luis Escobar or Cayetano Luca de Tena. Several of the most outstanding technicians and artists working in the film industry at that time were also involved in their production, such as the set decorator Sigfrido Burmann (Hernández Ruiz 2001, 131). The brothers Antonio and Manuel Machado also participated in the theater during this time, composing historical dramas of a more popular slant, which were premiered in the twenties and thirties in Madrid. Thus, it is evident that this period of historical films drew on these theatrical precedents. Locura de amor, for example, is based on a play of the same title by Manuel Tamayo y Baus which premiered in 1855; La leona de Castilla is an adaptation of a play by Franciso Villaespesa; María la Brava is based on the play by Eduardo Marquina; La duquesa de Benamejí is adapted from a play by the Machado brothers; and we might even mention here the epigone of outmoded

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theater, José María Pemán and his play Cuando las Cortes de Cádiz, which was brought to the screen as Lola la piconera. We also find late romantic influences in several novels that were adapted to films. For example, Francisco Navarro Villoslada’s novel Amaya o los vascos del siglo VIII/Amaya or the Basques in the Eighth Century (1879), imbued with the nationalistic spirit of the times, was brought to the screen by Luis Marquina as Amaya (1952). We might even include here a few authors whose novels follow in this line of traditional, conservative narrative construction: Father Luis Coloma’s novel Pequeñeces/Trifles was adapted by Juan de Orduña in 1950 and Manuel Halcón’s Las aventuras de Juan Lucas/Adventures of Juan Lucas was brought to the screen by Rafael Gil in 1949, although the most notable of these adaptations was probably Ignacio Agustí’s novel Mariona Rebull, which was adapted for film by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia in 1947. These films not only used and updated formulas coming out of a long and successful tradition of Spanish drama and fiction, they also appropriated references from historical paintings of the nineteenth century. Francisco Pradilla was an important painter of reference. His 1877 painting Juana la Loca was explicitly reproduced as a scene at the beginning and ending of the film Locura de amor. On other occasions, the allusions are not quite so obvious; nevertheless, the sublime emotional drama that we typically see in Spanish academic painting is alluded to in many of these films. The affected poses of Pradilla’s La Capitulación de Granada/ The Surrender of Granada (1882) are clearly echoed in Alba de América/Dawn of America (Juan de Orduña 1951), while Locura de amor has some fairly direct allusions to paintings such as El testamento de Isabel la Católica/Queen Isabel la Católica Dictates Her Last Will and Testament by Eduardo Rosales (1864), and the Demencia de Doña Juana/The Dementia of Juana of Castile by Lorenzo Vallés (1866). References to Goya appear in several scenes from Agustina de Aragón and he is, of course, explicitly mentioned in Goyescas by Benito Perojo (1942). It becomes clear that in order to fully understand the iconographic references in historical film dramas, especially in terms of how an event from the past is emotionally elaborated, it is essential to see their connection with historical painting.

Transnational references The historical film dramas, nevertheless, were not limited to drawing inspiration from traditional sources. Their success was based on the way they incorporated

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narrative and dramatic resources developed in contemporary international cinema. The Spanish historical dramas correspond to the trend of the French and British cinéma de qualité of the 1940s. These dramas were related to a tradition that had been successful since the 1920s with the costume films and historical dramas that were highly popular both in Europe (particularly in Germany, with the genre known as the Kostümfilme) and the United States. In the mid-1930s, with the arrival of sound, there was a resurgence of these theatrical formulas that were adapted to film. For example, several of Maxwell Anderson′s Tudor dramas, written in blank verse, were the source for Mary of Scotland (John Ford 1936) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Michael Curtiz 1939). Both were successful on Broadway and later as films. The films had lavish sets and well-­known actors, following the “Merrie England” style that had gained success through films such as Fire Over England (William K. Howard 1937). Undoubtedly, this influence continued through the 1940s as films were becoming more politically oriented with the outbreak of the Second World War and the expansion of totalitarian regimes around the world. One of the most significant of these is The Sea Hawk (Michael Curtiz 1940), a story of Elizabethan privateers that drew parallels with contemporary events. It portrayed England as the last bastion of freedom in Europe, staving off Spain’s King Philip II, conqueror of the world, who had sent his powerful Armada to attack England. The allusions to Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombing of London were easily recognized. Needless to say, the film was censored in Spain. Countless films of adventures, pirates, or swashbucklers keyed into the public’s fascination with historical recreations. Audiences flocked to see elaborate costumes, extravagant jewelry, huge ships dismasted by cannon shots, thrilling scenes of carefully choreographed fencing duels, tumultuous battles, monumental sets, amazing stunts, ballroom dancing in grandiose palaces, in sum, an abundance of enticements ready to capture the spectators’ attention. The Spanish films inevitably used some of these devices, most notably the sword fighting scene. In fact, some of them, especially those that were not overtly ideological, were influenced by popular adventure novels whose dynamism fit very well with the Errol Flynn-­style swashbucklers. It was also quite frequent for these films to use motifs borrowed from mass culture. Gothic iconographies were one of the most popular examples, with their castles and dark dungeons, secret passages, and oppressive shadows that embellished the action shots, especially the sword fights that effectively encapsulated the narrative climax. This is the case of Locura de amor, María la

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Brava or La leona de Castilla, to mention just a few examples. Plots filled with murders and executions also added to the morbid and sinister flavor of the Gothic, such as we find in scenes of dungeons or hangings at the gallows in Catalina de Inglaterra or María la Brava. Another defining stylistic motif of the genre is the use of low-­key lighting, especially the sbattimento technique of casting shadows over figures or objects that inevitably creates a gothic feel (Rubio Mont 2001, 137). We can also trace many of these iconographic references—executioners, masked knights, treacherous courtiers, indolent kings, and skillful swordsmen— to the extremely popular comic books of that time. One of the key characters in the Spanish post-­war period was El guerrero del antifaz/The Masked Warrior, which appeared on newsstands with overwhelming success in October 1944. Action plots, using the past as a way to talk about the present, the way male characters were characterized, and even the type of language used are all factors that connect this film genre with pulp fiction and comic books (Porcel 2010, 112). Vázquez de Parga discusses the influence of comic books on the popular vision of history (2000, 38), and it was also a clear influence on shaping this film genre.

A woman’s film: case study Perhaps what is most significant about the influence of the contemporary entertainment industry has to do with its engagement with the female consumer, which was especially decisive during the 1930s and 1940s. Jo Labanyi has pointed out how the rendition of “strong, active women” in these films keyed into the way the female audience was configured in the post-­war years (Labanyi 2002, 42). Women were, after all, the main consumers of mass culture, including film—a phenomenon that was occurring internationally, not just in Spain. For instance, Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), with the intrepid Scarlett O’Hara, made the American entertainment industry recognize the potential of the female audience as consumers. Incidentally, Victor Fleming’s 1939 film version of the novel was not released in Spain until November 1950, thus denying audiences access to the adventures of Scarlett O’Hara, who had already fascinated millions of viewers (and readers) worldwide. In any case, accounts from women in Spain of that time confirm that film was a vital means of entertainment and socialization, and melodramas such as Locura de amor had quite an impact (Gómez-Sierra 2004, 92).

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In 1946, Corín Tellado erupted on the scene with her wildly popular romance novels. Previously, romance novels had been heavily moralistic and the love affairs quite platonic. Tellado now recast the romantic stories through a more modern perspective. Her novels were just as moralistic, but she brought desires to the surface, and gave her women characters active, not at all self-­sacrificing roles (Vázquez de Parga 2000, 203). These new novels also had a “softly veiled eroticism” which certainly helps explain their immense success (Amorós 1968, 45). They combined sentimentality with subtle eroticism based on double entendres, a strong emphasis on descriptions of physical features, and often times the extreme impulses of the characters. Cultural productions crisscrossed each other in their appeals to female consumption, and along with the development of the new romance novels were the radio dramas of the 1940s (Balsebre 2002, 102). The most successful radio programs, however, were not produced until the 1950s, and one of the first of these was Gone with the Wind, directed by Antonio Losada for Radio Barcelona, which was timed to coincide with the film premiere in Spain in November 1950 (Balsebre 2002, 249). Historical films reveal a transformation in women’s characters as the female audience demanded elements that resonated with their predilection for romance, even in epic formats. We might say that the treatment of human passions was more in tune with the Brontë sisters than with Shakespeare, as we find that passionate outbursts commonly led to madness or delirium. The melodramatic construction in Locura de amor, for example, is based on the queen’s mental derangement. Similarly, the obstinate resistance of María de Padilla in La leona de Castilla, or María’s obsessive need for revenge in María la Brava, ultimately bring them to an extreme, self-­destructive obfuscation. María la Brava is portrayed as a woman ready to face any challenge, even a sword fight. The impetuous patriotism of Agustina de Aragón reveals a certain perverse pleasure in the collective immolation before the invading French army. Passionate truculence reached delirious extremes in Inés de Castro, in which King Pedro of Portugal had the hearts of Ines’s murderers served in a goblet and later, having gone completely mad, made his couriers kiss the putrefied hand of his beloved’s corpse. Furthermore, the popularization of the melodramatic, epitomized by passionate outbursts, opened up the way for the inclusion of other elements. In my view, the more or less implicit eroticism and liberalization of sexual relations in many of these films is not just a secondary factor. Even though it is true that some of the male characters are given asexual traits and move in de-­eroticized

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circles (Labanyi 2002, 47–9), many others are promiscuous, and adultery is treated with absolute normality. The Archduke Philip in Locura de amor seems to discover his love for Queen Joanna only when he is on his deathbed, after having chased half the skirts of Europe. Don Pedro in Inés de Castro and Don Dionisio in Reina Santa are presented as recalcitrant adulterers, as is Henry VIII in Catalina de Inglaterra. Faced with such a selection of predators, a range of formulas is used for the female characters. Some are self-­sacrificing wives bordering on saintliness, but there are also those who give themselves up to the men through conniving or romance. Sexual activity is made more or less explicit and is even a source of narrative conflict, as we see in Reina Santa where there is a clash between Dionisio I’s legitimate heir and the various illegitimate children he fathered. In short, this narrative material creates the space for romantic conflicts and sexual freedom that does not exist in other genres. Sometimes eroticism is quite explicit, which is puzzling in the light of how other genres of the time were censored. In Catalina de Inglaterra, Anne Boleyn (Mary Lamar) suggestively reveals her body when making advances to one of her lovers or to the king (Rafael Luis Calvo). In another scene, the king passionately falls upon her while we glimpse the moment of violent eroticism reflected in the mirror. In La leona de Castilla, no sooner has María Pacheco de Padilla (Amparo Rivelles) seen her husband beheaded on the gallows than she disguises herself as a seductive wench in a tavern to get her hands on some documents. Finally, the romantic dialogs between the characters have the ability to “unnerve,” which writers like Corín Tellado sought in their novels (Amorós 1968, 44). All of this narrative content defines a treatment that goes beyond the limits of the Late Romantic dramatic tradition and places these films in the context of modern feminine sensibility, at least to the extent that it was being forged by cultural productions and specifically by the romance novel or the melodramatic folletín publications.

Propaganda and style The sentimental and emotional content, however, was subject to several ideological principles reflected in certain cinematic style and staging solutions. It is not difficult to recognize in them transnational models that, in turn, drew on the legacy of the historical films of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. One of these models concerns the approach to narrative voices and the way they create a bridge between past events and the present. The simplest option is a superimposed

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voice, either in the form of voice-­over narration or a title, which sets the scene for the story and provides us with a context for interpreting it from the present, as in La leona de Castilla, Inés de Castro or María la Brava. Another more complex strategy breaks down the time of the story into two dimensions. One story provides the frame in which someone—usually a witness to the events of the narrative—tells the events to another character, which leads to one or more flashbacks, retold by the narrator, who interprets the facts for the viewer (as in Locura de amor). This technique is also used in Alba de América and Agustina de Aragón, in which the temporal and declarative duality are marked by the protagonist’s own memories of events that occurred years before. This breakdown of time is used to reinforce the fusion of the film’s events with the present time of the spectator through the voice that mediates those events. Staging should also be considered along with features of narrative construction. The settings and mise-­en-scène were quite sophisticated, and the photography was highly expressive and symbolic. In some cases, inspiration was found in Late Romantic historical painting, as mentioned above, as well as in other stylistic sources such as Baroque chiaroscuro. For example, cinematographer Alfredo Fraile aimed to reconstruct a Baroque style in Reina Santa (Rubio Mont 1995, 124), endowing the scene of Isabel of Aragón’s ominous nightmares with dramatic chiaroscuro effects. As we come to the end of our account, there is one that must be mentioned which is normally cited as the last in the series of historic melodramas: Lola la Piconera. The film has the fundamental stylistic elements: it opens with a voice-­ over narration over a shot of the Napoleonic flag. This sets the scene for the viewers, and the voice-­over, by using the first person plural (“we”) implicitly includes them in its point of view: “El ejército de Napoleón pretende completar la conquista de España. Ha caído Sevilla en su poder y se dirige sobre Cádiz, último baluarte de nuestra independencia.” (“Napoleon’s army wants to completely conquer Spain. Seville has fallen and now he is going after Cadiz, the last bastion of our independence.”) Immediately, the flag disappears to reveal the celebrations of victorious French troops stationed at the Bay of Cadiz. This perfectly choreographed scene of the masses is highly reminiscent of the 1930s totalitarian cinema in which male choirs sing while various scenes appear in synch with the music. In this scene, Ted Pahle’s photography works together with the movements of the camera to capture the play of light and the dynamic movements of the masses working their way through the streets. After the main characters are introduced,

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elements from epic cinema (specifically those that had worked so well in Agustina de Aragón, and in La duquesa de Benamejí) are intertwined with the copla, with the unlikely figure of a copla singer as the heroine. In contrast to the strong women protagonists whose suffering only had personal resonance, Lola (the copla singer Juanita Reina) represented the emancipation of the collective, resilient pueblo, the people. In the film, she is almost always surrounded by a crowd of admirers; she is their leader. Although the film uses the theme of national identity, the romantic plot takes precedence over the epic. This is epitomized in a scene where Lola and her French lover meet a group of gypsies. The gypsies, stateless and free as the wind, are idealized as living outside of political conflicts. That night, Lola’s dream sets the scene for an oneiric ballet sequence that, with showy excess, encapsulates the idea of this impossible freedom. There is an excessiveness to the scene that Americans call extravaganza, which is related to the aesthetics of kitsch. Kitsch was a word often used to express the kind of style and ideological underpinnings of these grandiose productions. These complex, diverse components reveal something decisive in Spanish cinema of the 1940s and 1950s: a struggle in the cultural industry between forces of modernity and the restrictions of heavily ideologized visions of culture, morality, and politics. In this confrontation, the sense of women as spectators is eloquently revealed in the grand historical film productions. While still relegated to a secondary role in society, the female audience was decisive in shaping the cultural and entertainment industry. The Spanish film industry depended on them and their capacity as consumers. Consequently, these historical films appealed directly to their fantasies and aspirations, however removed they might have been from their everyday lives once they stepped out of the cinema.

References Amorós, A., Sociología de una novela rosa. Madrid: Taurus, 1968. Balsebre, A., Historia de la radio en España. Madrid: Cátedra, 2002. Fernández Colorado L. and P. Couto (eds), La herida de las sombras. El cine español de los años 40. Madrid: Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España-AEHC, 2001. Gies, D.T., “Historia patria: el teatro histórico-­patriótico en España (1890–1910),” in La escena española en la encrucijada (1890–1910), eds R. Salaün and M. Salgues. Madrid: Fundamentos, 2005, pp. 57–75.

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Gómez-Sierra, E., “Palaces of Seeds: From an Experience of Local Cinemas in Post-­war Madrid to a Suggested Approach to Film Audiences,” in Spanish Popular Cinema, eds A. Lázaro-Reboll and A. Willis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 92–112. González González, L.M., Fascismo, kitsch y cine histórico español. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2009. Hernández Ruiz, J., “Películas de ambientación histórica. ¿Cartón-­piedra al servicio del imperio?” in La herida de las sombras. El cine español de los años 40, eds L. Fernández Colorado and P. Couto. Madrid: Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España-AEHC, 2001, pp. 127–36. Labanyi, J., “Historia y mujer en el cine del primer franquismo,” Secuencias, 15, 2002, pp. 42–59. Martín Gaite, C., Usos amorosos de la postguerra española. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 1988. Montero Díaz, J. and M.A. Paz, Lo que el viento no se llevó. El cine en la memoria de los españoles (1931–1982). Madrid: Rialp, 2011. Porcel, P., Tragados por el abismo. La historieta de aventuras en España. Alicante: Edicions de Ponent, 2010. Rubio Mont, J.L., “Alfredo Fraile y la pintura de José de Ribera: el claroscuro barroco como ejemplo,” D’Art, 21, 1995, pp. 121–38. Rubio Mont, J.L., “Aplicación simbólica del esbatimento por los directores de fotografía españoles de la primera generación de posguerra. El caso de Alfredo Fraile,” in La herida de las sombras. El cine español de los años 40, eds L. Fernández Colorado and P. Couto. Madrid: Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España-AEHC, 2001, pp. 137–56. Salaün, S.R. and M. Salgues (eds), La escena española en la encrucijada (1890–1910). Madrid: Fundamentos, 2005. Vázquez de Parga, S., Héroes y enamoradas. La novela popular española. Barcelona: Glénat, 2000.

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Realism, Social Conflict, and the Rise of Crime Cinema in Francoist Spain Juan A. Tarancón

Los ojos dejan huella/Eyes Leave Traces, directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia in 1952, is remarkable for the way it positions the spectator on the side of an opinionated, proletarian anti-­hero who artfully deceives a dissolute lawyer from a good family into committing suicide. However, over the course of the film, he falls victim to a similarly elaborate plan devised by the wife of the deceased. In the end, both the corrupt bourgeois and the outspoken Marxist destroy each other. The film can hardly be said to favor any party in conflict. Los ojos dejan huella is also noteworthy for the way Manuel Berenguer’s expressive photography elaborates on the story. Berenguer often shot the protagonists with very low levels of exposure and harsh key lights with no fill, which rendered them in sharp focus against a blanket of darkness, thus betraying their detachment from the hardships of daily life.1 Crime films like Los ojos dejan huella stood in sharp contrast with the Spanish cinema of the time. They became the port of entry of a realist aesthetics developed in the context of supranational forces that made it possible to push contemporary economic and political concerns to the foreground. Their visual boldness and contemporary stories put the focus on the government’s unresponsiveness to social issues while raising awareness concerning the calamitous results of the autarkic capitalism favored by the regime, which had turned out to be a disaster for the working class and simultaneously a lucrative opportunity for the unscrupulous economic elites. However, the ambiguity of these films defies the ideological reductionism so often read into Francoist cinema. Their critical understanding of the structures of power and their commitment to exposing the underworld of society have always put crime films under the scrutiny of censors. In Spain, for example, the gangster films from Warner Bros. were banned by the rightwing government of the CEDA, and likewise early

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attempts to reproduce the crime thriller formula like Ignacio F. Iquino’s Al margen de la ley/On the Margin of the Law (1935). It is therefore striking that crime cinema should have flourished under Franco’s rule. Also intriguing is the fact that this type of film often proved to be the meeting ground for filmmakers of seemingly conflicting ideological affiliations. Los ojos dejan huella, for example, was directed by Falangist José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, but it was scripted by Carlos Blanco, a writer who had fought on the Republican side and had spent five years in prisons and concentration camps before being freed in 1944. If one thing is clear it is that the in-­depth study of these early Spanish crime films reveals the incongruity of adopting decontextualized ideological or generic paradigms. In an effort to sidestep the hitherto dominant essentialist approaches to Francoist cinema on the one hand, and the prevailing taxonomic approach to genre theory on the other, my purpose is to map out the social, cultural, and aesthetic forces that determined the emergence of crime cinema in Spain and thus reconstruct a sense of how the form it took oriented spectators within the political context of the time.2 Although this contribution in no way represents a rigid periodization or a comprehensive corpus, it does focus most particularly on the films made in the period of “national Catholic corporatism” (Stanley G. Payne 1987, 622), which lasted roughly from 1947 to 1957, marked as the decade was by the sidelining of Falange (the Spanish Fascist Party) and the growing influence of the Catholic laity. Films like Barrio/The Neighborhood (Ladislao Vajda 1947), La calle sin sol/The Sunless Street (Rafael Gil 1947), Nada/Nothing (Edgar Neville 1947), Una mujer cualquiera/Fallen Woman (Rafael Gil 1949), Apartado de correos 1001/P.O. Box 1001 (Julio Salvador 1950), Brigada criminal/Crime Squad (Ignacio F. Iquino 1950), Séptima página/The Seventh Page (Ladislao Vajda 1950), Surcos/Furrows (José Antonio Nieves Conde 1951), Los ojos dejan huella, Hay un camino a la derecha/There is a Path to the Right (Francisco Rovira Beleta 1953), El cerco/Police Cordon (Miguel Iglesias 1955), Camino cortado/Closed Exit (Ignacio F. Iquino 1955), El ojo de cristal/The Glass Eye (Antonio Santillán 1955), Muerte de un ciclista/Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem 1955), Los peces rojos/Red Fish (José Antonio Nieves Conde 1955), and Distrito quinto/Fifth District (Julio Coll 1957), only to mention a few, were contingent on the political and ideological battles fought within Francoism and engaged in the artistic and social debates of the time to offer a more complex picture of the challenges faced by the people. Crime films continued being made profusely after 1957 but these addressed different challenges—the ascendancy of the technocrats of the Opus Dei and the

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rapid industrial development—and they were connected with other cinematic trends—the desarrollismo comedies and the so-­called Nuevo Cine Español (New Spanish Cinema). The study of this posterior film corpus would consequently entail analytical focus on very different questions. Researchers have often looked at Spanish crime cinema through the distorting lens of film noir. Despite the renewed interest in early Spanish crime films (Medina 2000; Sánchez Barba 2007; Stone 2007; Fay and Nieland 2010) the prevailing tendency has been to assess these films against the dominant noir paradigm, only to conclude that film noir could not develop in Franco’s dictatorial regime.3 This approach betrays the weight that prescriptivist views still carry in genre-­related matters. We tend to privilege well-­defined categories and ignore the fact that any concrete film is always a complex hybrid—a mingling or compound that reshuffles conventions developed in the context of different genres and cultural traditions. What is more, this take on genre also ignores that films articulate with specific political, social, and cultural contexts, and that their meaning is not simply determined by their engagement in one generic category. Dealing with film requires more imagination. Genres challenge our most ingrained ideas about the nature of knowledge. We expect genres to reveal the simple order that underlies each film. But films cannot be reduced to the straightjacket of genre categories. Films both perpetuate a sense of stability and self-­similarity and, at the same time, are subject to constant change due to the influence of internal and external forces. As Christine Gledhill suggests (2000, 221), this dynamic may well be the space where we can pursue questions about society. Consequently, we need an approach that takes into consideration the interplay of both processes, everything that strives for order, clarity, and simplicity as well as everything that disrupts our expectations. As I argued elsewhere (Tarancón 2010), we may experience films in terms of genre but this does not mean that genres are consistent or autonomous categories to be taken as rigid models. Genres always reduce the complexity of films to the lowest common denominator. There is nothing wrong with this provided that we regard genres as fluid, contingent conceptualizations that provide us with a different awareness of society for specific circumstances and not as a fixed, ready-­made model to be “discovered” once and again in individual films irrespective of the political, social, and cultural forces that make up the social context in which they are made and/or received. As an analytic tool, genre is about identifying—or fighting off—a position or a paradigm that allows us to see the relationships that other approaches hide from sight while, at the same time,

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acknowledging the one-­sidedness, the instability and the contingent nature of one’s own analysis. Still, many scholars tend to arrange films into the mold of rigid, generic paradigms, selecting the evidence that confirms their preconceived ideas and obscuring the significance of everything that would produce a different outcome. No genre epitomizes this approach like film noir. As has been amply noted, film noir never existed as a category in classical Hollywood.4 Not only was the genre cooked up long after the films were made, but, as James Naremore already observed (1998, 13), it took the shape it took because the context—either France in the late 1940s or the US in the early 1970s—prompted critics to look at films in a certain way and to highlight some features and downplay others. In other words, the conceptualization of film noir may offer an insight into post-­war US society, but cutting Spanish cinema into the aesthetic and ideological straightjacket of film noir is just another case of academic juggling that adds nothing to the understanding either of the films or of the context in which they were produced. Although generic conventions travel easily across cultures, genre categories should not be so hastily transposed to other cinematographies. In dealing with Spanish crime cinema, we need an approach that acknowledges the influence of those conventions that we now associate with film noir but also of everything that too narrow a focus on set paradigms has kept out of sight. A global, interdisciplinary look at the evolution of cinema reveals that the conventions that we have come to associate with film noir responded to new ways of thinking about social justice and realism, and that they developed as the result of various social, political, cultural, and technological forces. What I propose to do next is to explore the supranational contexts in which these realist conventions emerged, the position they came to occupy in Spanish cinema, and how they articulated with a concrete political, social, and cultural context to orient the audience. In an interview given in 1936 only a few weeks before the Civil War broke out, Federico García Lorca marked out the challenge artists had ahead of them: “No decent person believes any longer in all that nonsense about pure art, art for art’s sake. At this dramatic moment in time, the artist should laugh and cry with his [sic] people” (in Gibson 1989, 439). Embedded as it was in the violent, anti-­ liberal movements and in the economic recession, the political context of the interwar years evinced the exhaustion of avant-­garde art, whose detailed, almost reverential emphasis on the abstract qualities of objects cut it off from the realities of contemporary life. What was once regarded as a radical response to

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bourgeois pictorialism was now beginning to be seen as repetitive, disconnected from reality, and without a clear ideological mission. The alternatives seemed to lie in some form of realist art that could incite identification with the actual material conditions of the people. Although part of a more general and transdisciplinary interest in realist aesthetics, two alternatives emerged at the time in the field of cinema that offered a bold and dramatic form of realism grounded on contemporary social life as opposed both to outdated concepts of beauty and modernist concerns with human perception and the so-­called museum eye: documentary films and hard-­edged melodramas. Neither of these trends signaled a complete break with previous styles. On the contrary, as is customary in narrative film, both took on many of the visual innovations of 1920s modernism (i.e. objectivism, self-­conscious formalism, extreme close-­ups, uncommon camera angles, scale disruptions) but they also expanded their language to achieve a more pedagogical, socially conscious look. Documentaries had become fashionable among cinemagoers and were highly regarded among filmmakers during the 1920s, due principally to the international success of Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) and the accomplishments of Merian C. Cooper’s Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) and Dziga Vertov’s Chelovek s kino-­apparatom/Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Two major events in the US would boost documentary aesthetics at the time, the formation of the leftist cultural movement Workers’ Film and Photo League (WFPL) in New York in 1930 and the project undertaken by the Farm Security Administration in 1935. The Workers’ Film and Photo League, which evolved into the Film and Photo League in 1933, was sponsored by the Comintern’s Workers International Relief and planned to aid in the production of films that documented the challenges faced by the working classes at a time when mainstream media trivialized or ignored class-­related conflicts in the United States.5 The activities of the WFPL also included screenings of European films and contributions to several journals. In this regard, one of its most dynamic members was the pioneering leftist film theorist Harry Alan Potamkin. Writing for the Daily Worker in 1930, Potamkin defined their objective as: “Documentaries of workers [sic] life. Breadlines and picketlines, demonstrations and police-­attacks. Outdoor films first. Then interiors. And eventually dramatic films of revolutionary content” (in Campbell 1977). The better known Farm Security Administration (FSA) started sponsoring photography and film at the same time as the League was being forced to reduce

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its activities for lack of financial support. Although it did not have the solid ideological base of the WFPL and work varied substantially from one artist to the next, the project evidenced a similar ideological mission. As Mary Warner Marien (2002, 279) puts it, the FSA “aimed at educating the public about the experience of hardship or injustice.” The sharp, unglamorous images of bread lines, down-­on-their-­luck farmworkers and derelict buildings contributed like no others to create an iconography of class difference and to shape public debate around issues of capitalism and social justice. What is more, the FSA also contributed in changing the taste of the people and in redefining the concept of realism. Although only two documentaries were made under the auspices of the FSA, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938), both directed by Pare Lorentz, they illustrate the shift in mentality at the time from the self-­ contained aesthetics of 1920s documentaries like Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy 1924) or Anémic cinéma/Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp 1926) to concerns with individuals and social justice. Likewise, in fiction film, the demand for a socially-­engaged art as expressed by García Lorca seemed to summon the adoption of some form of expressive, didactic, and accessible realism. During the second half of the 1920s, high levels of illumination, low-­contrast photography, by-­the-numbers decoupage, and formulaic narratives had become the norm in Hollywood. This homogenization of cinema was further encouraged by the technical constraints posed by the introduction of sound and by the need to capitalize on the studios’ costly stars. In the early 1930s, aesthetic innovations had given way to a neutral and impersonal style that facilitated quick output under the conditions imposed by early sound technology. The bourgeoisie recognized itself in this complacent form of cinema where old ideas of omniscience and transparency triumphed over aesthetic obtrusiveness. This standardization would determine the different ways in which realism would be explored in the course of the 1930s as new technologies were developed and the international sociopolitical climate deteriorated. The aesthetics of realism responded less to specific notions of verisimilitude than to the internal evolution of the medium, which had resulted in the flat style of early sound cinema, and to external cultural and social determinants. This can be looked upon as a case in point in which aesthetic conventions do not have any fixed meaning; they only acquire their significance as part of changing, conjunctural traditions with many historical and cultural factors at play. Low levels of light, depth staging, sharp images, lengthy takes, and bold perspectives are as removed

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from human perception as Hollywood’s classic style, but during the 1930s these conventions were equated with authenticity, quest for truth, unfeigned realism, and with an attack on bourgeois values. Although early US sound films became more homogeneous than ever before, sweeping generalizations should be avoided. For decades, shooting followed fairly conventional notions of style according to genre, mood, gender, or studio policies, which allowed for a considerable degree of variation and innovation even within the standardized studio system of the time. For example, in line with Hollywood’s style manual, which conceded that some genres and some characters could benefit from a harsher style, Warner Bros. used deep focus staging and high contrast images for the gangster films of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, while female stars like Bette Davis would be filmed according to conventional 1920s ideas of glamor that recommended soft focus, low-­contrast photography, and heavy diffusion. Similarly, RKO was home both to bright, simply staged comedies and to dark, intricate crime dramas. Even MGM, famous for its lavish productions, for its optimistic tales of small-­town life, and for glamorizing their numerous stars by overexposing the negative, made films like Freaks (Tod Browning 1932) and Fury (Fritz Lang 1936) in the course of the 1930s. Apart from the development of realism within the limits of Hollywood’s right-­mood-for-­the-story theory, in pre-Second World War France, filmmakers like Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier or Marcel Carné, as well as German refugees like Robert Siodmak or Georg Wilhelm Pabst, made pessimistic, politically tinted narratives about underprivileged people that, despite their routine studio shooting, middle range contrast, and heavy diffusion, stood out from the general tendency for glossy films and thus managed to tap into the social conflicts of the time. Allegedly, after watching Renoir’s La grande illusion/The Grand Illusion (1937) and Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937), Ernst Lubitsch (of all men) lamented that US filmmakers were too concerned with conventional ideas of beauty and perfection and urged them to pursue this same sense of realism (in Keating 2010, 229). Notwithstanding the differing views, for example, of cinematographer Karl Struss, who in 1934 complained that the “modernist” photography of German and Russian filmmakers had been taken to extremes (in Keating 2010, 228), Lubitsch’s words intimate far-­reaching changes in the taste of a public who, weary of Hollywood’s flat style, and increasingly familiar with the images of the FSA that filled entertaining magazines like LIFE, had come to identify realism with elaborate, crisp images of ordinary subjects hit by the economic crisis. Although all studios tried to weather the depression with

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comedies and musicals, as the 1930s moved on and new lenses and film stock warranted alternatives, there was an exploration of realism in cinema understood as somber narratives, staging in depth, high-­contrast photography, deep focus, and multiplicity of camera angles and points of view. This tendency culminated in the course of the 1940s, first with the work of directors like William Wyler or John Huston, cinematographers like Gregg Toland or Nicholas Musuraca, and art directors like Albert S. D’Agostino, and later on, with the cynical mystery dramas of European refugees like Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder or Robert Siodmak. According to Toland (in Bordwell 1985, 348), the aesthetic innovations developed in these films (in particular, depth staging and deep focus) responded to a stylistic demand for realism. John Alton seemed to be of the same opinion. As Keating observes, Alton saw no contradiction between expressionist lighting and realism. “In the latest films,” he wrote in 1949, “there is a tendency to go realistic . . . There is no better opportunity for such realistic lighting than in mystery illumination” (in Keating 2010, 259). In essence, this is the view adopted by André Bazin who, as put by David Bordwell (1997, 71–2), considered this sort of artifice to be “consonant with cinema’s mission of exposing and exploring phenomenal reality.”6 In Spain, the 1930s brought the Second Republic and sound cinema, and the beginnings were not easy for either. The 1930s were a turbulent, unstable decade embedded in new forces that had entered the European political landscape after the First World War. As in the rest of Europe, the challenges posed by the collapse of the old order and the spread of democracy and socialism ushered in an era of interconnected conflicts marked by the rise of the proletariat. The Second Republic was marked by these supranational forces which, as Casanova argues (2011, 12), triggered a conservative counterrevolution in defense of national unity, the Catholic Church, and the right to private property. Cinema cannot be isolated from these conflicts. One of the key characteristics of Spanish cinema during the first half of the 1930s was its rapid transition from the crisis generated by the introduction of sound (which both increased its dependence on international assistance and exacerbated the hegemony of US cinema) to the consolidation of the industry with an unprecedented run of box-­office hits. But the establishment of Spanish cinema was marked, both from an aesthetic and an industrial perspective, by the pervasive ideological polarization between traditionalism and liberalism that had been rumbling on for almost a century.7 Film clubs and production companies are illustrative of this polarization. While some film clubs were connected to Falange and

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screened Italian and German films of unequivocal fascist nature, others (the majority) were managed by working class movements and, in line with the progressive ethos of the WFPL, screened Soviet cinema along with films by the likes of Renoir, Clair, Dreyer or Pabst.8 In the same manner, the two most relevant production companies of the period, Filmófono and CIFESA (Compañía Industrial Film Español SA), are often seen as a reflection of this polarization. While Filmófono offered a more avant-­gardish look at popular melodramatic stories that prompted the spectators to reassess class relations, CIFESA specialized in the production of happy-­go-lucky comedies in the flat style of Hollywood and folkloric musicals that conjured up pre-­modern notions of artistic merit.9 The 1930s can also be considered the golden age of documentaries in Spain due mainly to two factors: the Misiones Pedagógicas (Pedagogical Missions) and the war documentaries. The Misiones Pedagógicas was an interdisciplinary liberal project reminiscent of the aforementioned projects of the WFPL and the FSA in the United States. It regarded the making and the exhibition of documentary films as a pedagogical instrument of modernization and education in a largely rural, impoverished, and illiterate country, and contributed to popularizing the association between social activism and avant-­garde techniques.10 The Civil War coincided with technological developments like faster film stock and lighter cameras, which not only allowed filmmakers to capture the conflict, but forced them to reconsider many assumptions about film language. In this respect, the Spanish Civil War became the training ground for the development of a new aesthetics of realism, immediacy, and emotional involvement. Although pre-Civil War Spanish cinema bespeaks the forces of modernization that swept through Europe, in particular respecting issues of gender,11 socially conscious fiction films in the progressive spirit that had brought about the Second Republic were, in general, negligible before the war.12 However, once the war broke out the anarchist union Sindicato de la Industria del Espectáculo (SIE; Entertainment Industry Union) collectivized the film industry and started making films to deliberately expose the social and economic imbalance engendered by capitalism. Aurora de esperanza/Dawn of Hope (Antonio Sau Oliete 1937) epitomizes the working procedures and the progressive agenda of the SIE and connects issue-­oriented cinema with the realist techniques deployed in WFPL’s short documentaries like National Hunger March (1931) and in the bleak melodramas made in the orbit of Warner Bros. during the Hoover administration. In Aurora de esperanza, for example, as the story unfolds and

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jobless workers join in a hunger march, the visuals change from standard studio practices (frontal perspective, shallow death, and by-­the-book decoupage) to location shooting, harsh contrasts, multiplicity of angles, and depth staging. After the Civil War Spanish cinema bounced back to outmoded bourgeois pictorialism. The main filmic output of the period was a type of comedy that took on a fairy-­tale approach to upward mobility and drew its model from the stylistically unexciting US and Italian comedies of the early sound era. To a lesser extent, the film industry also produced a number of folkloric musicals in the tradition established by CIFESA in the 1930s (and continued by SpanishGerman co-­productions during the Civil War) as well as military epics and historical dramas that engaged in the nationalist rhetoric of the regime. In general, all these films ignored the hardships of the people. Instead, in line with the project described by the Falangist journal Primer Plano, they were more preoccupied with the development of a distinctive national cinema that celebrated “submission to discipline and the common responsibilities in the military day-­to-day functioning of the state” (in Triana-Toribio 2003, 40). Made in Italy in the aftermath of the war, Florián Rey’s musical La Dolores (1940) typifies the outmoded pictorialism of the era: mid-­range contrast, soft focus, heavy diffusion and pre-­modern notions of visual composition. Although the depiction of the lower classes and the clichéd images of Spain found in these films might have raised suspicion among the new ruling elites, the idyllic images of abundance associated with a rural, pre-­modern version of Spain were no doubt in compliance with the regime’s anti-­liberalism. Moreover, the sense of social order put forward by the meticulously staged musical numbers gave a transcendental dimension to the strain put on the population that tuned in with the objectives laid out by Primer Plano. Like La Dolores, the historical drama Correo de Indias/Packet Boat to the New World (Edgar Neville 1942) refers the spectator back to a picturesque, harmonious past devoid of the conflicts that were sweeping through Europe as a consequence of the spread of liberal, democratic ideals and the demands of the working class. Correo de Indias centers on a love affair against the backdrop of the Spanish migration to South America during the colonial era. Members of all social classes leave Spain to seek fortune in Peru because, as one character declares in the opening scenes, “Aquí ya tiene todo el mundo en su casa lo que necesita.” (“Here people already possess everything they need in their homes.”)13 During the crossing, crane shots that reveal a rigid system of social stratification alternate with musical numbers reminiscent of Florián Rey’s pictorialism that endorse this unequal social

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hierarchy. Like most Francoist cinema, Correo de Indias combines the dream of upward mobility and the joyous celebration of submission, order, and impermeability between the different social classes. After the defeat of Germany and Italy in the Second World War, Franco stood at a crossroads. He wiggled out of the difficult political situation by underplaying the fascist roots of his regime and appealing instead to Spain’s religious and historic uniqueness to legitimize his dictatorial government. Although little changed at home in terms of civil liberties, in the context of the Cold War, this cosmetic makeover, as well as the outspoken aversion to everything communist, ensured the gradual acceptance of Franco’s dictatorship in the international scenario. However, the defascistization of the regime ushered in a period of internal conflicts. A country that was divided as a consequence of the Civil War and the ensuing persecution of everything presumed to be tainted by the socialism of the interwar years led to a further split between what Dionisio Ridruejo would call excluyentes and comprensivos, between, on the one hand, those who were taking over power and were unresponsive to the ongoing social drama (for the most part lay Catholics who would manage the liberalization of the economy) and, on the other, those closer to Falange that, once excluded from power and displeased with the course of events, turned their attention to the underworld of misery and exploitation and reinvented themselves as socially-­committed intellectuals.14 As evidenced in 1951 by the conflict over Surcos and Alba de América/Dawn of America (Juan de Orduña 1951) and the subsequent resignation of José María García Escudero as Director General de Cinematografía y Teatro (Director General of Film and Theater), this ideological polarization also reached the world of cinema. These were the years of historical epics and religious dramas that built on the pictorialism favored by the regime, but also of dark, pessimistic crime films that drew together aesthetic solutions developed in a supranational sphere to inquire into the social ills of Francoism through the prism of those ignored by the regime, i.e. the ascension to power of the economic elites, the endemic classism of the regime, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, their blindness to social inequalities and, in general, the widening gulf between the rhetoric of the regime and the reality of the people. Several films from 1947 were central to the changing conceptions of what constituted realism. Nada, La calle sin sol and Barrio denote a rejection of the affected style of the previous years and an exploration of techniques able to respond to an awakening to the harsh realities of Francoism. When filmmakers

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in Spain resolved to address contemporary social issues they had narrative and aesthetic models to draw from. Nada, for example, follows in the tradition of US gothic melodramas to explore gender and generational issues in the context of post-Civil War Barcelona. Manuel Berenguer, who had worked at the UFA studios in Germany in the 1930s before shooting documentaries during the Civil War for Laya Films, adopted expressionist techniques to recreate the asphyxiating atmosphere of Carmen Laforet’s novel. In La calle sin sol, cinematographer Alfredo Fraile used wide-­angle photography, deep focus, and sharp contrast to give Enrique Alarcón’s marginal settings a sense of material authenticity with which the audience could identify. Yet, it is Barrio, a double version made for the Spanish and the Portuguese market that stands out for its use of expressive realism. When a solitary accountant and a racy bar singer attempt to escape the oppressive neighborhood of the title and sail to Brazil, their hopes are dashed by a criminal wanted for murder. The man returns to the neighborhood and is hounded and stoned by a frenzied mob in an unnerving sequence that borrows generously from Weimar expressionism to subvert the sense of order and social harmony evoked by films like La Dolores or Correo de Indias. These films brought to the fore the themes (gender issues, poverty, oppression, class barriers, hopelessness) and the aesthetics (contemporary marginal locations, high contrast, off-­horizontal shots, wide angle framing, deep staging) that would characterize Spanish crime cinema for a decade. Una mujer cualquiera, another early crime drama directed by Rafael Gil with interiors designed by Enrique Alarcón, also undercuts simplistic views of national cinema. The film was shot by Theodore J. Pahle, a US cinematographer who had worked in Europe before arriving in Spain in 1939, and starred by Mexican diva María Félix and Portuguese actor Antonio Vilar. Like Barrio, the story features a murder investigation and the futile attempts of an odd couple to escape an asphyxiating social milieu that is conveyed through undiffused key lights, hard shadows, wide-­angle shots, bold foregrounds, and deep focus staging. The film poses unprecedented questions about gender issues, lack of freedom, and the disintegration of the country’s social fabric. The story—the fall of a woman from bourgeois affluence to picking up a man on the street to pay for her room in a boarding house—sabotages the idealized, interclass romances and the myth of upward mobility that characterized so much Francoist cinema. Class and gender boundaries are unsurmountable in Una mujer cualquiera. Nieves falls in love with Luis, the man who frames her for murder, and the two resolve to escape the country. When Luis tries to pin the murder on Nieves for a second

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time she kills him. The last scenes show how Francoist institutions take over the role of the oppressor, and sexism and oppression become systematized. The film’s bitter conclusion is therefore that the regime precludes any type of social progress. Similar issues were tackled in the course of the 1950s in a series of films that were either produced by Ignacio F. Iquino’s production company IFI or made by filmmakers who had started out at IFI. Two of the most remarkable were Camino cortado and Distrito quinto, both of which used high contrast lighting, wide-­angle close-­ups, and deep focus staging to convey the claustrophobic atmosphere as a group of people living on the margins of Francoist society attempt in vain to escape the country after a robbery. It was precisely the filmmakers around Ignacio F. Iquino, first at Emisora Films and later on at IFI, who produced a steady output of heist films in which the image of order and normality projected by the police investigation is undercut by the realist portrayal of the lower classes. Two of these films, Apartado de correos 1001 and Brigada criminal, were released in 1950 and are customarily regarded as milestones in the development of crime cinema. That same year Ladislao Vajda and cinematographer Guillermo Goldberger teamed up again for Séptima página. The film is especially interesting for its labyrinthine narrative. Instead of one linear chain of events, multiple plot lines crisscross against the backdrop of a homicide investigation to offer a complex cross-­section of Spanish society. The film follows genre-­based conventions for the staging and the characterization of each storyline (greater depth and increased contrast for the nightclub and the boarding-­house scenes and a softer style for the screwballish scenes of the wedding plot) but their interconnectedness provides the audience with a different standpoint from which to explore and make sense of the contradictions in contemporary society as the business-­ minded Catholic laity gained power at the expense of the more socially conscious members of the regime. The case of Amparo (Anita Dayna) for example, is illustrative of how the film’s generic hybridity exemplifies these aspects of social life under Franco at the turn of the decade. First, while Isabel (María Rosa Salgado), the righteous bride in a plot modeled after Hollywood’s comedies, is constantly floodlighted to irradiate an idealized, virtuous version of womanhood, Amparo is always lit with a cross-­frontal key that casts shadows over her face and signals her out as the dark, duplicitous woman of Hollywood crime melodramas. Secondly, and more crucially, her role as mistress of a renowned banker (the father of the bride) in one storyline and as girlfriend of a decent medical student from a rural background in another cuts across the Spanish

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class system to illustrate how the debauchery of the economic elites spread across the entire social fabric and corrupted the traditional values on which the regime rested. The thematic and aesthetic paradigm that emerges from these films goes beyond one-­dimensional categorizations of Spanish cinema into pro- or antiFrancoism. The focus is laid, instead, on the abandonment of the values promoted by the fascist party and the corruption engendered by the wealthy elites. This perspective allows for a nuanced understanding of contemporaneous crime films like Balarrasa (1951) and Surcos. Both were directed by Falangist filmmaker José Antonio Nieves Conde and written by notable Falangist intellectuals (Vicente Escrivá in the case of Balarrasa and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester in the case of Surcos), and both deploy many of the aesthetic resources and thematic lines found in Séptima página as a means of denouncing how corruption and materialism undercut the values upon which the regime had originally erected its legitimacy. It is noteworthy, for example, how Balarrasa brings together conventions from religious and crime cinema to illustrate the moral decay (and the way to redemption) of a bourgeois family that has teamed up with a group of criminals to indulge in a life of luxury and idleness. In a comparable way, Surcos deploys a wide array of realist techniques—i.e. location shooting, marginal working-­class locales, a multi-­threaded narrative, sharp contrast, and deep focus scenes with foreground and background action—to depict a morally bankrupt society abounding in inequality and crime. What is particularly relevant is, in the first place, that these films revealed that not everybody who supported the dictatorial regime that emerged from the Civil War shared the same agenda and, secondly, that the expressions of dissatisfaction from within the regime articulated with the increasing social unrest and the development of class consciousness. To return by way of conclusion to the first film mentioned in this chapter, let it be said that Los ojos dejan huella is illustrative of the complex and ambivalent ways in which crime cinema became the vehicle for an assessment of Francoism in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Made in the context of a political crisis that increased the alienation from the regime and facilitated the spread of Marxist ideology among the rank and file of Francoism,15 the film counterpoints the poverty of the working class with the arrogance, the extravagances and the immorality of the bourgeoisie. However, although Los ojos dejan huella invites spectators to visualize Spanish reality through the prism of class (and even identify with the inflammatory lines and the criminal streak of its protagonist), the generic conventions on which it rests (the story of an ill-­fated hero who cannot seem to steer clear of a deadly

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woman and the expressionist cinematography) “discourage,” to use Judith Hess Wright’s words, “any action that might otherwise follow upon the pressure generated by living with these conflicts” (2003, 42). In other words, although the film foregrounds a sense of social justice concurrent with the context of disaffection toward the regime, the tragic denouement illustrates the uselessness of thinking in terms of class struggle. From this prism, Los ojos dejan huella is a case in point of how crime cinema signaled a break with the political complacency and the conservative academicism of the immediate post-Civil War years. Notwithstanding the cultural isolation of the country, in the late 1940s crime films became the conduit through which the European and US realism of the interwar years re-­entered Spanish cinema. Its unconventional spatial configurations, its modernist conception of perspective, its multiple viewpoints, its contemporary settings, and its socially conscious perception provided Spanish filmmakers with a strategy to draw attention to the rigid class hierarchies Franco’s regime rested on and to introduce a civic and political awareness that crisscrossed ideological blocs inherited from the past. From there, the importance of a more cultural reading of a film genre like crime cinema under Franco’s regime. Indeed, as I have hoped to demonstrate in this contribution, if generic categories confer meaning to what otherwise would appear meaningless, we also need to consider the conjunctural nature of films as well as what any genre analysis tends to hide from view.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy for her helpful comments on a draft of this paper. Research toward the writing of this article has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project no. FFI2013–40769–P. 2 I have deliberately left out references to the interconnectedness between the Spanish film industry and its European and American counterparts. However, it must be noted that, despite the cultural isolation imposed by Franco’s regime, Spanish cinema was never cut off from foreign traditions. The filmmakers of the 1940s were the same who went to work in Germany, France or the US during the crisis of sound, and the same that managed the film clubs in the 1930s; the national industry had been energized by filmmakers and technicians escaping from Nazi persecution; and, save occasional clashes with the censors, economic interests prevailed and US crime films were usually released in Spain (i.e. The

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House on 92nd Street in 1946, Double Indemnity and The Killers in 1947, and Criss Cross and Naked City in 1950). 3 And yet, at the time Spain and the US had more in common than often meets the eye. The anti-­communist paranoia of the McCarthy era and the Catholic-­tinged code of censorship adopted in the early 1930s were not so distinct from the basic ideological precepts of Franco’s regime, which eventually facilitated its international recognition in the course of the 1950s. 4 For a detailed account of this issue see James Naremore 1998, 9–39. 5 The Workers’ Film and Photo League (WFPL) included William Eugene Smith, the photographer that made Spanish Village, the photo essay of life in rural Spain published in LIFE magazine on April 9, 1951. 6 At the other end of the spectrum is Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, for whom their debt to expressionism makes the hard-­edged mystery dramas of the 1940s the antithesis of realism (2004, 74). 7 For a detailed account of the conflicts between these different intellectual and political forces see Santos Juliá 2004. 8 For an overview of the film-­club scene see Román Gubern 1995 and 2013. 9 See Román Gubern 1995, Steven Marsh 2013, and Jo Labanyi 2013. 10 Josetxo Cerdán and Vicente Sánchez-Biosca 2013, 537, and Vicente J. Benet 2012, 114–20 have commented on the avant-­garde qualities of these documentaries. 11 See Hilaria Loyo 2015 as well as Vicente J. Benet’s and Valeria Camporesi’s contributions to this volume. 12 These would include, among others, Sobre el cieno/Above the Mire (Fernando Roldán 1933), Los niños del hospicio/The Children of the Hospice (Miguel Silvestre 1933) and Mendicidad y caridad/Mendicity and Charity (Adolfo Aznar 1935). 13 All translations are the author’s except where otherwise noted. 14 See Santos Juliá 2004. 15 The impact of Marxism at the time is described in Santos Juliá 2004 and Xavier Doménech Sampere 2012.

References Benet, V., El cine español. Una historia cultural. Barcelona: Paidós, 2012. Bordwell, D., “Film Style and Technology, 1930–60,” in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, eds D. Bordwell, J. Staiger, and K. Thompson. London: Routledge, 1985, pp. 339–64.

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Bordwell, D., On the History of Film Style. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Campbell, Russell, “Introduction,” Jump Cut, 14, 1977, pp. 23–5. Available from:

[August 20, 2014]. Casanova, J., Europa contra Europa, 1914–1945. Barcelona: Crítica, 2011. Cerdán, J. and V. Sánchez-Biosca, “Newsreels, Documentary, Experimental Film, Shorts, and Animation,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 521–42. Doménech Sampere, X., Cambio político y movimiento obrero bajo el franquismo. Lucha de clases, dictadura y democracia (1939–1977). Barcelona: Icaria, 2012. Fay, J. and J. Nieland, Film Noir. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. Gibson, I., Federico García Lorca: A Life. London: Faber and Faber, 1989. Gledhill, C., “Rethinking Genre,” in Reinventing Film Studies, eds C. Gledhill and L. Williams. London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 221–43. Gubern, R., “El cine sonoro (1930–1939),” in Historia del cine español, eds R. Gubern et al. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995, pp. 123–80. Gubern, R., “Film Clubs,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 434–42. Juliá, S., Historias de las dos Españas. Madrid: Taurus, 2004. Keating, P., Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Labanyi, J., “CIFESA,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp 410–16. Loyo, H., “Contested Referents: Hollywood Cinema and Spanish Modernity in the 1930s,” in Transnational Mediations: Negotiating Popular Culture between Europe and the United States, eds C. Decker and A. Böger. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015 (forthcoming). Marien, M.W., Photography: A Cultural History. London: Lawrence King, 2002. Marsh, S., “Filmófono,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 406–10. Medina, E., Cine negro y policíaco español de los años cincuenta. Barcelona: Laertes, 2000. Naremore, J., More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. Payne, S.G., The Franco Regime, 1936–1975, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Sánchez Barba, F., Brumas del Franquismo. El auge del cine negro español (1950–1965). Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2007. Sánchez-Biosca, V., Cine y vanguardias artísticas: conflictos, encuentros, fronteras. Barcelona: Paidós, 2004.

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Stone, R., “Spanish Film Noir,” in European Film Noir, ed. A. Spicer. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007, pp. 185–209. Tarancón, J., “Genre Matters: Film Criticism and the Social Relevance of Genres,” CineAction, 80, 2010, pp. 13–21. Triana-Toribio, N., Spanish National Cinema, London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Wright, J.H., “Genre Films and the Status Quo,” in Film Genre Reader III, ed. B.K. Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003, pp. 42–50.

4

Luis Lucia’s Lola la piconera (1951): Hybridity, Politics, Entertainment Federico Bonaddio

Lola la piconera/Lola, the Coalgirl, a 1951 CIFESA (Compañía Industrial Film Español SA) production directed by Luis Lucia and which premiered on March 3, 1952 (González González 2009, 215) is interesting because of the way it combines elements of two familiar transnational genres: the historical epic and the musical. In Spain, the first is associated, though not exclusively, with the early years of Francoism, while the second, which takes on a primarily Andalusian character in the Spanish context, became a staple of Spanish film production for the duration of the regime. The film is considered marginal to the cycle of historical epics made by the Valencian studio from the late 1940s on (Mira 2005, 61) not so much because it was CIFESA’s final historical production but rather because of its hybrid character which, beyond issues of form and style, works to convey a rather mixed message that ultimately undermines the defensive patriotism associated with the epic genre thus far. The spirit of the film is “in tune with the new attitudes of the regime: at the beginning of the 1950s Spain was trying to find a place in the international community after the long period of post-­war isolationism” (Mira 2005, 61). As Luis Mariano González González notes: the Nationalist discourse which had marked other productions of the same cycle now gives way to a less belligerent position with regard to foreign countries. This new attitude is more inclined toward an understanding between nations, like the one which would be brought about by the agreements with the Vatican and the White House at the start of the 1950s, which would put an end to the isolation suffered as a consequence of the dictatorship since the end of the Second World War. 2009, 231; all translations are the author’s except otherwise noted

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However, while it is true that the film, which centers on the love affair, during the French siege of Cadiz, between Lola, a Spanish patriot (Juanita Reina), and Gustavo, a captain in the Napoleonic army (Virgilio Teixeira), conveys an openness that is in keeping with the political context of Spain in the early 1950s, the film’s hybridity, I would suggest, also has something to say about Spanish cinema generally and about CIFESA in particular. At the heart of the matter lies the business of making and selling entertainment. In order to show this, I will begin by examining CIFESA’s relationship with the State and the conditions affecting filmmaking, both commercial and ideological. In the process, I will examine the genres that are relevant to the film: the historical epic and the musical. Finally, I will proceed to a reading of Lola la piconera itself, focusing specifically on the lovers’ encounter with the gypsy caravan toward the end of the film and the ensuing dream sequence in the gypsy encampment. CIFESA enjoyed a good relationship with the Franco government. Its contacts with it, as Mira (2004, 60) points out, helped ensure the studio’s success in the years immediately after the Civil War. Yet, to acknowledge this is not the same as insisting on the existence of some “natural relationship” between CIFESA productions and the regime (Castro de Paz 2002, 135). Mira (2005, 62) notes that CIFESA’s head, Vicente Casanova, had frequent run-­ins with various members of the government, while Castro de Paz (2002, 135) calls to mind a particular argument with the censors over the 1949 costume drama, La duquesa de Benamejí/The Duchess of Benamejí. We should not forget that CIFESA, like all other production companies in Spain, was in private hands (Labanyi 2007, 242). It sought commercial success, and the Francoist system of rewarding films that were considered of “special interest” offered it and other companies a means of achieving that success or, at the very least, of balancing the books. Regarding CIFESA’s lavish historical spectacles, Mira writes (2005, 62), “Even for a consolidated studio with contracted technicians and stars, these were expensive films to produce and therefore needed huge returns at the box office, which could only be achieved through government support and, not coincidentally, a new system of grants for film had been introduced in the early 1940s.” Although expensive to make, Casanova was banking on the historical epic to get the company out of the severe financial crisis in which it found itself in 1946 (Mira 2005, 61–2), a crisis brought about by excess of production and the end of the Second World War (Mira 2004, 60). With the historical epic, Casanova had hit upon a formula, or so he thought, that would attract audiences with its big-­budget spectacle and would secure the support of the State with its ideology.

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Says Mira (2005, 62), “As long as Casanova could convince government officials of the effectiveness of the formula in terms of the strengthening of national spirit, these films earned awards, tax breaks and publicity.” While the historical epic would undoubtedly become CIFESA’s most “distinctive product” (Mira 2004, 60), it is worth noting that CIFESA produced only four of them—Locura de amor/The Mad Queen (1948), Agustina de Aragón (1950), La Leona de Castilla/ The Lioness of Castile (1951), and Alba de América/Dawn of America (1951), all directed by Juan de Orduña—in addition to the hybrid Lola la piconera. The close association of CIFESA with the historical epic is indicative of a broader misconception about the panorama of Spanish cinema in the early Franco years, which was “more diverse than is commonly thought” (Pavlović et al. 2009, 64). “Without doubt, the films which most readily define early Francoist cinema,” writes José Enrique Monterde, “those which expose in more explicit terms its founding ideas, constituted . . . a relatively small part of the overall production” (1995, 230). Yet, it is because of the apparent concordance between the historical epic and the ideology of the regime that CIFESA is ultimately defined by its historical cycle and regarded quite narrowly as the “regime’s ideological standard bearer” (Evans 1995, 215). Far from “natural,” the relationship between CIFESA and the State was, as I have suggested above, one of need. The State needed the film companies too, having realized the potential of cinema for the dissemination of its ideology to a mass audience. However, as Labanyi observes in a different context, the best way to reach that audience “was not overt propaganda, which was easily resisted, but the production of apparently escapist films whose message would be absorbed subliminally” (2007, 242). Hence the attraction of Casanova’s formula, which provided escapism “in films that turned away from iconic representation of reality, and even from the present tense” (Mira 2005, 62). The State’s system of rewards and censorship would, in theory, help shape the ideological content, although, in practice, contradictions and inconsistencies meant the outcome could not be certain (Triana-Toribio 2003, 53). To begin with, “the censorial apparatus was surprisingly arbitrary and ambiguous. There was no explicit set of rules, criteria, or guidelines for censorship until as late as 1962” (Pavlović et al. 2009, 62). Moreover, the award of import licenses to companies whose films were placed in the higher categories on a sliding scale of classifications—in 1944 a new top category of “National Interest” was introduced (Bonaddio 2004, 31)—meant that the regime helped sustain the influx of foreign films whose ideological conformity could not be guaranteed. Access to these films was

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widespread since 1941, when it became a requirement that all foreign films be dubbed into Spanish (Labanyi 2007, 242). “The problem,” Rafael Abella writes, “was that since it was compulsory for foreign films to be dubbed, people preferred to watch Gary Cooper rather than José Nieto, and favored Leslie Howard over Julio Rey de las Heras. Not to mention the choice between Dorothy Lamour and Blanca de Silos or between Hedy Lamarr and Ana Mariscal” (2008, 431). It was of course inevitable that internal production drew on imported genres (Triana-Toribio 2003, 52). The popular appeal of foreign films, particularly those from Hollywood, was reason enough to copy them. What they offered, quite simply, was entertainment. As Abella puts it, “ordinary people, freed from their servitude to subtitles, displayed a marked preference for foreign films,” as they offered something that was in stark contrast to “the oppressive reality of the country and the strident tones of national cinema” (2008, 43). Abella’s analysis, however, while right to underscore the audience’s preference for foreign films and their escapist tendency, does not take into account the unquestionable success enjoyed by films made in Spain, including the epics of CIFESA’s historical cycle, with the first one, Locura de amor, proving to be a particularly resounding box-­office hit. What is more, the distinction between the Spanish brand and the foreign import merits some scrutiny given that Spanish companies, including CIFESA, had for some time looked at Hollywood genres, amongst others, for inspiration, the historical epic and the musical being cases in point. Indeed, CIFESA’s success, as it had been before the Civil War, was “rooted in its imitation of the Hollywood film industry, in its efficient production mechanisms, and in its impressive national star system” (Pavlović et al. 2009, 63). When all was said and done, “early Francoist cinema, which remained in private hands and therefore had to be commercially viable, had to satisfy not only the censors but also audiences who flocked to see English-­language movies” (Labanyi 2013, 246). In effect, the Spanish film industry imported, imitated, and competed with Hollywood. The very “look”—the costumes and décor—of Spanish historical films of the period, including those of CIFESA, are “clearly influenced by Hollywood’s historical productions of the 1930s and 1940s” (Labanyi 2004, 35). Significantly, the art directors and cameramen were often themselves foreigners who had either worked in the German or Italian costume traditions, themselves heavily influenced by Hollywood, or even in Hollywood itself (Labanyi 2004, 35; 2007, 242–3). Moreover, if nineteenth-­century historical paintings provided the point of reference for “the repertoire of episodes from national history that appeared on

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Spanish screens” (Labanyi 2013, 241–2)—and with it, the aesthetics on which “the graphic chronicle of the victors was built, often giving priority to crude and Manichean ideological didacticism over any preoccupation over art” (Castro de Paz 2002, 142)—it was also a referent for both European and American commercial productions of the day (Castro de Paz 2002, 144). At the level of plot, though, it was not the Francoist conception of history underpinning the epic—namely, an uncritical appraisal of Spain’s glorious past that legitimizes the present (Monterde 1995, 235–6)—that enticed audiences, but rather the genre’s “indisputable popular allure,” that is, “a marked melodramatic tendency that, regardless of the contempt provoked by the genre in critical circles . . . has given Spanish cinema a set of extraordinarily peculiar and attractive features” (Castro de Paz 2002, 139–40). For Castro de Paz, “it was a case of employing the popular imaginary born of certain historical referents and giving it filmic shape through the use of certain visual conventions (the so-­called costume drama, ostentatious sets, etc.) using narrative forms immediately recognizable by the audience (melodrama)” (2002, 140; italics in original). As it turned out, Casanova’s formula did not save the studio. Despite the popular success of the historical cycle, “lack of official support together with the difficulties inherent in the model would lead to yet another, final, crisis for the company” (Mira 2004, 60). By 1952, CIFESA had limited its activity to distribution (Bonaddio 2004, 36), while the historical epic fell out of favor altogether. Films about historical events would return later in the decade and enjoy considerable success, but these were not films that sought to give “a version of the past that is relevant to the present” (Mira 2004, 61). Instead, the new formula closely followed the “Hollywood patterns and popular European historical films such as the Sissi series” in which “the past is the stage for escapism, not an area to explore (or construct) a version of how the Spanish had become what they were” (Mira 2004, 61). The historical film now emphasized the escapism which Casanova had seen as being integral to his own model, albeit with a large dose of ideology thrown in, in an attempt to secure the State’s backing and its invaluable grants. Significantly, the 1940s had seen the epic form fall out of favor in America also—where productions were on a scale that could never be matched by the Spanish product—as “audience tastes turned to contemporary subjects, exemplified in the sophisticated musicals and comedies of Hollywood” (Burgoyne 2008, 36). Arguably, Lola la piconera anticipates a similar change in audience tastes at home, its hybrid form enacting the historical epic’s surrender to the world of

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pure entertainment represented by the musical. This is not to say that the musical, and in particular the folkloric musical, as well as other genres, was not shaped by the ideology of the regime, but the politics were less explicit in, for example, the films CIFESA made either before or alongside the historical epic, which ranged “from light comedies geared toward a mass audience to profitable escapist musicals” (Pavlović et al. 2009, 63). As José Enrique Monterde explains: the number of historical and religious films is negligible compared with that of certain genres apparently alien to direct propagandistic indoctrination. This does not mean that comedies, dramas, melodramas, musicals (including the folkloric variety), crime films, etc. remained uninfluenced by the ideologically dominant trends; actually, there never was a ‘no-­man’s-­land’, but a supreme will to orientate production towards entertainment. 1995, 230

With entertainment in mind, while set designer Sigfrido Burmann, cinematographer Ted Pahle, and costume designers Manuel Pertegaz and Eduardo Torre de la Fuente guaranteed Lola la piconera’s continuity with the “look” of the historical epic (they had all worked on Agustina de Aragón), there was no better choice for director than Luis Lucia who had already been responsible for a number of low-­budget CIFESA comedies and melodramas (Castro de Paz 2002, 133). José Luis Castro de Paz provides an effusive appraisal of Lucia’s talents and impact on Spanish cinema of the period: “Luis Lucia would establish himself as one of the most efficient of the company’s directors, quick and practical in his application to stories whose connection with audiences was guaranteed due to their brilliant execution, who always exuded popular spontaneity, warmth and humanity” (2002, 134). Lucia was able to combine slick narrative devices and the Hollywood “look” “to give form to filmic referents that were eminently autochthonous” (Castro de Paz 2002, 13). He was, in other words, the master of the españolada à l’américaine—the clichéd Spanish film given the Hollywood treatment (Castro de Paz 2002, 134). What Lola la piconera offers, however, is something more than a Spanish product that looks to America for a model. In a self-­reflexive turn, it becomes a reflection on the very tension between, on the one hand, the idea of Spanishness that has shaped much Spanish production and, on the other, pure entertainment as embodied by Hollywood and, in particular, by the musical. As a counterpoint to its historical character, the film’s musical element is important both because of its association with entertainment and because of its alliance with the utopian principle. “Musicals,” writes Richard Dyer, “were

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predominantly conceived of, by producers and audiences alike, as ‘pure entertainment’—the idea of entertainment was a prime determinant on them” (2002, 9). Moreover, what entertainment offers is “escape” and “wish-­fulfilment,” both of which “point to its central thrust: namely, utopianism” (Dyer 2002, 20). “Entertainment,” continues Dyer, “offers the image of ‘something better’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-­to-day lives don’t provide. Alternatives, hopes, wishes—these are the stuff of utopia, the sense that things could be better, that something other than what is can be imagined and maybe realized” (2002, 20). In Lola la piconera, this is precisely what is at stake. While those characteristics that belong to the historical epic—the siege mentality, the resistance toward the invader, the defensive patriotism informed by the rhetoric of autarky—are all concerned with the past, with looking back in order to explain the regime’s version of the present, the musical element, even though it is put at the service of the nation in the patriotic songs Juanita Reina is made to sing, points to a brighter future, one where, for example, nationality is less important than love, and this applies not only to the wishes of ordinary people, but to the narratives of Spanish cinema itself. “Su patria,” Gustavo sighs, reflecting on the gypsies he and Lola have encountered, “es la tierra donde acampan cada noche. No son franceses ni españolas.” (“Their country is the land where they set up camp every night. They are neither French nor Spanish.”) If, across the panorama of Spanish cinema, we can understand, as Alberto Mira suggests, that “[t]he utopian aims of the musical temper[ed] the earnestness of other historical epics” (2005, 69), what we have in Lola la piconera is the same dynamic in microcosm. Throughout the film, Lola’s performance of the copla—an Andalusian-­ inflected popular song (Mira 2005, 63)—however patriotic at times, undercuts the very seriousness of the historical episode by virtue of its “impossibility”: choreographed numbers, non-­diegetic musical accompaniment, a disregard for realism. But it is in several scenes toward the end of the film, when Lola and Gustavo happen upon a gypsy caravan, that the premise of the historical epic is called into question more explicitly. A scene in which the couple watch the gypsies dancing in a style that is “raw” in comparison to Lola’s own performances, though no less choreographed—Labanyi (2002, 217) has called attention to the diegetic guitars and drums—gives way to a dream sequence in which the gypsies are transformed into fantastic versions of themselves and “flamenco metamorphoses completely into ballet” (Labanyi 2002, 216). For Labanyi (2002, 217) the issue here centers on the tension between popular culture

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(flamenco) and high art (ballet), the film betraying both the “anti-­intellectual stance” and “the association with official culture” of the writer on whose play the film was based, José María Pemán, a supporter of the Falange and a member of the Real Academia Española (RAE; Royal Spanish Academy). This said, the dream sequence performs a specific function, which is to transport Lola and Gustavo to a world “where national enmities can be overcome by love” (Labanyi 2002, 217). The couple have already envisaged running away together to a corner of the world where no one can find them, and Gustavo states, in the language of love, that he has no need for either France or Spain: “Mi patria,” he admits to Lola, “empieza y acaba en ti.” (“My country begins and ends in you.”) He then asks Lola whether she, like him, has ever dreamed of a world where hatred, war, and borders do not exist, a world devoid of all the things that separate them now. Lola’s answer is simple: “¿Quién no ha soñado con esa cosa tan bonita?” (“Who has never dreamed of such a beautiful thing?”) And yet, despite their dreaming, what reality dictates is that the best they can hope for is to live out a single day as gypsies, “Como estos gitanos, vivamos un día sin patria.” (“Like these gypsies, let us live for a day without a country.”) For entertainment to work, it needs to respond to real needs. Says Dyer, “it is not just what show business, or ‘they,’ force on the rest of us, it is not simply the expression of eternal needs—it responds to real needs created by society” (2002, 23; italics in original). Behind Lola la piconera there is, no doubt, a calculation that the film’s message is, as critics have pointed out, in tune with a changing political reality. Yet the needs of the audience have also been taken into account. After the gypsies’ flamenco performance in the encampment, Gustavo makes a proposal that takes the couple—and the spectator—to a world beyond politics, one that is pure show business. “Soñemos,” he urges Lola. “Piensa que estos gitanos que bailan son seres de un mundo de fantasía y felicidad.” (“Let us dream. Imagine that these dancing gypsies are creatures from a world of fantasy and joy.”) In a split second the couple find themselves in a landscape of exotic plants, flowers, and gypsy caravans, a landscape that is striking for its artificiality at a time when the epic—an example of the papier-­mâché genre, where entire sets were made out of papier-­mâché (Pavlović et  al. 2009, 75)—feigned historical reality. The choreography, costumes, and fantastical décor could not be further removed from the broader setting of the film or from the aesthetic of the historical epic. Above all, the “look” of this balletic sequence, which still retains a vague flamenco inflection, is reminiscent of Hollywood numbers, of musical interludes that neither shy away from excess nor shun the temptation to exoticize

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their subjects. If the couple’s dream distances us from the performance of gypsy flamenco and the copla of previous scenes, it is because this fantastical world is not only a place where love overcomes boundaries, but also one where entertainment is not dependent on adherence to local models. This is something that Spanish audiences, already familiar with foreign films—particularly Hollywood—understood. Lola’s martyrdom at the end of the film, brought about by the treachery of a Spaniard (the liberal, Don Luis de Acuña), is clearly different from that suffered by Agustina (Aurora Bautista) in Agustina de Aragón. The patriotic overtones are less important than the feeling of loss and give way to Gustavo’s memories of Lola, which are presented as flashbacks to prominent moments in the film, including the couple’s dreams of a world without boundaries. As well as having an emotional appeal, this final sequence foregrounds instances of performance that remind us of what is engaging about the film, not its patriotic tenor but the charm, wit, and talent of the film’s female lead. In the end, we might consider Lola la piconera to be the last throw of the dice by a studio that, for all its success, suffered one financial crisis too many. Indeed, the film did not do badly at the box office, attracting a total audience of 121,814 spectators (González González 2009, 215). Perhaps, as Mira suggests, the film “sought new ways to replay the patriotic formula as outlined by Cifesa head Vicente Casanova” (2005, 61). If so, then this demonstrates an inability on CIFESA’s part to move beyond the conventional rhetoric of the historical epic and forgo the rewards that conformity might bring. And yet, curiously enough, this self-­reflexive film seems to be aware of the dilemma. For this reason, while it is common to cite the collaborative nature of filmmaking as a reason why “we cannot see early Franco cinema as a mere reflection of regime ideology” (Labanyi 2007, 242), perhaps what Lola la piconera demonstrates is that the same principle applies also to the relation between films and the studios that produce them.

References Abella, R., Crónica de la posguerra 1939–1955. Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2008. Bonaddio, F., “Dressing as Foreigners: Historical and Musical Dramas of the Early Franco Period,” in Spanish Popular Cinema, eds A. Lázaro-Rebolz and A. Willis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 24–39. Burgoyne, R., The Hollywood Historical Film. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

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Castro de Paz, J.L., Un cinema herido. Los turbios años cuarenta en el cine español. Barcelona: Paidós, 2002. Dyer, R., “Entertainment and Utopia,” in Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. S. Cohan. London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 19–30. Evans, P., “Cifesa: Cinema and Authoritarian Aesthetics,” in Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction, eds H. Graham and J. Labanyi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 215–22. González González, L.M., Fascismo, kitsch y cine histórico español (1939–1953). Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2009. Labanyi, J., “Musical Battles: Populism and Hegemony in the Early Francoist Folkloric Film Musical,” in Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice, ed. J. Labanyi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 206–11. Labanyi, J., “Costume, Identity and Spectator Pleasure in Historical Films of the Early Franco Period,” in Gender and Spanish Cinema, eds S. Marsh and P. Nair. Oxford: Berg, 2004, pp. 33–51. Labanyi, J., “Negotiating Modernity through the Past: Costume Films of the Early Franco Period,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, vol. 13, no. 2–3, 2007, pp. 241–58. Labanyi, J., “The Ambivalent Attractions of the Past: Historical Film of the Early Franco Period,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 241–48. Mira, A., “Spectacular Metaphors: The Rhetoric of Historical Representation in Cifesa Epics,” in Spanish Popular Cinema, eds Antono Lázaro-Reboll and Andrew Willis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 60–75. Mira, A., “Lola la piconera/Lola the Coalgirl,” in The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, ed. A. Mira. London: Wallflower Press, 2005, pp. 61–9. Monterde, J.E., “El cine de autarquía (1939–1950),” in Historia del cine español, eds R. Gubern et al. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995, pp. 181–238. Pavlović, T. et al., 100 Years of Spanish Cinema. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Triana-Toribio, N., Spanish National Cinema. London: Routledge, 2003.

5

Nothing Ever Happens: Juan Antonio Bardem and the Resignification of Hollywood Melodrama (1954–63) Daniel Mourenza

Juan Antonio Bardem’s indebtedness to Italian Neorealism has been widely recognized. Films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s Cronaca di un amore/ Story of a Love Affair (1950) and Federico Fellini’s I vitelloni/The Young and the Passionate (1953) are often cited as direct influences on films such as Muerte de un ciclista/Death of a Cyclist (1955), and Calle Mayor/Main Street (1956). However, some scholars (Kinder 1993; Roberts 1999; Allinson 2005; Jorza 2011) have recently identified the influence of Hollywood melodrama on these films. My article will discuss this decisive influence on these and other films from that period, including Cómicos/Actors (1954), Los inocentes/The Innocents (1963), and Nunca pasa nada/Nothing Ever Happens (1963). In this article I will argue that Bardem made an intelligent and subversive use of melodrama to display the immanent need for change in Spain. By displacing the social and ideological conflicts of Francoist Spain onto the private sphere of individual and sentimental relationships, he drew attention to how these conflicts were ultimately experienced by the individual. I will thus show how the adoption of a global genre such as melodrama was used by Bardem to represent and confront Spain’s social and political situation. A certain reluctance to consider Bardem’s films as genre, especially in Spanish academia, has prevented a thorough study of the use of melodrama in his first and most acclaimed films. Regarded as an “auteur,” his films were thought to fit better into the tradition of Neorealism than such a popular genre as melodrama. Furthermore, because of his political commitment and the historical context in which he worked, his films have generally been associated with “progressive” Italian Neorealism rather than with the “uncritical entertainment genre” of Hollywood melodrama. However, in this text I will read Bardem’s early films

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through the seminal work of authors such as Thomas Elsaesser and Laura Mulvey, who, from the 1970s onwards, reassessed the meaning of melodrama and claimed that this genre could function “either subversively or as escapism,” depending on “the given historical and social context” (Elsaesser 1987, 47). Several scholars have tried to understand the dialogue between Neorealism and melodrama in Bardem’s films. Rob Stone, for example, has referred to both aesthetics as “dialectically opposite,” used to antagonize two social classes and create a political discourse out of this clash (2002, 48–9), and Mark Allinson has explained the use of melodrama as a “less confrontational vehicle” than Neorealism, which could be used by Bardem to avoid censorship (2005, 80). Both arguments, however, cling to the traditional binary opposition between Italian Neorealism and melodrama mentioned above. Diana Roxana Jorza, probably the most perceptive of these critics, argues that Neorealist strategies in Bardem’s films do not oppose, but enable the use and resignification of Hollywood melodrama in political terms (2011, 117). Although I agree with Jorza’s premises, this text will not be concerned with the Neorealist influence on Bardem’s films; rather it will understand his use of melodrama as a political strategy in itself, which resignifies the genre from within and adapts its subversive potentials to the specific Spanish context.

Juan Antonio Bardem and melodrama Melodrama was first “recovered” as a potentially subversive genre in film studies in the 1970s by some Marxist scholars who saw in it the possibility of expressing, in aesthetic form, the formal contradictions of the ideology that brought them into being; and, later, in the 1980s, by feminism, which noticed that this genre primarily focused on female sexuality. The highly stylized melodramas that Douglas Sirk shot in Hollywood in the 1950s were then rehabilitated and his films, which had been hitherto recognized by the industry and the audience but denigrated by the critics, were now reclaimed as social criticism. Jacquie Byars argues that the extremely stylized aesthetics of melodrama were thus “valorized by film critics as the ‘excess’ that calls attention to the socio-­political contradictions inherent to bourgeois stories” (1991, 14). Scholars such as Peter Brooks (1976) and Elsaesser (1987) have associated the formal characteristics of melodrama with a crisis of expression in which language is no longer adequate to express the emotions at stake. Consequently, film melodrama had to resort to stylistic traits

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such as music and lighting. In other words, melodrama does not deal with a direct understanding of what is said, but expresses through different means that which cannot be said with words. This mode of expression is especially apt to make the language of the unconscious speak through symptom. It has been claimed that this language is especially suitable to play out the ideological contradictions of a society. Thus, 1950s Hollywood melodramas that sought to interpret and help to understand the institution of the family were, at the same time, according to Mulvey, revealing the inconsistencies of American ideology, such as the contradictions between the phallocentric, misogynist fantasies of the patriarchal culture and the ideology of the family. These melodramas, in other words, focused on the conflicts “between people tied by blood or love” and aroused excitement by pushing those contradictions further, by means of “touching on sensitive areas of sexual repression and frustration” (Mulvey 2009, 41). None of the above-­mentioned intellectual strands has ever become dominant in film studies in Spanish academia. This fact explains why very few Spanish critics have addressed Bardem’s films as melodramas. The Spanish film critic, Miguel Marías, an exception to the rule in this regard, adds another reason to explain the lack of scholarship on melodrama in Spain. He argues that melodrama in Spanish cinema has scarcely developed, although it has appeared in an indirect and fragmentary way, in what he calls a “repressed melodrama.” One of the reasons for the underdevelopment of this genre is that, because of censorship, screenwriters and directors tended to soften, instead of exaggerate, the stylistic traits on which melodrama is based, especially regarding its pessimistic premises. Marías also claims that, because of the derogatory connotations of this genre, very few “critically acclaimed” Spanish directors would accept the classification of their films as melodramas, even if, according to him, Bardem’s best films, Cómicos, Calle Mayor and Nunca pasa nada, are themselves melodramas (2000, 118). Marías argues that films such as Calle Mayor and the “eloquently titled” Nunca pasa nada are not based on the excessive temporal accumulation of events, as many Hollywood melodramas are, but rather on the fact that nothing ever happens, at least nothing of what the characters long for (2000, 116). Following Marías, I argue that Bardem’s melodramas are based on the following premise: characters are longing for something, which means a change in their life for the better, but what they long for never comes true. This does not mean that nothing happens throughout the film. Indeed, events occur—events that are out of the control of the protagonists but which nevertheless have a great impact upon them. However, the promises for change contained in these events are

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always frustrated and in the end everything goes back to normal. As Elsaesser has noted, one of the recurrent features of melodrama is the desire for an unobtainable object. In Calle Mayor, Isabel’s (Betsy Blair) unattainable object is the Prince Charming she dreams of, with whom she wishes to live a love story as in the movies. In Cómicos, on the other hand, Ana Ruiz (Elisa Galvé) longs to become the leading actress of a theater company. These desires are the driving force that moves the action forward. Elsaesser argues that the gap between reality and the characters’ desires—i.e. the discrepancy between seeming and being, intention and result—is one of the central, and most critical, features of melodrama. For him, 1950s Hollywood melodramas are thus genuine tragedies about the impossible contradictions between desires and the reality lived by Americans, for whom the American dream has turned “into a proverbial nightmare” (Elsaesser 1987, 67). In the Spanish context, the genre of melodrama allowed Bardem to speak of the frustration of individuals in the Francoist society of the 1950s and 1960s, and to contradict the promise made by the regime’s official discourse about liberalization, openness, and economic development, which was supposed to lead to an improvement of Spaniards’ quality of life. Characters in Bardem’s films thus always appear tired—through boredom or despair—of a reality in which nothing ever happens. Starting from his first solo film as writer and director, Cómicos, which he wrote after reading the script of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), Bardem developed a similar structure in all his melodramas. Throughout the film, there is always the opportunity or the promise of a change, which never actually arrives. The ending of the film does not imply, therefore, a move forward from the beginning. The situation remains stagnant and the characters do not improve their lives. These “empty” endings have often been criticized because they offer “neither ‘poetic justice’ nor hope of any future change for the better” (Jorza 2011, 121). However, quoting Mulvey, “the strength of the melodramatic form lies in the amount of dust the story raises along the road, the cloud of overdetermined irreconcilables which put up a resistance to being neatly settled, in the last five minutes, into a happy end” (2009, 42–3). The political strength of Bardem’s melodramas lies in the way that his stories work out the tensions and contradictions of everyday life in Spain under Franco. Bardem leaves the problems of these stories unresolved, thus stressing the tensions between gender roles, classes and even generations. These tensions, far from being relieved with an all-­encompassing solution, press for solution in real life.

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Representing gender roles: Cómicos and Calle Mayor Cómicos is probably Bardem’s closest film in formal terms to the Hollywood style. The use of close-­ups, music, lighting, and interiors in this film is stylistically similar to Hollywood melodramas. Although the film is not set in a family home, the settings of the film are nearly all interiors and perform a similar function. Elsaesser argues that “[M]elodrama is iconographically fixed by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the bourgeois home and/or the small-­town setting.” The emotional pattern that these claustrophobic settings give rise to is panic or latent hysteria, which is “reinforced stylistically by a complex handling of space in interiors” (1987, 62). The settings of most of Bardem’s melodramas are in fact either the family home or a small town. In Cómicos, however, the characters of the film are members of a traveling theater group moving from town to town for their shows. Nonetheless, these towns, as Ana and Miguel (Fernando Rey) fantasize from the window of a café, function in the end as the same small town. Ana  Es curioso . . . tengo el baúl roto de tanto viajar y en realidad sólo conozco un teatro, un café y una pensión. Miguel  Mejor. Así al menos se puede creer que las cosas son como uno se las imagina. Ves, aquí hay una plaza con soportales. Los chicos y las chicas pasean de siete a nueve y se hacen novios dando vueltas. Ana  Sí. Y más allá hay un parque y un quiosco de música y la estatua de un señor con levita. Miguel  Eso, un señor con levita que costeó el alcantarillado. A la derecha está la catedral y, pasando el río, el seminario.1

This description (a cathedral, a river, a statue of a man in a frock coat, and a bandstand) is repeated later in the film to evoke the uniformity of all towns. The endless touring of the theater company functions as a representation of the stagnation and oppression that suffocates both Ana and Miguel. Juan Francisco Cerón Gómez argues that “this space that suffocates the main characters is in the last analysis a metaphor for an oppressive country and society” (1998, 106). The story revolves around the character of Ana Ruiz, a young actress who dreams of becoming the first actress of a theater group and achieving success. However, all she can do is to wait, like most female characters in Bardem’s melodramas. Mulvey argues that waiting is a representation of the erotic function of the woman as passive (2009, 35). In traditional narratives, this

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passive figure works as a formal closure, commonly epitomized by marriage, in which the man, as subject, finally obtains the woman. However, in melodrama, the narrative thrust arises from the internal conflict induced by the character’s inability “to accept or conform to the set of symbolic positions around which the network of social relations adhere” (Rodowick 1987, 272). In Cómicos, Ana Ruiz avoids confinement to a traditional bourgeois marriage with Miguel, in which she would only play the role of a housewife. She keeps waiting for the opportunity to play the leading actress and show how much she is worth. This opportunity finally arrives when Doña Carmen (Rosario García Ortega), the leading actress and capital partner of the group, falls ill and Ana is allowed to replace her. Despite her successful performance, she is nevertheless refused a second chance and is told that Doña Carmen will play the leading actress the following day, relegating Ana back to her supporting role. María A. Gómez (2006) and Susan Martín-Márquez (1993) have noted that the character of Ana is probably the most positive in Bardem’s early melodramas because, in spite of her failure to become the leading actress, she experiences a coming to consciousness and gains the self-­assurance necessary to reject Carlos’s extortion, who promised her triumph on the stage in return for sexual favors. Through this rejection she stands firm in her decision to pursue her career on her own, avoiding Carlos’s blackmail. The unresolved ending, in short, proposes a situation in which everything remains the same and Ana is forced back to her “waiting” role. However, Ana has shown that she is not passive; it is (this) society that confines her to that role. Calle Mayor is set in a conservative, provincial town which could in fact be the materialization of the imaginary town that Ana and Miguel envisioned in Cómicos. The film focuses on the oppressive atmosphere that surrounds and permeates the townspeople’s lives, especially Isabel’s, the local spinster, who becomes the object of a cruel joke arranged by a group of grown-­up pranksters. Juan (José Suárez) is asked to seduce Isabel and make her a proposal of marriage, only to dump her at the annual ball at the Círculo Recreativo. Bardem declared that, with this film, he aimed to develop a general critique of 1950s Spain and, particularly, of the social conditions experienced by women at the time (2002, 288). Melodrama appears here as the vehicle to X-ray the gap between the reality in which women live and their dreams. In fact, Isabel’s dream of forming a family and a home, devised according to Hollywood films, functions here to show the gap between Spain’s promises for economic development and the empty reality of these promises. Jorza argues that Isabel appears “beguiled by

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the promise of economic prosperity promoted in the Spanish media, which is not accompanied by the same possibilities of personal and social emancipation as deployed in the Hollywood women’s films of the period” (2011, 126). At the beginning of the film, Isabel tells Juan why she loves Hollywood melodramas: Isabel  A mí todas esas películas de amor me encantan. Sobre todo si son americanas . . . Es por las casas que sacan . . . y las cocinas. ¿Se ha fijado usted qué cocinas? Blancas, limpias y estupendas. ¿Por qué se ríe? Juan  Me estaba acordando de mi amigo, de Federico. Estaría discutiendo ya con usted. Diciéndole que todo eso de las películas americanas es falso, es mentira . . . . Isabel  A lo mejor. Pero es bonito . . . aunque sea mentira.2

For Isabel, Hollywood melodramas are a lie, but a beautiful lie nonetheless. The cruel joke arranged by Juan’s friends becomes that “beautiful lie” that Isabel likes so much. Hence, through this joke, she is given the chance to live the love story she has always dreamed of. The recognition of the farce at the end is for her a terrible clash with the reality she lives in: the oppressive, misogynistic Francoist Spain. By sending Isabel back to her “waiting” role, Bardem criticizes the passive role of women in that society and the idea of marriage as a happy closure for the problems surrounding individuals (an argument that he will deepen in Nunca pasa nada). Mulvey has suggested that Hollywood melodramas were often about a world that was at once sexually repressed and obsessed. The lack of sexual satisfaction of the female characters was the driving force of the narrative (2009, 44). In Calle Mayor, Isabel is also (unconsciously) obsessed with sex; an obsession symbolized by her dream of living a love story “like in the movies,” that she has developed by watching Hollywood melodramas. At the same time, however, she is (self-)repressed by the society she lives in, especially due to her Catholic upbringing, and as a result cannot live her sexuality freely. In this way, she tries to direct her sexual desire into the “correct” sexual economy, that is, into a family. Her submission to Juan as his wife would thus function as the perfect closure for this absence. The film also stresses that the only other space allowed to women apart from the home is the brothel, where they are given an equally passive role, as Tonia (Dora Doll) tells Federico (Yves Massard): “Las mujeres no podemos hacer otra cosa, sólo esperar. En las esquinas, en los soportales de la plaza, paseando por la calle Mayor, detrás de las ventanas.”3 The film is, in a nutshell, a critique of the suture offered by the promise of a happy marriage in certain melodramas. The end, therefore, does not bring any

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change to Isabel’s resigned life. On the contrary, it reveals that “there is no real escape for her from the provincial town she lives in” (Jorza 2011, 128). A marriage, in short, would not be a better option. Mulvey argues that in Hollywood melodramas there is always a tension between phallocentric fantasies and the family, which “tend towards a beneficial sacrifice of unrestrained masculine individualism in the interests of civilisation, law and culture” (2009, 42). Bardem, however, discards the possible ending in which Juan would sacrifice himself to marry Isabel. Such an ending would direct all the tensions opened up by the film to a contained goal that would justify Isabel’s suffering in favor of marriage and the institution of the family. Bardem thus parodies marriage as the perfect closure for all the contradictions opened up throughout the film and, by doing so, resignifies the genre.

Domestic melodrama and sexual repression: Nunca pasa nada The film Nunca pasa nada best renders this idea of stagnation and oppression that fills Bardem’s early melodramas. Stylistically, this film moves away from some formal traits of melodrama: it uses longer takes and fewer close-­ups than Bardem’s earlier films and is shot in real locations. However, thematically it is more clearly a melodrama, akin to the most subversive 1950s Hollywood family melodramas. Here the family home, as well as an oppressive provincial town, is the central spaces of the film. The plot is structured around a simple event that threatens to change the everyday life of the small town in which the film is set and, more importantly, the unhappy marriage between Julia (Julia Gutiérrez Caba) and Enrique (Antonio Casas): the arrival of a beautiful French young variety-­theater actress, Jacqueline (Corinne Marchand), to be operated on for appendicitis. Enrique’s crush on the actress gives Julia the opportunity to put an end to her marriage and leave a town which oppresses her. Nonetheless, Julia is aware that, once the Frenchwoman departs, everything will return to normal. She thus declares to the nosy, conservative women who criticize Jacqueline for corrupting the good morals of the town: Yo no le veo tanta importancia. Yo no creo que tengan que preocuparse, de verdad. Aquí nunca pasa nada. En cuanto esa chica se vaya, todo volverá a ser igual. Es como cuando pasan los turistas en verano. Cuando empezaron a venir, también decíamos y . . . no pasa nada.4

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When Bardem’s film premiered at the 1963 Venice Film Festival, the Spanish ambassador in Rome and future Minister of Tourism and Information, Alfredo Sánchez Bella, fiercely attacked it in a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fernando María Castiella. He accused Bardem of fanaticism for suggesting that nothing happened in Spain, thus negating the reality of the impact of the country’s openness to foreign countries, especially with the arrival of tourism (Gubern and Font 1975, 132). However, Bardem’s point is not that Spain has not changed. In fact, the film shows a number of commercial trucks passing through the town, as an illustration of the new economic policy of the Franco regime that opened up to capitalism and aimed to increase foreign trade and investments. The film rather emphasizes that, despite the many changes undergone in the country, the life of its citizens remains as miserable as ever. The leitmotiv “nothing ever happens” focuses here on an unhappy wife who is, through societal pressure, forced to carry on with her marriage. The film powerfully stresses the impossibility for Julia of being happy and sexually fulfilled as a woman in this milieu. Laura Mulvey has argued that in the family melodrama, the central presence of a woman permits the story to be overtly about sexuality. Marriage does not appear as the event that marks the narrative closure with a happy ending, allowed by the promise of a “happily ever after,” since the wedding has already taken place and life has gone on. Now the narrative focuses on what is next and explores the desires of the female character through the question: “What does she want?” (Mulvey 2009, 37; italics in original). This is precisely a question that the film Nunca pasa nada brings to the fore in one of the tensest, and most brilliant, scenes of the film. When Julia finds out about the relationship between Jacquie and Enrique, she does not blame the actress but her husband, and directs all her repressed anger against him. In a long discussion, shot in a single take, Julia reveals that she is aware of Enrique’s numerous infidelities, but she is not jealous, she only feels indifference and aversion. She then reproaches him for her lack of sexual satisfaction and personal fulfilment as a woman (“La vergüenza es tanto tiempo perdido, tanto tiempo en que no he sido nada cerca de ti. Ni mujer ni nada”).5 Next, Julia confesses her unhappiness and her decision to separate, even to the detriment of her son. Enrique replies by saying that she is unfair to him since, even if he has not always been the perfect husband, he has given her everything a woman could want. She should understand that men have certain desires which should be accepted as such (“Un hombre es un hombre y yo, es verdad, soy un hombre lleno de deseos . . . En ese sentido, no creo que pueda cambiar.

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Tienes que tomarme como soy, como yo te acepto a ti”).6 Finally, he changes his tone and tells her that, in fact, her role as a wife is to endure everything he does, even if she does not like it. At this stage, Julia exposes her desires as a woman: “Yo no sé si tú tienes deseos o no. Lo que sé es que yo sí los tengo. Y no tengo nada, nada. Estoy sola. Yo soy una mujer, ¿te enteras? Y quiero serlo. Y me paso los años sin sentir que lo soy. ¡Entérate, entérate!”7 To Enrique’s astonishment, Julia then reveals that she may direct her sexual desires outside the institution of marriage in the same way that he has done. This scene shows the gender roles that wife and husband were expected to play but, more importantly, it reveals the sexual and social repression that a woman feels when restricted to such a role. Mulvey suggests that the main ideological function of melodrama is to work certain contradictions through to the surface. A difference can nonetheless eventually be established “between the way that irreconcilable social and sexual dilemmas are finally resolved” (2009, 46). In Nunca pasa nada, these social and sexual dilemmas are left unresolved, keeping the contradictions alive. In the final sequence, Jacquie’s bus leaves the town as Enrique watches its departure. Julia emerges from behind and takes her husband’s arm to guide him back home. On their way, they feign total marital harmony in front of the rest of the townspeople. Everything, then, goes back to normal. However, this is hardly a reconciliation.8 The film has revealed the tensions lived in the core of the family and the ending keeps them unsettled. In this way, the film directs these tensions to point out that gender roles inside the family are ultimately destructive and that the Catholic, Francoist society that supports it is responsible for that suffering.

Drawing attention to class difference: Muerte de un ciclista and Los inocentes The films Muerte de un ciclista and Los inocentes primarily focus on class. Both start with a similar event, a car crash, and revolve around a love affair, but their main aim is to draw attention to class difference. One of Bardem’s most acclaimed films, Muerte de un ciclista, winner of the FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) prize at Cannes, deals with the extramarital love affairs of two members of the haute bourgeoisie, who belong to the victorious side of the Spanish Civil War. Juan (Alberto Closas) is an academic who obtained his post in the university thanks to his brother-­in-law’s privileged position. His

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lover, María José (Lucia Bosé), is a socialite married to a wealthy husband. In this case, the promise for a change entails a moral reward, rather than a better life. Juan’s goal is to start life anew with María José once they have expiated their guilt. He feels guilty for having killed a working-­class cyclist and escaped without offering any aid. Thus, Juan finally decides to turn María José and himself in to the police. Ronald Schwartz attributes this surrender to Juan’s guilt. For him, this guilt pertains to a wider guilt of the privileged toward the rest of society, with which Juan has come into terms during his visits to the slum where the cyclist’s family lives. Thus, according to Schwartz, “[H]is decision to surrender to the police suggests self-­expiation, a purgation of his own association with a society and class system he cannot ever hope to change” (1986, 19). His decision to surrender also comes through contact with a younger generation of university students who, despite mostly belonging to families supporting the regime, are now protesting and standing against the dictatorship. Juan’s moral decision is nonetheless frustrated in an ending that shows the voracious nature of the bourgeoisie, which defends its privileges at all costs. In order not to be arrested by the police, Maria José decides to kill Juan before leaving the country with her husband. However, to avoid censorship, Bardem had also to punish María José and have her die while going to meet her husband after running over Juan in a third, fatal car crash.9 The very end of the film is devoted to an anonymous cyclist (Manuel Alexandre) who was involved in the crash and decides to go away for help, in direct contrast to the couple after the accident at the beginning of the film, thus showing, in Rob Stone’s words, “the moral superiority of the working class” (2002, 49). Los inocentes should have been set in San Sebastián, but the project did not find a producer in Spain and was eventually shot in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Thus, instead of representing an old Basque family of industrialists, the film focused on the Argentinian haute bourgeoisie. In this way, the film did not ultimately deal with the political situation in Spain, but with a more abstract depiction of the destructive effects of capitalism. After his wife dies in a car accident, Bruno (Alfredo Alcón) finds out that she had a love affair with the wealthy industrialist, Félix Errazquin. Bruno, who is aware of class difference, realizes by the end of the film the power of this family of big proprietors and understands that he cannot fight against them. In the meantime, he falls in love with Félix Errazquin’s daughter, Elena (Paloma Valdés), the only one in the family who listens to him. Against the advice of her family, Elena starts a relationship with Bruno and is determined to leave everything behind in order

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to escape with him. However, Bruno understands that he cannot escape from the grips of the Errazquin family and accepts their compensation to forget Elena. When the couple are leaving for Córdoba, Bruno calls the Errazquins and two policemen appear in the train station to take Elena with them. This ending reveals an unromantic message: love does not triumph over class difference. In other words, with this ending Bardem stresses that there is class difference. He put it as follows: “to some extent, this film is against the idea of love seen . . . as a universal panacea. It is a film about social classes” (Cerón Gómez 1998, 189). A happy ending for the couple would mean that there is a possible reconciliation between the classes if both make some sacrifices. But clearly this is not the message that Bardem wants to convey. He rather wants to highlight that, as things stand in capitalist countries, there cannot be a happy ending, but the continuation of misery and inequality. Elsaesser argues that melodramas, because of their dualistic presentation of characters as good or evil, manage to convincingly present all the characters as victims, placing the critique on a social and existential level, rather than on individual psychology. For this reason, melodrama is “capable of reproducing more directly than other genres the patterns of domination and exploitation existing in a given society” (1987, 64). If films such as Cómicos, Calle Mayor, and Nunca pasa nada focused on women as victims of the conservative, phallocentric Spanish society, Muerte de un ciclista and Los inocentes are based on the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie. In Muerte de un ciclista, the bourgeois characters realize that the fact that nothing ever happens is the prerequisite for keeping their class in power. In Los inocentes, Bruno is aware of this fact and, as a symptom of weakness, ends up surrendering to the power of the bourgeoisie. The spectators, by contrast, are invited to negatively gain consciousness by bearing witness to Bruno’s betrayal of his class. They should thus realize, as Walter Benjamin warned, “[T]hat things are ‘status quo’ is the catastrophe” (1999, 473). The following words that Bardem read in the famous Salamanca Conversations (1955) reach their full significance here: “Undoubtedly a film maker cannot himself hope to change the world. Nonetheless, he must make a contribution. He must devote all his efforts toward a positive, useful cinema that will reveal the reality of things so that they will change” (Sadoul 1972, 15). In conclusion, these films are not about reconciliation, but about showing on screen how the tensions and contradictions of a society are ultimately experienced by individuals. Bardem conveys this message precisely through the use of a

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“global” genre such as melodrama, which is particularly suited to express the emotions and frustrations of everyday life. By adapting it to the Spanish social context and working through the conventions of the genre, Bardem makes a subtle, yet powerful, critique of Francoist Spain. Spectators should thus acknowledge through their own experience the immanent need for change and their self-­recognition as agents for that change.

Notes 1 Ana  It’s strange . . . my trunk is broken from so much travelling and yet I only know one theatre, one café and one guesthouse. Miguel  Good. That way you can believe that things are as you picture them. Look, here there is a square with arcades. Boys and girls stroll around from seven to nine and start their courtships by going around in circles. Ana  Yes. And over there is a park and a bandstand and the statue of a man in a frock coat. Miguel  Exactly, a man in a frock coat who funded the sewage system. On the right, there is the cathedral and, on the other side of the river, the seminary. (All translations are the author’s except otherwise noted.) 2 Isabel  I love romantic films . . . especially if they are American . . . because of the houses . . . and the kitchens they show. Have you seen those kitchens? They are white, clean and wonderful. What are you laughing at? Juan  I was just thinking of my friend, Federico. He would be arguing with you already, telling you that everything in American films is fake, it’s a lie . . . Isabel  Maybe. But it’s nice . . . even if it’s a lie. 3 We women can do nothing else, only wait. On street corners, in the square arcades, strolling along the Main Street, behind the windows. 4 I don’t think it’s that important. Really, you shouldn’t worry. Nothing ever happens here. As soon as that girl leaves, everything will be back to normal. Just like the tourists in summer. When they started to come, we also complained and then . . . nothing happens. 5 The real shame is the amount of wasted time, so much time that I have been nothing to you. Not a woman, nothing. 6 A man is a man. And it’s true, I’m a man full of desires . . . In that sense, I don’t think I can change. You should take me as I am, in the same way I accept you.

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7 I don’t know whether or not you have desires. What I know is that I do have them. And I have nothing, I’m alone. I’m a woman, do you understand? And I want to be one. Years have gone by without feeling that I’m a woman. Face it! 8 Compare this ending to the film La venganza/Vengeance (1958), a social western about the “national reconciliation” promoted by the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) in 1956. 9 Bardem ironically claims that he devised this ending with a friend to avoid censorship because the Catholic Church, which had the right of veto in the censorship of scripts, did not believe in divine justice, only in physical death for adultery (Bardem 2002, pp. 203–4).

References Allinson, M., “Calle Mayor/Main Street,” in The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, ed. A. Mira. London: Wallflower Press, 2005, pp. 79–87. Bardem, J.A., Y todavía sigue. Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2002. Benjamin, W., Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1999. Brooks, P., The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Byars, J., All That Hollywood Allows: Re-­reading Gender in 1950s Melodrama. London: Routledge, 1991. Cerón Gómez, J.F., El cine de Juan Antonio Bardem. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1998. Elsaesser, T., “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,” in Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. C. Gledhill. London: British Film Institute, 1987, pp. 43–69. Gómez, M.A., “Teatro, género e identidad en el cine español: Cómicos de Juan Antonio Bardem and Actrices de Ventura Pons,” Hispania, vol. 89, no. 1, 2006, pp. 202–11. Gubern, R. and D. Font, Un cine para el cadalso: 40 años de censura cinematográfica en España. Barcelona: Editorial Euros, 1975. Jorza, D.R., “A Neorealist Melodrama’s Problematic Contention with Hollywood: Calle Mayor (1956),” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, vol. 7, no. 2, 2011, pp. 117–32. Kinder, M., Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Marías, M., “El melodrama reprimido,” in Las generaciones del cine español, ed. J. Cobos. Madrid: España Nuevo Milenio, 2000, pp. 115–22. Martín-Márquez, S., Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

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Mulvey, L., Visual and other Pleasures. New York: Palgrave, 2009. Roberts, S., “In Search of a New Spanish Realism: Bardem’s Calle Mayor (1956),” in Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition, ed. P.W. Evans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 19–37. Rodowick, D.N., “Madness, Authority and Ideology: The Domestic Melodrama of the 1950s,” in Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. C. Gledhill. London: British Film Institute, 1997, pp. 268–80. Sadoul, G., Dictionary of Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Schwartz, R., Spanish Film Directors (1950–1985): 21 Profiles. Metuchen, NJ and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1986. Stone, R., Spanish Cinema. Harlow: Longman, 2002.

Part Two

Broadening Perspectives: Crossing Borders, Crossing Genres

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Carlos Saura’s Stress es tres, tres (1968): A New Spanish Cinema with French and American Influences? Arnaud Duprat de Montero

Following its very mixed critical reception and commercial failure upon release in November 1968, Carlos Saura’s Stress es tres, tres/Stress is Three, Three is today largely ignored. This constitutes a true injustice, both with regard to what the film could have contributed to Spanish cinema had it been differently received, but also regarding the coherence that it brings to the very heart of its director’s filmography. The freedom displayed by this work in terms of cinematic language arguably springs from the kinship that linked the so-­called Nuevo Cine Español (New Spanish Cinema)—of which Saura has been considered one of the most emblematic exponents since Los golfos/Hooligans (1959)—with other contemporary approaches to cinematography, in particular the Nouvelle Vague. However, the originality of Stress es tres, tres is to be found in its intertextual and generic richness, for, beyond the influence of other cinematographic movements, the film stands out for the linkages it establishes with Luis Buñuel’s films from his late French period. This process comes about by means of simple nods to the films in question as well as via spiritual preoccupations with the contemporary world and its future. Furthermore, these preoccupations, together with the car journey at the heart of the narrative of Saura’s plot, display characteristics of the essentially American genre of the road movie. Finally, the presence of the Anglo-American actress Geraldine Chaplin in the cast, still glowing from the international success of Doctor Zhivago (David Lean 1965), ultimately distances Saura’s film from the new Spanish cinema of the period. This young cinema, despite its stylistic freedom, which aligns it with other European trends, was more focused upon specifically national social problems than upon themes of international resonance like the sentimental problems of a bourgeois couple, one of the elements for which Stress es tres, tres was criticized upon release.

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But today such readings seem too narrow because we know that the film, following on from La caza/The Hunt (1966) and Peppermint frappé (1967), is rooted in the beginning of an artistic period during which Saura would unceasingly mull over contemporary Spanish society before turning, in the 1980s, toward Latin America and other historical periods. I therefore find it appropriate to evaluate here the meaning that springs from the intertextual and generic wealth of Stress es tres, tres, thus working in line with the work done first by Robin W. Fiddian and Peter W. Evans (1988) and later by Nadia Lie (2011). Stress es tres, tres may not adhere totally to the characteristics of a road movie but it should be noted that any distance Saura establishes between his film and the genre in question begs to be seen as a commentary on Spanish society—although, it might seem paradoxical that Saura relied on such an international generic framework for such purpose. Stress es tres, tres could be a good example of the point Celestino Deleyto makes as regards film genres: “The history of genres, while dependent on the internal revolution of forms and industrial practices, is also closely linked to social and cultural history” (2012, 228). On the other hand, its many international references would reveal, as put by Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, “the recognition of the decline of national sovereignty as a regulatory force in global coexistence” (2006, 1). Similarly, references to the French Nouvelle Vague and to Buñuel’s work fulfil the same purpose. These intertextual references, particularly those to Buñuel, whom Saura acknowledged as his sole cinematographic master,1 could also serve to ensure the authorial coherence of Stress es tres, tres, thereby contradicting the perception of the film as a minor work in which Saura, so steadfastly Spanish in his other works, might have got lost within a web of superficial international references. Regarding the issue of coherence in Carlos Saura’s work, his collaboration with Geraldine Chaplin also merits some consideration. Her presence was criticized at the time for distancing Saura from the realities of Spain, but the creative involvement of the actress, by turns appearing as a minor character or as a far more complex and mature female figure, might shed light on the full expression of the director’s poetics while not denaturing them in any way.

The American road movie influence As Nadia Lie observes, “although it does not appear in any studies of the road movie, Stress es tres, tres constitutes an important and original contribution to

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the genre . . . capitalizing on some of the basic elements which constitute the genre” (2011, 43). Firstly, although Paul Bartel notices a link between westerns and road movies, pointing out that “the decline of the western just happened to coincide with the rise of the road movie” (in Williams 1982, 7), the journey from civilization as represented by the city to the deserted coastline in search of economic profit (the objective is the construction of a tourist complex) undertaken by the three protagonists of Stress es tres, tres echoes the motivations of the heroes of the western. In addition, the region of Almería, which was used as the décor for many spaghetti westerns and that Saura filmed in a series of prolonged long shots, reinforces this link in visual terms. However, while Bartel, like Devin Orgeron (2008, 4), considers the road movie to have come of age at the end of the 1960s with Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn 1967) and particularly Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper 1969), others view It Happened One Night (Frank Capra 1934) or The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford 1940) as the genre’s first examples (Williams 1982, 7; Cohan and Rae Hark 1997, 1–14). In Orgeron’s view the road movies of the late 1960s, which he regards as a “cine-­ideological ‘franco-­american encounter,’ ” came about as a new generation of American cinema audiences—“a newly forming, highly educated, and deeply skeptical postwar youth market [that] clamored in the 1960s for new fare”—discovered new European cinematography—“existentially inflected, formally inventive European cinematic products” (2008, 4). For Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road (1957) was a decisive influence on these new road movies: “In redefining the road protagonist as marginal and unassimilable by mainstream culture, Kerouac’s novel significantly reconfigured the road as ‘personnel’ ” (1997, 7). This existential dimension to the idea of travel as well as the marginal nature of the protagonists would seem to constitute the essential difference between old and new road movies. Considering the time at which it was made, it makes sense to place Stress es tres, tres within this evolution. The journey which Antonio (Juan Luis Galiardo), Fernando (Fernando Cebrián), and his wife Teresa (Geraldine Chaplin) undertake provides an opportunity for existential reflections—most notably Antonio’s remarks on the novel he has read about gender confusion or when the characters talk about the end of the world—but, unlike the heroes of the new road movies, Saura’s protagonists do not put forward ways to save the world (the only solution offered by any of them being war), nor do they reject established society. Of course, the major difference with other road movies is that the

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protagonists of Stress es tres, tres are not outcasts; rather, they are representatives of the new technocratic bourgeoisie which had become wealthy over the previous ten years in Spain. The consequence of such disparities is a somewhat subversive vision of this particular social class, presented at the time by Franco’s regime as symbolic of modern Spain. Although conceived as one of the main foundations of society, here this new bourgeoisie is portrayed as fragile and ideologically confused. The social and economic system to which they belong and which they helped create thus merely alienates the characters and their class at large, making life insufferable and eventually tearing them apart—this is further emphasized by the voice over of the film’s opening shot, even though the critical aim of the comment is to a certain extent watered down by the use of international examples removed from the immediate Spanish reality. Furthermore, the way that the characters regress, first into adulthood via teenage high jinks at Fernando’s aunt’s house—it is particularly noticeable in Fernando’s wild conduct with the motorbike and in Teresa’s behavior in the bedroom—and later on into childhood once they get to the beach and join in a game of hopscotch and a crawling race, could be seen as an expression of the need for them to leave their social roles in order to aspire to a new authenticity. Yet, in spite of themselves, the characters display all the frustration and the primitive instincts which drive them and which remain unspoken until the end of the film. While murderous violence makes an appearance during the film’s dénouement, Fernando is only imagining the murder of Antonio, whom he suspects of having an affair with Teresa, so the situation of the three protagonists cannot be said to evolve. The meaning of this ending is to be found within the historical and social context of the film. Nadia Lie postulates that the ending “undermines the dream of modernity taking over Spanish society at the end of the Franco regime”  (2011, 41), while Peter W. Evans and Robin W. Fiddian consider that at the end of the film: Fernando acts out in his unconscious what Willem Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism refers to as the ‘identification of the individual in the masses with the Fuhrer’ (here, of course, Franco). Furthermore, in envisaging the destruction of Antonio in religious terms, imaged as the martyrdom of St Sebastian, he succeeds also in exposing the contradictory tendencies towards self-­assertion and self-­denial, sadism and renunciation, that reveal the corrupt, tyrannical origins of the ideology to which he and his contemporaries are expected to succumb. 1988, 81

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It may be added that, unlike La caza and Peppermint frappé, where the violence deployed at the end of the film does actually take place, Fernando’s fantasy reinforces the image of a social class with no real hope for change.2 This aspect may be seen as an echo of the new road movies in which the protagonists remain on the fringes of society,3 except that in Stress es tres, tres this alienating inertia affects the very foundations of Spanish society. However, this is only subversive compared to American movies. Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli stress this point: “whereas in American films the travelers tend to be outcasts and rebels looking for freedom or escape, in Europe it is rather the ‘ordinary citizen’ who is on the move, often for practical reasons (for work, immigration, commuting or holiday-­making)” (2006, 5). Without renouncing the generic influence of the American road movie, Stress es tres, tres therefore would seem to be more similar to the European films which from the 1950s onwards placed journeys at the very heart of their narrative structures, for example Smultronstället/Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman 1957), La strada (Federico Fellini 1954), Viaggio in Italia/Voyage to Italy (Roberto Rossellini 1954), Nóz W Wodzie/Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski 1962) or the films of Jean-Luc Godard.

Godard and Buñuel’s influences Regarding the generic foundations of Stress es tres, tres, several issues should be pointed out. First, the intertextual richness of Stress es tres, tres is coherent with the genre to which it belongs, namely the road movie. Second, of all the exponents of the Nouvelle Vague, it is Godard whom we perceive most conspicuously in Saura’s work of the 1960s, and, as Orgeron notes, Godard’s À bout de souffle/ Breathless (1960) is “a pivotal precursor to the American road movie” (2008, 5). Just like the Swiss director in À bout de souffle, Saura uses natural settings, post-­ synchronization and, most particularly, editing glitches and sequences without a definitive end point in his first full-­length feature film Los golfos. These techniques prompted Florence Colombani to say that Godard was throwing “the basic grammar of the cinema out of the window” (2004). Yet, taking into account when Los golfos was made, one cannot talk of Godard’s influence, because Saura only discovered À bout de souffle in Paris in 1960 when he was supervising the addition of subtitles to his film prior to its presentation in Cannes. One may however talk of a similar artistic approach.

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The same can be said of Stress es tres, tres and Godard’s Week End (1967). Although the car journey and the presence of a foreign actress may bring to mind À bout de souffle, Saura’s film has more in common with Week End, which was released in France on December 29, 1967, the filming of Stress es tres, tres having started on September 18, 1967.4 Both these works contain a bourgeois couple on the road—in Godard’s film there is also the question of the wife’s infidelity and the presence of a lover at the beginning—undertaking a journey whose goal is economic and murderous—in the case of Week End, to kill the wife’s mother in order to inherit her state. As the plot unfolds, the two protagonists meet many people and see bloody road accidents whose purpose is to denounce an apocalyptic consumerist society. However, while the tone of Week End is satirical, the social reflection contained in Stress es tres, tres is more subtle, due to the forbidding environment in which it was made. Furthermore, whereas the cinematic language of Week End—to use Colombani’s idea—provocatively accrues grammatical errors, Stress es tres, tres is cut and edited following classical cinematic syntax. Only Fernando and Antonio’s direct looks at the camera in the car recall those of Michel in À bout de souffle; this similarity creates a further link with the road movie genre, establishing an additional layer in the impenetrable nature of the characters. Orgeron, for example, remarks that “In spite of this nearness, however, Michel remains distant, incomplete and removed, and this proximate distance as we might term it, becomes a defining characteristic of the road movies that follow Godard’s film, films that similarly ask the viewer to ride along with characters that remain puzzlingly closed” (2008, 85). As a consequence, the different approaches adopted by the two directors ultimately make this similarity a somewhat distant one, and the less provocative approach of Saura in Stress es tres, tres may in fact be seen as having more in common with Buñuel’s contemporary productions. Buñuel’s French films of the time borrow frequently from Godard’s work, from the jump cuts and the man selling the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Elysées in Belle de Jour (1967) to the bold use of certain background noises in potentially controversial lines that Godard employed in Made in USA (1966) and 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle/2 or 3 Things I Know about Her (1967) and that can be found in Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie/The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). However, while Godard uses such techniques to denounce the censorship which still held sway in French cinema, Buñuel’s use of them contains an element of schoolboy humor, for the background noises are incorrectly placed and the audience can still understand the meaning.5

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The link between Godard and Buñuel takes shape in more complex fashion in Week End and La voie lactée/The Milky Way, released in France on March 15, 1969. In this film, the journey undertaken by the two vagrants, Pierre and Jean, from Paris to Santiago de Compostela also has an economic aim—to obtain money by taking advantage of the pilgrims’ charity. In addition, the characters meet many people on the road who, much like the couple in Godard’s film, aid them in their passage through places and time periods. Furthermore, in neither work does the use of absurd humor cancel out the likelihood of a forthcoming apocalypse. Whilst the fantastic element is absent from Saura’s work, his preoccupations with modern society, in particular the concern that the loss of spirituality and the impact of pollution might bring about the end of humanity, are identical to the ideas Buñuel puts forward in La voie lactée and in his following French films.6 The opening shot in Saura’s Stress es tres, tres shows a motorway jammed with cars, which echoes the credit sequence of Buñuel’s film, where similarly congested roads are seen. Not unlike La voie lactée, Stress es tres, tres is structured around several episodes involving various incidents and encounters. Finally, as in the case of La voie lactée, where the audience does not find out what happens at the end of the journey of the two students, certain plot lines of Stress es tres, tres, like the woman injured in the car accident or the episode involving Fernando’s nephew, have no conclusion.7 We have seen how from Peppermint frappé onwards (a film that is dedicated to Buñuel) Saura revels in references to the work of the man he often refers to as his master. The story of Julián in Peppermint frappé is inspired by several of Buñuel’s heroes: Francisco in Él/Torments (1953), Archibaldo in Ensayo de un crimen/The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) or Don Jaime in Viridiana (1961). In Stress es tres, tres, Fernando’s aunt’s house, which seems to belong more in the rural Catholic past than in the present of desarrollismo, recalls Don Jaime’s in the same way that Pablo, a spoilt child, evokes the first scene of Ensayo de un crimen or that his collection of insects brings to mind Eduardo’s in Abismos de pasión/Wuthering Heights (1953). But the links between Luis Buñuel and Carlos Saura are much deeper than these simple references. This was made clear in Peppermint frappé, where the female figure constructed out of the combination of Elena and Ana not only serves as a representation of Saura’s conception of femininity,8 but can also be seen as a metaphor for Buñuel’s artistic evolution precisely at the moment when he was preparing to definitively abandon Mexican cinema and return to Europe.

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The figure in question evokes at once the themes of unity, both characters are played by the same actress, and duality, they represent two heroines with two different voices, one Spanish and one foreign. Furthermore, this metaphor—a duality that prevents a complete unity—also reveals a vision of Buñuel’s creative situation as a tussle, as another incomplete attempt to harmoniously reconcile his essentially surrealist French philosophical learning with his Spanish spiritual upbringing. Insofar as the female figure of Peppermint frappé seems to be a forerunner of that of Cet obscur objet du désir/That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) in inverted form—in the case of Buñuel’s film, one woman is played by two different actresses, which can be seen as a reference to Peppermint frappé, where the same actress, Geraldine Chaplin, plays two different women (Elena/ Ana)—it may be considered that the links between the two directors’ filmographies are basically a correspondence between their agendas.9 This phenomenon is confirmed if we compare Stress es tres, tres and La voie lactée as both films were released within a span of only a few months and it is therefore impossible to talk of one influencing the other. Furthermore, the link between Saura and Buñuel is underscored by the characterization of Teresa, who displays the most artificial characteristics found in the female figures in Peppermint frappé. Like Elena, and as Ana wishes to be, Teresa is treated like a commodity. First blonde, then brunette, she remains enigmatic and elusive to Fernando’s attempts to understand and dominate her. Of course, this similarity also rests on the performance of Geraldine Chaplin, who establishes, if only by her mere presence, the authorial coherence of Saura’s filmography at the time.

Geraldine Chaplin and the Spanish/foreign female figure The coherence of Saura’s work takes shape as we retreat from the concept of an intertextual dialogue with Buñuel’s works and focus, instead, on his handling of female characters—an element which can be found in the female lead of Peppermint frappé, albeit only in embryonic form. Basing her performance on a concept of femininity, which, according to Geraldine Chaplin, was entirely Saura’s,10 the actress’s creative input in Stress es tres, tres confers the character of Teresa a personal and psychological depth, which, due to Chaplin’s nationality,11 differentiates her from conventional representations of women in Spanish cinema. According to Saura, the collaboration with Geraldine Chaplin

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constituted the film’s raison d’être.12 What is more, assessing Chaplin’s contribution, Saura said that it was very important because she provides me with a vision, an enrichment, certain remarks, indeed a range of things which I don’t know, or rather which I can guess but which I do not really know . . . it is more than the performance of an actress . . . it goes much further than that; it goes as far as debates about certain scenes, because on several occasions I think that she was right and I have adjusted or I can simply be the director and say we have to do this. Díaz and Fernández-Xesta 1971, 8

The creative tension which surfaces in this quote is quite apparent in Stress es tres, tres, and is linked to the psychological depth of the heroine. Although, Teresa, like Elena, is an objectified woman, unlike the latter, she refuses to submit to the status that Fernando wants her to conform to—it is revealing that, at one point, Teresa gazes into a mirror and imagines herself telling her husband: “I am not an object.” A number of linkages between Stress es tres, tres and Peppermint frappé are noteworthy. The man who seeks to dominate Teresa is her husband who, like Julián, incessantly observes her through a variety of lenses. In these subjective shots, the use of frames within frames—binoculars, but also half-­open doors or mirrors—create a mise en abyme of the process of cinematic framing, leads to a blurring of the lines between the director’s view and that of the characters and blurs the boundaries between the diegesis and the external world. The film thus creates, thanks to the relationship prompted by the heroine’s behavior, a mirror effect involving the partnership between the actress and the director. Furthermore, not only is Fernando frequently found adopting the role of a film director who observes his wife, placing her in a variety of situations, attempting to capture her truth without her knowing and trying to understand her—for instance when he leaves her alone on the road with Antonio—but Teresa also exhibits qualities associated with performers on several occasions. Despite the fact that her status as an objectified woman is similar to the idea of an actress whom a director dresses up and manipulates in the sound editing process—the actress’s voice was once more dubbed13—Teresa often avoids being controlled by her husband, and she does so by displaying childish behavior. Moreover, we may note that such playful moments have different resonances. Playing in a childish way, where playing may be taken to be a synonym for acting, reinforces the parallelism between actress and heroine. Other episodes like her parading in the bedroom having put on her

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sister-­in-law’s tunic, the removal of her wig or the scene in which she finds a stocking on the beach, which were not present in the screenplay and were improvised during filming,14 ultimately lead to Teresa adopting different personalities. As a result, the tensions between director and actress can be said to mirror those of the fictional couple. In this fashion, the collaboration with Geraldine Chaplin reinforces the theme of couples in Saura’s work, a theme which could only be seen in embryonic form in Peppermint frappé. This theme was further examined later in La madriguera/Honeycomb (1969), in which the narrative is pushed to its limits by having the characters’ imagination take priority over reality, by introducing several secondary narrators, and by jumbling places and time periods. These narrative resources would become one of the distinguishing features of Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens (1975), culminating in the recurrent topic of breakup in Elisa, vida mía/Elisa, My Life (1977), Los ojos vendados/Blindfolded Eyes (1978) and Mamá cumple cien años/Mama Turns One Hundred (1979).

Conclusion The intertextual and generic wealth of Stress es tres, tres does not distance Saura’s oeuvre from contemporaneous Spanish cinema or from the reality of Spain at the time. As was noted above, the codes of the road movie or those of the Nouvelle Vague are never strictly followed, and those very subversions of the genre constitute opportunities for the national context to reveal itself, either through implicit social commentary or through the appearance of submissive bourgeois characters where one would expect outcasts. It is in this way that Stress es tres, tres can be said to align itself with the New Spanish Cinema. In addition, the intertextual references and the generic basis do not distance the film from Saura’s poetics; on the contrary, it could be seen as a necessary step in the director’s artistic evolution as it pursues a dialogue with Buñuel’s filmography, most notably through a number of common links with Godard in general and Godard’s Week End in particular. It also furthers several thematic aspects from La caza—members of the bourgeoisie with murderous compulsions in the Spanish barren landscape—and, most particularly, from Peppermint frappé—problems within the couple, the woman as an object, the role of imagination—which would turn out to be decisive in his films of the 1970s. Finally, it is important to note that the coherence of this evolution is largely due

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to the collaboration with Geraldine Chaplin. If her mere presence underlines the influence of the road movie due, mainly, to the fact that she is a foreign actress playing in a European film—like Jean Seberg in À bout de souffle—the way that she grabs Saura’s conception of femininity, stamps her creativity on it, and takes authorial responsibility gives added importance to the themes of the couple and the role of imagination and helps lift Saura’s oeuvre to its future cinematic fulfillment.

Notes 1 In reply to a question in which Marcel Oms asked Saura about his cinematic masters (1981, 112), Saura replied: “I have but one; and that’s Buñuel.” All translations are the author’s except otherwise noted. 2 Saura’s own words corroborate this interpretation: “The idea of killing or not is not so important. I thought a great deal about this point and it would have been stupid if the characters shot each other. They would be incapable of looking death directly in the face; they would be prevented from doing so by civilisation, economic development and the fact that they are so up-­to-date” (Pla and Olivier 1969, 18; italics in original). 3 As Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark argue (1997, 4–5), “Although the road has always functioned in movies as an alternative space where isolation from the mainstream permits various transformative experiences, the majority of road films made before the 1960s more successfully imagined an ultimate reintegration of road travelers into the dominant culture.” 4 However, the blonde wig Teresa wears in Stress es tres, tres may be viewed as a nod to Brigitte Bardot’s brown wig in Le mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard 1963). Besides, this was a device frequently used in the films of the Nouvelle Vague, and most notably in Cléo de 5 à 7/Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda 1962). 5 For further reading on this point see Duprat 2007, 87–96. 6 In conversation with Enrique Brasó, Saura observed, “It is not exactly the influence of Buñuel, but I largely share . . . his ambiguous vision of the world . . . and a certain moral conception of existence” (1974, 163). 7 Regarding the plot of Stress es tres, tres, Saura stated: “I thought that after Peppermint I should make a more freestyle film, less rational and sophisticated” (Brasó 1969, 7). Buñuel also shared such preoccupations in his French films. As he started writing Le fantôme de la liberté/The Phantom of Liberty (1974), he declared: “I want to make a film that is completely free in terms of style” (Saint-Jean 1974, 5).

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8 Says Saura, “he [Julián] is fascinated with the woman-­object, which is a fascination that I have, and that we all have because of our education” (Bartholomew 1982, 4). 9 See also Duprat de Montero 2013 and Duprat 2014. 10 As Geraldine Chaplin observed, “Elena was a completely objectified woman, seen from a man’s viewpoint, and I found nothing to base my performance on” (Brasó 1969, 7). 11 Saura spoke on this subject: “She provided me with a vision of femininity which was far removed from that of the Spanish woman . . . this Anglo-Saxon woman was far more liberated and much more ready in every possible way: sexually . . .” (López Linares 2004). 12 Saura noted that “Stress es tres, tres was born out of [his] collaboration with Geraldine” (Brasó 1974, 198). 13 However, this did not spring from any desire on Saura’s part. Says Saura, “I dubbed her . . . because she was leaving for America . . . I have always defended to the death actors’ own voices” (Diario 16, February 26, 1989, 12). 14 These moments of burlesque are a reminder of Geraldine Chaplin’s heritage, reinforcing the perception of the actress in her. For Fiddian and Evans, for example, “There is a vivid freshness and innocence in Geraldine Chaplin’s eyes, and, about her lips, the faint trace of her father’s ‘Charlot’ expression, not only a touch of the great comedian’s qualities as eiron, the scourge of hypocrisy and pretentiousness, but also a nervous, almost spectral, skeletal grimace around the mouth, particularly as she becomes animated either in conversation or in laughter” (1988, 75–6).

References Bartholomew, G., The Films of Carlos Saura 1959–1980, PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 1982. Brasó, E., “Saura sin Geraldine, Saura con Geraldine,” Fotogramas, no. 1084, 1969, pp. 6–7. Brasó, E., Carlos Saura. Madrid: Taller Josefina Betancor, 1974. Cohan, S. and I. Rae Hark (eds), The Road Movie Book. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Colombani, F., “Le cinéaste de la modernité,” Le monde télévision, May 22, 2004. Deleyto, C., “Film Genres at the Crossroads: What Genres and Films Do to Each Other,” in Film Genre Reader 4, ed. B.K. Grant. Austin: Texas University Press, 2012, pp. 218–36. Díaz, V. and M.P. Fernández-Xesta, “Entrevista con Carlos Saura,” Cinestudio, no. 94, 1971, pp. 6–14.

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Duprat, A., Les derniers films de Luis Buñuel: l’aboutissement d’une pensée cinématographique, PhD thesis, Université Paris 8 and Universidad de Córdoba, 2007. Duprat, A., “Exploración del universo sauriano a través del realismo onírico buñueliano: ¿un diálogo imposible?” in Desmontando a Saura, ed. C. Rodríguez Fuentes. Barcelona: Luces de Gálibo, 2013, pp. 73–82. Duprat, A., “Les figures féminines de Peppermint frappé (Carlos Saura, 1967) et de Cet obscur objet du désir (Luis Buñuel, 1977) comme métaphore de création cinématographique,” in Corps et territoire, eds E. Tilly and A. Duprat. Rennes: PUR, 2014, pp. 47–59. Ezra, E. and T. Rowden, Transnational Cinema, The Film Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Fiddian, R.W. and P.W. Evans, Challenges to Authority: Fiction and Film in Contemporary Spain. London: Tamesis Books Limited, 1988. Lie, N., “Saura y el género ‘road movie’: análisis de Stress es tres, tres”, Carlos Saura, una trayectoria ejemplar, ed. R. Lefere. Madrid: Visor Libros, 2011, pp. 29–45. López Linares, J.L. (director), Retrato de Carlos Saura. Arte-Zebra producciones, 2004. Mazierska, E. and L. Rascaroli (eds), Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and The European Road Movie. London and New York: Wallflower, 2006. Oms, M., Carlos Saura. Paris: Edilig, 1981. Orgeron, D., Road Movies: From Muybridge and Méliès to Lynch and Kiarostami. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pla, J.M. and J. Olivier, “Entrevista con Carlos Saura,” Film ideal, no. 209, 1969, pp. 17–24. Saint-Jean, R., “Enchaîné à la liberté,” L’avant-­scène cinéma, Le fantôme de la liberté (scénario et découpage), no. 151, 1974, p. 5. Williams, M., Road Movies. New York, Proteus Books, 1982.

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Violence, Style and Politics: The Influence of the Giallo in Spanish Cinema of the 1970s Andy Willis

A number of critics, in particular Marsha Kinder in her 1993 book Blood Cinema, have commented upon the propensity toward violence that marked a number of Spanish films in the 1970s. Whilst much of this critical writing has concentrated on films that would broadly be categorized as “art cinema,” there is a range of other works for which an equation between the representation of violence and oppositional politics might also be put forward. This is perhaps most clear in the recent academic work that has reassessed works that fell into the boom in horror film production that took place in Spain during the 1970s. However, the use of violence in a number of other internationally popular genres, such as the western and the war film, might equally be considered as a vital part of their filmmakers’ visual and thematic strategies. This is perhaps most marked in a number of violent thrillers produced in Spain during the 1970s, many of which upon reflection might be argued to have taken their cinematic lead from the Italian giallo, a form that had found international recognition in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this chapter I will begin by considering what constitutes the giallo in terms of style and content before going on to ask whether or not we might speak fruitfully of gialli in the Spanish context. In addressing this question, I will categorize a number of films that might be considered as falling into the cycle, such as Eloy de la Iglesia’s El techo de cristal/The Glass Ceiling (1971) and Nadie oyó gritar/No One Heard the Scream (1973), Eugenio Martin’s La última señora Anderson/The Fourth Victim (1971), Carlos Aured’s Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota/The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974), and León Klimovsky’s Una libélula para cada muerto/A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1974), before going on to offer a political reading of some of the works that may be labeled as constituting a small but identifiable Spanish cycle of gialli. Finally, I will go on to suggest that whilst it is possible to argue that a number of these films can be considered as part of

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the internationalization of the giallo, to fully understand them one needs to place them into the particular context of Spanish culture and society in the early to mid-1970s; a culture and society driven by the archly conservative worldview of the Franco dictatorship.

International co-­productions in Spain Following the impact of Hollywood-­derived international filmmaking on the Spanish film industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s, typified by the output of Samuel Bronston’s various companies and the large scale productions of El Cid (Anthony Mann 1961), King of Kings (Nicholas Ray 1961), and 55 Days at Peking (Nicholas Ray 1963), co-­productions became somewhat commonplace. This was particularly true of productions involving companies based in Spain and Italy. As Marcia Landy puts it, writing primarily about Italian cinema, “the 1960s can be characterized as a moment when cinema broke loose of its national moorings, financially and culturally, participating in what is now described as globalization” (2000, 181). In this context, working closely with Italian filmmakers would suggest the possibility of influence would certainly exist. Spanish producers will undoubtedly have looked at the potential international markets for their Spanish versions of genre films and considered which types of films were returning a profit. This economic model would therefore indicate that the international success of the Italian gialli would point to the fact that profits could be available to commercial outfits ready to produce local work that fitted the cycle in some way. Crucially, these profits could come from both domestic and international markets leading producers to create various versions of their films to fit the needs of different territories. This often involved greater sexual and violent content leading to what have become known as “clothed” (suitable for the Spanish domestic market) and “unclothed” versions (for areas with more liberal censorship regimes such as France and Germany) being shot at the same time with directors adjusting key scenes to appeal to a variety of markets. A good example of these genre based co-­productions is the 1970 film Un hacha para la luna de miel/Il rosso segno della follia/A Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Directed by Italian Mario Bava and written by Spaniard Santiago Moncada, it was produced by Pan Latina Films (Spain), Películas Ibarra y Cía (Spain), Manuel Caño Sanciriaco (Spain), and Mercury Films (Italy). Reflecting the input of its co-­production partners, the film used a number of exterior locations in Italy and shot its interiors

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at the Estudios Balcázar in Barcelona. Un hacha para la luna de miel also sported an international cast headed by Canadian Stephen Forsyth, supported by Dagmar Lassander (who is Czech), Laura Betti (who is Italian), Jesús Puente (a Spaniard), Femi Benussi (from Italy), and Antonia Mas (another from Spain). Whilst Un hacha para la luna de miel has connections to the giallo cycle through its director, during this period other genre films would also use the potential of co-­production funding. For example, the links between Italy and Spain produced many westerns in the 1960s and 1970s. However, such co-­productions did not always involve Italy. The 1973 horror film La campana del infierno/La cloche de l’enfer/The Bell of Hell is a useful instance in this regard. Shot in Galicia and directed (Claudio Guerín Hill) and written (Santiago Moncada) by Spaniards, it was co-­produced by Hesperia Films SA (Spain) and Les Films de la Boétie (France) and, in the best tradition of such co-­productions, used an international cast, here headed by Frenchman Renaud Verley and Swede Viveca Lindfors. If co-­production deals brought Spanish producers and filmmakers into contact with international cycles and trends, some Spanish filmmakers themselves ventured abroad to work during this period. For many, the most notorious filmmaker in this regard is Jess Franco, who perhaps epitomizes the commercial “director for hire” of the era. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Franco would make work financed by French, German, and Spanish producers that would be released in various versions that contained different levels of sex and violence as needed. Again, Franco did shoot occasionally in Spain, such as on his version of Dracula (known variously as Count Dracula/El conde Drácula/Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht, 1970), which was a British (Towers of London), West German (Corona Filmproduktion), Italian (Filmar Compagnia Cinematografica), and Spanish (Fénix Cooperativa Cinematográfica) co-­production. In such instances where cast and crew members are drawn from all over Europe, the international flow of ideas and influences is clear and filmmakers would certainly be aware of the influence of styles such as the giallo. For producers, such knowledge would likely suggest potentially profitable elements for inclusion in their future work; elements that would be eminently marketable to audiences for popular cinema.

Defining the giallo The term giallo is drawn from the Italian series of crime and mystery novels and stories that had been published by Mondadori since the late 1920s. As

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Mikel J. Koven says, “[t]hese paperback novels, often translations of English-­ language novels by writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace, were presented in vibrant yellow colours” (2006, 2). Because of this, the term giallo would quickly become shorthand for the murder-­ mystery genre and would later encompass more hardboiled detective fiction originally produced in the USA. Koven suggests that whilst they proved popular, they were not automatically seen as suitable cinematic material until after the Second World War. This, he argues, was because the pre-­war fascist government saw them as potentially socially troublesome as they were “advocating the worst kinds of criminal behavior” (2006, 3). After the fall of the fascist government, the end of the war and the rebuilding of the Italian film industry, the potential of such popular crime stories as the source material for films was revisited and by the 1960s the giallo had moved onto cinema screens. As a film style, now heavily influenced by US pulp fiction, the giallo developed in Italy during the 1960s. A key work in establishing the cycle, Mario Bava’s La ragazza che sapeva troppo/The Evil Eye (1963) was also known as The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a title that through its similarity to The Man Who Knew Too Much suggests the influence of the work of Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock made two versions in both 1934 and 1956). This is perhaps not a surprise as he had built an international reputation as a master of cinematic mystery and suspense. Bava continued his relationship with the giallo with Sei donne per l’assassino/Blood and Black Lace (1964) which introduced some of the cycle’s most identifiable visual and thematic components. This film is noticeably more violent, containing stabbings, strangulation, and suffocation, with much of that violence targeted at young women, something that would mark out the giallo and gain it some notoriety in critical circles. Sei donne per l’assassino also contains a killer who wears a black overcoat, leather gloves, and a hat to disguise their identity. All of these became familiar elements of the giallo as they were repeated over the next decade until they became something of a cliché. The giallo cycle perhaps reached its zenith in the early 1970s when directors such as Dario Argento, with his L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo/ The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), brought the cycle to the consciousness of international film critics and audiences. Indeed, following the success of Argento’s film, the number of Italian giallo films in production increased, and with their strange titles and sequences of sex and violence, they began to form a significant part of the European popular cinema of the period. However, as is usually the case, these films did not spring from nowhere, and they had their

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antecedents in the wider European popular crime cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tim Bergfelder argues that the Italian giallo has strong links with other European crime films of the 1960s, and that they reflect the wider popularity of crime fiction across media from novels to film and television. He states that a number of popular German crime films of the period, or krimis, as they were known, especially those based on the work of Edgar Wallace, were co-­produced by German and Italian companies. This resulted in a desire to make crime films within Italian production companies as they realized their box-­office potential. Bergfelder contends that, The Italian film industry in the early 1960s has also reacted to the widespread popularity of crime novels at home by creating a new cinematic genre, the ‘giallo’, named after a crime-­novel series of the 1950s and 1960s with distinctive yellow covers. Like the Wallace films, the giallos directed by Mario Bava, Umberto Lenzi, or Massimo Dallamano had deliriously convoluted plots featuring masked killers and elaborately staged murders, and an excessive visual aesthetics, characterised by a highly mannered cinematographic style and a flamboyant mise-­en-scène. Unlike the Wallace films, their depiction of violence was quite graphic. They were also fairly sexually explicit. 2005, 160

Bergfelder, then, is clear in his acknowledgement of somewhat circular influences that impacted upon European popular cinema and how this underpinned the development of the giallo. His argument also suggests that with such origins it would be strange if the success of the cycle did not, continuing the international flow of influence, suggest to producers in countries such as Spain that giallo style crime films might prove successful. The understanding of the giallo as a form and its subsequent influence internationally has been hindered by academic writers and critics not always being precise in their usage of critical terminology with regard to the cycle. In his influential work on Italian cinema since the Second World War, Peter Bondanella usefully highlights that the popular cycles of Italian westerns, peplum, and horror during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s challenged the dominance of Hollywood in certain markets. He stated that, “in several instances, post-­war Italian cinema has managed to invade Hollywood’s most typical moneymaking product: the genre film” (2001, 418). However, Bondanella problematically collapses the giallo into his discussion of the Italian horror film overlooking their links to the European crime film that Bergfelder had identified as being so central. In doing so he is

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marginalizing some of the key crime orientated codes and conventions of the cycle and some of its most influential components. For example, he lists Dario Argento’s highly significant L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo, Il gatto a nove code/Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) and 4 mosche di velluto grigio/Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) simply as examples of Italian horror films. Whereas, taking into account Bergfelder’s point, one might usefully argue they are better understood as gialli. Indeed, when Bondanella goes on to list aspects of the horror films, he cites the killer in black leather gloves, the Hitchcockian tone, the focus on a detective story, and the graphic murder sequences, all things that are certainly part and parcel of the crime film codes and conventions utilized by various gialli from the 1960s and 1970s. This critical blind spot masks two very significant things. Firstly, the specificity of the giallo cycle of this period, particularly in terms of it developing its own codes and conventions, and secondly the influence of this style in particular, as opposed to Italian horror more generally, on internationally produced violent crime films in the early 1970s. One of the places where this influence was clearly felt was in the commercial, popular film industry in Spain.

The giallo in Spain The censorious nature of the Spanish state in the 1960s and 1970s meant that a range of films struggled to be released in the country or when they did appear did so in heavily cut versions. However, Troy Howarth, writing about Mario Bava, lists Spanish releases for some of his most influential gialli. He states that La ragazza che sapeva troppo was released by Alianza Cinematografica Española SL as La muchacha que sabía demasiado in a version that ran nine minutes shorter than the one screened in the UK. That Sei donne per l’assassino appeared circa 1965, a year after its Italian premiere, under the title Seis mujeres para el asesino, and distributed by Seleciónes Capitolino S. Huguet in a version that was the same length as the UK and US cuts. Whilst the 1969 Un hacha para la luna de miel, a Spanish co-­production, was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Iberica SA as Un hacha para la luna de miel in a version that ran eighty-­three minutes, the same as the US print and five minutes shorter than the one seen in the UK and Italy (Howarth 2002, 336–41). That these most influential films did find their way to Spanish screens clearly indicates that there was an awareness of international tastes amongst Spanish filmmakers. This knowledge of trends and cycles within popular cinema was likely further informed by the fact that

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European, particularly Italian, filmmakers were arriving in the country at the time to work on co-­production projects. Alongside this, the interest of international sales agents and distributors in Spanish popular cinema, fuelled by the success of a number of these co-­productions, created a desire within Spanish producers to make films that would appeal to the same audiences beyond Spain, something that in turn created a willingness to shoot multiple versions of films for various European and wider international markets. The worldwide success of gialli such as Bava and Argento’s, and the myriad of imitations that followed during the late 1960s and early 1970s, meant that producers in Spain soon invited filmmakers there to attempt their own take on that particular style or to include the most marketable elements of the cycle in their films. Therefore, for the international distribution of such Spanish films, they often used titles, for example Juan Bosch’s Los mil ojos del asesino/Killer with a Thousand Eyes and La muerte llama a las 10/The Killer Wore Gloves (both 1974) and León Klimovsky’s Una libélula para cada muerto, which closely echoed those of their Italian counterparts such as La morte ha fatto l’uovo/Death Laid an Egg (Giulio Questi 1968), Così dolce . . . così perversa/So Sweet . . . So Perverse (Umberto Lenzi 1969) or L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco/The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (Riccardo Freda 1971). The embracing of the giallo style and its narrative structures in Spain meant that a number of established directors and writers who had worked in other popular genres turned their attention to making these violent thrillers. For example, Eugenio Martin, a well-­established director who had made a number of moderately successful co-­production westerns in the 1960s and 1970s including El precio de un hombre/The Bounty Killer (1966), Réquiem para el gringo/Requiem for a Gringo (1968), and El hombre de Río Malo/Bad Man’s River (1971), directed La última señora Anderson/The Fourth Victim (also known as Death at the Deep End of the Swimming Pool), a Spanish-Italian co-­production which clearly evokes the codes and conventions of the giallo. As with a number of Spanish giallo influenced films, this one is set outside Spain, in this case the UK, allowing the censors to be less concerned about their representation of a criminal and violent society. It also gathers together an international cast designed to appeal to audiences beyond Spanish-­speaking territories—in this instance the American Carroll Baker and Briton Michael Craig alongside Spanish actor José Luis López Vázquez. The film opens with Arthur Anderson, played by Craig, being stopped by his housekeeper and told his third wife is dead in their swimming pool. Together, in a sequence that effectively uses close-­ups and no music, they dress

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her and report her death to the police. Her funeral is stopped by a detective, Dunphy, who says Anderson must stand trial for murder at the behest of the insurance company of all three of his wives. Whilst the trial itself reveals all three seemed to have died in accidents that lead to him being acquitted, the opening sequences also establish the suggestion that Anderson may indeed be a killer, as Dunphy suspects he is. Based around mistrust and insurance policies, La última señora Anderson centers on a mysterious woman who enters Anderson’s life and who goes missing as soon as they are married evoking the suspicions of all around. If the film does not contain the violence of some of the later giallo, the twists and turns of its mystery plot and the psychological nature of the story clearly show the cycle’s influence spreading beyond Italy. Paul Naschy, by the early 1970s a significant horror actor and writer in Spain, was a very commercially minded filmmaker who also clearly saw the international box-­office potential of giallo related titles. He was involved as a writer and actor in the Spanish-Italian co-­production Jack el destripador de Londres/7 Murders for Scotland Yard (José Luis Madrid 1971), a film whose numerical English title and its suggested series of seven murders seem designed to offer links to the giallo. The opening sequence confirms the influence of the Italian films. A subjective shot from what viewers soon will find out is the killer’s point-­of-view takes them around Soho’s strip clubs and sex cinemas before picking up a prostitute and following her to her flat, where she is killed. Only a hand wearing a black leather glove and the long thin blade used for the murder are seen. The inclusion of such familiar iconography makes the links to the giallo clear. Another Naschy vehicle, which he again wrote and acted in, Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota, also displayed aspects of the giallo. Antonio Lázaro-Reboll notes that the publicity for the film evokes the giallo and that at least one reviewer noticed the link, referring to its title as being “á la Italian,” whilst another saw it as “superior to the vast majority of overtly pretentious and sensationalist Italian gialli” (2012, 45). In this case both the promotional material and the critical response suggest that by 1974 Spanish audiences were familiar with the giallo.

Una libélula para cada muerto: violence and politics in Spanish cinema Klimovsky’s Una libélula para cada muerto marks one of the clearest attempts by Spanish filmmakers to create a film that fitted the giallo cycle. To generate the

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feel of the Italian originals, director Klimovsky and writer and lead actor, once again Paul Naschy, set the story in Italy and shot exterior locations in Milan, made clear by the immediate post-­credit sequence of shots which included the city’s famous cathedral and its high fashion district. Alongside the setting, from the outset the film also seems to consciously evoke the visual iconography of the giallo. For example, in a pre-­credit sequence there are a number of shots where we are half shown a mysterious character in a car that follows a young drug addict who has just scored a fix back to his home and murders him. The killer wears a dark overcoat and the eponymous leather gloves of the giallo cycle, and wields a large sword-­like blade which spatters the victim’s blood across a white wall. This opening, using as it does both an Italian setting and a particular visual style, clearly positions Una libélula para cada muerto in the giallo tradition. The attempts to create a Spanish film that could be marketed as a giallo continues as Naschy’s Inspector Paulo Scaporella, a tough no-­nonsense detective who needs to recover his reputation after a troublesome last investigation, is assigned a case where the killer leaves a dragonfly on their victims. The background to the on-­screen events include the modish worlds of fashion and art; the first clue found is a high-­end, hand crafted fashion button. The elaborate nature of the killings, again so typical of the giallo cycle, is present here in the weapons used by the killer. The sword of the pre-­credit sequence is followed by an umbrella that contains a blade in its tip which the killer uses on his second victim, a prostitute, and a hatchet which is used to dispatch a naked trio who have just taken part in a threesome, and later a stripper who also acts as a prostitute for the “sexually depraved.” In the film’s finale, the killer produces an elaborate dagger with which he tries to murder his potential victim. Violent acts are at the core of Una libélula para cada muerto. Marsha Kinder has influentially argued that during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Spanish cinema contained a number of graphic images of violence. She argues that, Within the Spanish context, the graphic depiction of violence is primarily associated with an anti-Francoist perspective . . . During the Francoist era, the depiction of violence was repressed, as was the depiction of sex, sacrilege, and politics; this repression helps explain why eroticized violence could be used so effectively by the anti-Francoist opposition to speak a political discourse, that is to expose the legacy of brutality and torture that lay behind the surface beauty of the Fascist and neo-Catholic aesthetics. 1993, 138

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However, whilst it is true that a certain strain of oppositional film in this period used the disruptive potential of violent images, this was also something that was adopted by more commercial filmmakers whose politics may not be as obvious but whose work can be read as reflecting the Francoist ideology of the time. The violence in a Spanish take on the giallo, such as Una libélula para cada muerto, can certainly be read in such a political manner. In this film, the victims of the killer represent various forms of socially unacceptable behavior, at least to those watching it from a politically conservative perspective. The first is a drug addict, the second a prostitute, the third a sexually liberated trio who use drugs and alcohol, the next a stripper, who is then followed by a sex-­trafficker, a perverted professor, an extravagantly camp fashion designer, a cheating husband, and finally an unfaithful wife, before the killer is stopped. The morally dubious link between the anti-­social activities of the victims suggests all are equally to be despised by upstanding members of society. Here, the general codes and conventions of the giallo become entwined with the ideological morality of the Spanish dictatorship, suggesting that anyone who does not acknowledge the sanctity of marriage is on a par with a disturbed professor with a penchant for necrophilia. Scaporella says that whatever we may think of the killers’ concrete actions, they are cleaning up the city, and whilst determined to catch the murderer, when his boss says that the slayer is not resting, he states that for him it is his future victims who should rest, that is “drug addicts, whores and some of the well-­known trash around town—all garbage.” Later, a character called Mohammed, who the police speculate may possibly be involved in drugs, prostitution, and the trafficking of women, has his heavies (sporting Nazi regalia) beat up Scaporella. Later Mohammed’s head is sent to the detective with a note from the dragonfly killer stating that he was a “depraved human being” and suggesting Scaporella will appreciate that he has been taken off the streets. Again, the killer and Scaporella’s view on the victim seem similar, drawing the worldview of the two closer together, and this is reflected in the fact that the detective threatens one of Mohammed’s heavies by saying he will chop him to pieces, echoing the most common murder style of the dragonfly killer. The reactionary worldview of the killer and the policeman are clearly presented as two sides of the same coin, and, taken to extremes, the only thing that stops Scaporella from cleaning up the city in the manner of the dragonfly killer is his position within the state apparatus. The collapsing of the attitude of the killer and the detective, who, we are told, has a previous reputation for being violent with suspects, marks Una libélula para cada muerto as a film that suggests that society does need cleaning up and we just need to agree on how best this can be done. Here, in the “heroic”

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character of Detective Scaporella, a more violent and repressive police force is not something rejected out of hand.

Conclusion The giallo remains an underexplored cycle of film production that emanated from Italy but which would prove influential across Europe and beyond. The popular film industry in Spain, with its long association with the Italian production companies through a plethora of co-­productions, was one such site of influence. A number of Spanish films produced in the early 1970s certainly display a range of the visual and thematic traits associated with the giallo cycle, suggesting an international circulation of the cycle’s codes and conventions. The Spanish version of these crime thrillers also shows that producers clearly desired to cash in on their potential domestic and international box-­office success of the giallo. However, although their violent imagery would undoubtedly have brought them to the attention of the Spanish censors of the period in a manner associated with more oppositional filmmaking, it is also possible to see these films as being representative of the more reactionary aspects of the Spanish popular cinema of this period. Ultimately, whilst such cycles of popular films tell us much about their contexts of production they also provide an insight into how they might operate ideologically in a period of harsh repression, their codes and conventions moulded to either support or occasionally challenge the status quo.

References Bergfelder, T., International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European Co-­productions in the 1960s. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005. Bondanella, P., Italian Cinema: From Neo-­realism to the Present, 3rd edn. New York: Continuum, 2001. Howarth, T., The Haunted World of Mario Bava. Godalming: FAB Press, 2002. Kinder, M., Blood Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Koven, M.J., La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2006. Landy, M., Italian Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lázaro-Reboll, A., Spanish Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

8

Spanish Gothic Cinema: The Hidden Continuities of a Hidden Genre Ann Davies

Spain does not apparently have a Gothic tradition. With the rise of Anglophone Gothic in the eighteenth century, Spain appeared to serve at best as part of a Southern European location for Anglophone encounters with the Gothic other, literature in which Catholic superstition and backward societies provided fertile ground for Gothic apparitions. Catherine Spooner, for instance, observes: “Sixteenth-­century Spain . . . boasted the Inquisition, witch-­hunts, bullfighting and horrific public executions. It was, of course, precisely the material of eighteenth-­century Gothic” (2006, 20). Spanish culture was able to create a Gothic context but unable to recognize it as such. If Spain did develop its own Gothic sensibilities these were considered sui generis, as with the work of Goya, or given their own label such as esperpento, which acknowledged the specificity of the Spanish context but also exposed it to the dangers of parochialism, cut off from wider literary and cultural trends. Rather, Gothic literature and cinema is strongly associated with an AngloAmerican tradition, and there has been little study of a specifically Spanish Gothic; indeed José B. Monleón (1990, 121) argues that the Spanish Gothic disappeared before the dawn of the twentieth century and thus before the advent of cinema. However, Abigail Lee Six contends that although the Gothic has been an unrecognized force, it is nonetheless to be found in nineteenth and twentieth-­ century literature, whose authors were well aware of the Gothic mode but who used it with caution as a result of concerns about perceived literary quality (2010, 14). This fits with the argument of commentators that Gothic is a mode rather than a genre (for example Botting 1996, 14). As a mode, Gothic can bypass Monleón’s categorization into historical periods. The Gothic in Spanish cinema has recently become more noticeable with the greater emphasis on convergence with Hollywood styles and storylines, and a move away from art-­house values

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that has been perceived from the mid-1990s onwards by many film scholars (see Allison 1997). One example of Gothic cinema is Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2001). Notwithstanding its Spanish specificity (see Acevedo-Muñoz 2008), the film operates in what might be thought of as a Hollywood mode, it is an English production with Anglophone actors, and it is ostensibly set in the Channel Islands. Other recent Gothic productions include NO-DO/The Haunting (Elio Quiroga 2009), Los ojos de Julia/Julia’s Eyes (Guillem Morales 2010), El orfanato/The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona 2007), and Hierro (Gabe Ibáñez 2009). The relative prominence of a Gothic sensibility in films such as these might disguise the fact that such a Gothic sensibility is not so new to Spanish film. Spanish horror cinema certainly drew on the Gothic before the 1990s (LázaroReboll 2012), but it was itself a marginalized genre that only comparatively recently has merited attention beyond its own industry and fan base. This chapter explores the use of the Gothic mode in films before the 1990s to argue that, as Lee Six suggests, the Gothic is more prevalent in Spanish culture than is commonly recognized. I discuss three films here that all draw on the Gothic mode. El espíritu de la colmena/Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice 1973) is generally regarded as an art-­house classic and an allegory of resistance to the Franco regime. Although critics have discussed the symbolism of the monster in terms of Francoism and patriarchy, there is less emphasis on the child Ana as Gothic heroine, on the ruins and landscapes, and on the sense of imprisonment and entrapment that are characteristic of the Gothic. La residencia/The House that Screamed (Narciso Ibáñez Serrador 1969) is more easily recognized as squarely within the horror genre, yet the more specific indications of the Gothic are also clearly present in the labyrinthine setting, the use of shadows and the sense of imprisonment once again. Antonio Lázaro-Reboll identifies the film as Gothic, including the period setting, the figure of the governess and the controlled performances so that La residencia “appears to be a modern Gothic thriller with a classical style of filmmaking” (2012, 111). While these two films arguably draw on a sense of exhausted patriarchal repression pervading the Franco dictatorship still in existence at the time they were made, the art-­house horror film Tras el cristal/In a Glass Cage (Agustí Villaronga 1987) carries the Gothic mode into the democratic era, and problematizes an overly simple equation of Gothic and Francoist repression, although it does not banish it altogether. These and other apparently disparate films are in fact linked together through a Gothic sensibility that threads through them, one that explicitly or

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tacitly acknowledges Anglo-American concepts of Gothic landscapes and Gothic monstrosity. This then continues through into the 1980s before emerging as full-­blown Gothic in the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century. In Spanish cinema before the 1990s we can detect not so much a coherent Gothic genre, but certainly a coherent Gothic mode, ambiguously Spanish, that prefigures the 1990s and beyond. Such a sensibility, despite the apparent inward absorption of the cinema of the time, also shows an outward continuity with the Anglo-American tradition that would in time facilitate the increasing convergence of the contemporary Spanish Gothic genre with a Hollywood style of filmmaking. The three films under consideration here all participate in this slippage over Spanishness to some degree. While El espíritu de la colmena takes place in rural Spain, its central characters engage with a Hollywood monster. La residencia and Tras el cristal, on the other hand, have no specific or identifiable locations beyond the generic Gothic house. This is in keeping with the tendency established in the Franco era that horror films were permissible provided they were not set in Spain (Aguilar 1999, 15). The susceptibility to outside places and influences enables these films to partake more readily of a transnational Gothic mode. There are many definitions of what makes a text Gothic, too many to consider here. Common characteristics include decayed or ruined buildings, often castles or ancestral homes; patriarchal or domineering figures who wield power over innocents, usually adolescent heroines; shadowy labyrinths and enclosed spaces; the past that haunts the present; and a dark secret that waits to be discovered. This is clearly not an exhaustive or definitive list, nor do all these characteristics have to pertain for a text to be Gothic, but they all apply to a greater or lesser extent to the three films under discussion. Scholars have observed the potential for the Gothic in El espíritu, but they frequently subordinate it to political resistance. Despite the fascination of the central character Ana (Ana Torrent) with Frankenstein’s monster after seeing James Whale’s film of 1931, the film is not normally thought of as pertaining to the horror genre. Many commentators find it hard to break from reading the film through the contextual framework of the Civil War and subsequent dictatorship. Yet even here a sense of the Gothic pertains through the notion of the past haunting the present. Jo Labanyi has pioneered the use of Derridean hauntology to consider how the ghosts of the Civil War haunt the Spanish texts of the present, and, in a key interpretation of El espíritu, she argues that Ana’s relationship with the monster allows her story to be historicized:

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The monster cannot be explained away as a projection of Ana’s fantasy: it is ‘really there’. Or rather, as befits a ghost of the past, it is and is not there, for it is a cinematic shadow: intangible but nonetheless embodied. The monster is thus a perfect illustration of the ontological (hauntological) status of history in the present . . . Ghosts are, precisely, the ‘might have beens’ of history that return as an actualizable, embodied alternative reality. Labanyi 2001

Chris Perriam suggests that the spirit of the title is in part the ghost of the Spanish Civil War, and goes on to argue: This implantation of fantasy and dread moves through the substance of the film in many complicated directions, but in one direct way—beyond the children’s realm—Frankenstein is used to comment on, if not Spain, at least society and its primary ethical struggles. 2008, 65

These frameworks are valuable, and I by no means dismiss them. My aim here is however to stress the Gothic aspects of the film in the ways in which it shares a Gothic mode with other films that do not explicitly share a concern to recuperate history, to see the Gothic in El espíritu as a mode in its own right rather than a cover for something else. Commentators do in fact implicitly or explicitly acknowledge the Gothic of El espíritu in passing without pausing to dwell on it, and precisely because their concerns are different from mine. So Susan Martín-Márquez, for instance, notes that the film “contains elements typical of the horror genre and the ‘paranoid woman’s film’: a large, slightly decrepit, and mysterious house, enigmatic characters, sudden violence and even a black cat, all filmed with expressionistic (Nosferatu-inspired) lighting and camera angles” (1999, 222). Perriam’s question, “could Ana’s way of viewing the monster stand for a common experience of fear and coping with fear, a common structure and attempted structuring of trauma?” (2008, 76), is highly redolent of the Gothic. Marsha Kinder refers explicitly to the Gothic: Absorbing both monster and victim as her own doubles, and the primal associations of the love and violence between them as the deep structure of her own fantasies about the father figures of her life, Ana reinscribes the Gothic myth (Frankenstein) to suit her own Spanish melodrama, just as it had earlier been reinscribed by Whale to suit the Hollywood horror genre. 1993, 128

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Robin Fiddian, however, explicitly positions El espíritu as part of a wider Gothic continuum, comparing the film with Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Fiddian claims To Kill a Mockingbird as a Gothic text with Boo Radley’s house at its Gothic core (2013, 25), notes that Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) serves a similar intertextual purpose in the novel to Frankenstein in Erice’s film (2013, 27), and cites Goya, the quintessential Spanish Gothic reference (2013, 32). He argues: we can regard The Spirit of the Beehive as a palimpsest comprising both a surface narrative and a ‘ghost’ story that lies just below that surface, transmitting a set of meanings and images that percolate upwards into the stories of Ana, Isabel and the other characters in Erice’s film. 2013, 31

Fiddian’s comparisons with American texts is notable, indicating how El espíritu transmits meanings similar to Gothic texts from another nation, texts that are themselves transnational, given that the original source texts are British. The subordination of a Gothic mode to the Spanish historical context is not inevitable, therefore. Instead, the past can haunt the present in other ways. Gothic landscape is one way in which this can occur. Haunting occurs at the level of space, of which, of all of the three films under consideration here, only the space in El espíritu can readily be identified as marked by the Spanish past, from the captioning at the beginning and the Falangist yoke and arrows on a building. In all three films the spaces are brooding and sinister, and have at their center old, labyrinthine or abandoned buildings that often suggest imprisonment, imposed by the old and corrupt power. These buildings are themselves monstrous, and suggest the past haunting the present. In El espíritu there is a clear “creep” factor that constantly lays a Gothic trace through sound and mise-­en-scène: the family house, looming and shadowy inside as the father first enters it, the sounds of creaking as the children lie in bed at night, the skull in the painting in the father’s study. Similarly, the ruined barn with its dark doorways that Ana and her sister Isabel (Isabel Tellería) explore is a Gothic space, the eerie wind whipping round it the only sound to break the silence that envelopes it; the fugitive that hides within it appears and disappears mysteriously, while the footprint found by Ana is another sign that adds to the mystery. As Ana goes in search of the monster, she delves deeper into spaces that lose any specificity and eventually chime with those of Whale’s Frankenstein, the foreign film that has so bewitched her. This culminates in the lakeside scene where she

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meets the monster, a reminder of the earlier scene from Frankenstein that impressed her so strongly. El espíritu shares this mode of setting with other films that appear more overtly Gothic. Lázaro-Reboll claims the school, the setting of La residencia, as in the Gothic mode: In true Gothic tradition, the school is a repressive institution; the sense of confinement and entrapment is explicitly conveyed in the credit sequence and sustained by a claustrophobic ambience and a number of motifs throughout the narrative (the isolation chamber, shadows of bars, secret rooms). Confinement and entrapment are conveyed as soon as the carriage bringing the new boarder enters the school grounds and slowly makes its way to the building deep in the forest. 2012, 112

The iconography of the scene in which Teresa (Cristina Galbó) tries to escape and is killed is also noticeably Gothic, with rain and thunder, dark passages, sudden sounds, and the ominous ticking of the clock. The labyrinth of the school provides the hiding places for the film’s true monster, Luis (John Moulder Brown), the son of the headmistress Madame Fourneau (Lili Palmer). He uses these spaces to spy on the schoolgirls in the greenhouse and in the showers, and takes over the attic to assemble his macabre bride from the body parts of dead students. The spaces of Tras el cristal are Gothic as well: dungeon or basement spaces gloomily lit, the labyrinthine houses with towers, and the surrounding countryside that entraps and appears to lead nowhere. Klaus (Günter Meisner), in an iron lung, lives with his wife Griselda (Marisa Paredes) and daughter Rena (Gisela Echevarría) in an unspecified foreign country that Griselda feels is inferior to Germany, the country they come from. Griselda’s opinions suggest a rerun of eighteenth-­century Gothic novels where Spain (and also Italy) functioned as the exotic but primitive land of Gothic for Northern Europeans. A young man called Angelo (David Sust) arrives at the house, and duly takes control of it. He murders Griselda, tortures Klaus, and draws Rena into an unhealthy and unstable relationship of dominance and submission. It gradually emerges that Angelo as a child was a concentration camp inmate who suffered from the pedophilic attentions of Klaus, who experimented on and tortured young boys at the camp. The adult Angelo slowly becomes a carbon copy of the younger Klaus by dressing in Klaus’s old greatcoat (that features in a photo of Klaus and Angelo when the latter was a boy). In the same way he refigures the

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Gothic house into a semblance of the camp, rigging up the house in chicken wire. There is already a close resemblance between the house and the camp that is heightened by Angelo’s arrival. The passageways and staircases along which he stalks Griselda to kill her are the same ones she walks down to switch off the mains electricity that runs Klaus’s iron lung (before changing her mind). Griselda’s murderous thoughts toward her husband, noted in several key scenes, and symbolized by the blood-­red dressing gown in which she walks through the house at night, suggest that a sense of violence already permeates the house even before Angelo arrives, a violence that dates back to Klaus’s time at the camp. The chicken-­wire transformation of the house simply makes explicit the deathly secret previously hidden away. While the spaces of El espíritu can be interpreted as specifically Spanish, not only through the identifying signs but also through the tradition of the meseta, nonetheless they also blur into the more generic iconography of Gothic landscape. The marks of Spanish identification at the beginning, such as the yoke and arrows symbols of the Spanish Falange on a wall in the establishing shots of the village, become a very weak peg on which to hang any insistence that Spanish specificities must trump the continuity Erice’s film has with other Gothic productions. The landscapes of El espíritu partake of the same Gothic mode that ensures the landscapes of La residencia and Tras el cristal are also haunted by their pasts. The spaces of all these films eventually lose all specificity and all meaning, except those of the ghosts of the past that haunt the characters. They also lose or lack identifying markers that specify a fixed location, suggesting that time—the return of the past in the present—means more in these films. Within the Gothic mode, these spaces of the past are often excavated by Gothic heroines, who resist the corrupt order that gives rise to the Gothic in the first place. Traditional Gothic heroines are young, but normally they have reached adolescence or are at least of marriageable age. They share, however, an innocence, not only of the darker realities lurking under the surface of their worlds, but of the coded silences that mask these realities. They take things at face value, and accept all things unquestioningly as real, because they have not yet been inducted into a society where everyone is aware that some things are simply pretence. And they are inquisitive; they may be ignorant, but they know that there is something that people are not telling them, and they are keen to find out what it is. These characteristics suggest Ana herself as a Gothic heroine despite her age, trapped in a sinister and labyrinthine house dominated by a patriarchal figure, her father, who cannot entirely convince us that he has her

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best interests at heart. Ana is willing to countenance potentially supernatural explanations, believing firmly in the idea of Frankenstein’s monster as a spirit rather than dismissing it as make-­believe or cinematic fakery as her sister Isabel does. Ana does not therefore simply function as a critical eye on the suffocations of the dictatorship (though she undoubtedly does do that, and to great effect). Ana partakes of a wider Gothic mode in which the heroine challenges the status quo, and indeed she draws on a figure from outside Spanish culture to do so. As such she is a Gothic heroine on a transnational as well as a national level. If the Gothic heroine of El espíritu was designed to look inward, she nonetheless has much in common with the heroine of a film produced with an eye to the international market (Lázaro-Reboll 2012, 110). In La residencia, the Gothic heroine, Teresa, shows a sensibility to the creepy atmosphere that, like Ana, marks her out from her peers, although this will do nothing to save her from the very real threat that lies within the school. As she arrives and enters the school, Teresa is aware of the door that slams shut behind her as they walk through the school, and the hand opening the window, even though the headmistress Madame Fourneau and Teresa’s “guardian” (probably her father) remain oblivious. But as they go through the greenhouse, all are aware of a flowerpot that suddenly crashes to the ground—from her expression of annoyance, it is clear that the headmistress knows the meaning behind the noise. From the very beginning, then, Teresa is presented as alert to the Gothic, ignorant but curious. Like Ana, Teresa is motivated to discover what is going on through a desire to escape this poisonous atmosphere. Ibáñez Serrador surprises us by ensuring that she does not survive, unlike most Gothic heroines. He does, however, emphasize her distinctiveness from the other girls through her sexual innocence. She is excluded from the montage of frustrated faces of the students imagining the sexual encounter of one of the girls with the young woodman (described below); and the assignation she arranges with Luis is not in pursuit of romance. The sexual undercurrents cause her suffering but do not corrupt her. It is her curiosity to find explanations and solve mysteries that endangers her. What both these heroines aim to discover is what lies hidden and what is never explicitly referred to. The spirit that haunts both these films—shared, as we shall shortly see, with Tras el cristal—is that of old and corrupt power, which might be Francoist or patriarchal but which at all events is one that produces monsters. Lázaro-Reboll suggests that Madame Fourneau of La residencia can be read as an authority figure in the Francoist mold (2012, 112). However, he also cites Hammer, American International Pictures (AIP), and Hitchcock’s Psycho

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(1960) as influences, pointing beyond local specificities (2012, 111). Madame Fourneau is herself presented as monstrous, presiding over a regime that is supposed to tame young women of dangerous immoral backgrounds but that in fact encourages sadism and sexual torture; but the monster that accounts for the disappearance of young women is Luis, who dismembers and reconstructs women to create the perfect mate. Luis himself, however, is the secret of Madame Fourneau’s past sexuality that she has repressed. It is a state of affairs also underscored by what is not spoken, even though headmistress and students are all aware of the repressed sexuality. This resembles the state of silence in El espíritu, in which the father, whose wife shrinks from him, and whose children fall silent when they hear his footsteps overhead, communicates with his daughters only to tell them not to touch things and to keep secrets from their mother (on the occasion of an outing to pick mushrooms). Similarly, sexuality as a rebellious force is hinted at in Ana’s trembling confrontation with, and surrender to, the monster by the lake at night. If the schoolgirls of La residencia are for the most part unaware of dangerous forces within their environment that threaten their lives, they are nonetheless well tuned to the sexual undercurrents that run through their society. They take turns to have sexual assignations with the young woodman, and, as the assignation takes place, the other girls appear to imagine to the ostensibly non-­diegetic cries of pleasure of their colleague. The film also hints broadly at lesbianism, through the sadistic desire of Fourneau’s lieutenant Irene (Mary Maude). Irene’s room is decorated richly, suggesting decadence, and it includes a picture of a naked woman. It is in this room that Irene and her sidekicks torture and humiliate Teresa. Luis is an integral but hidden part of the sexual undertone of the school community, voyeuristically spying on the pupils as they shower; his sadistic side is also implied from the casual manner in which he crushes an ant in his book. Although the corruption of society through suppressed and sadistic sexuality is both more overt and more strongly linked to authoritarian control than in Erice’s film, both films frame this in Gothic terms and inspire a Gothic response. In this way, then, both films are drawing on a Gothic idea that transcends national boundaries, rendering secrecy and corrupt power as matters of sexuality as much as history. The old, corrupt system that haunts the present with its unnamed secret carries across into the democratic era with Tras el cristal, but the roots of the trauma lie in a less than democratic past, in Klaus’s torture of imprisoned adolescents under the Nazis. Eventually Angelo repeats Klaus’s actions, torturing and killing young boys in a way that is highly distressing. At the end of the film

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Angelo removes Klaus from the iron lung, leaving him to die, and takes his former predator’s place in the machine, totally assuming his sinister mentor’s persona. The Gothic mode is evident in the existence of Angelo as a revenant from a past that haunts and adversely affects the present, while Klaus himself is a patriarchal figure that embodies the decay of the patriarchal system, rigid and parasitical, being kept artificially alive. Rena is a secondary though important character with echoes of the Gothic heroine in her gravitation toward Angelo while simultaneously fearing him. After running away, toward the end of the film Rena returns, ties her hair back and dresses in the clothes of one of the murdered boys. Then she approaches the iron lung to find Angelo inside, having killed and replaced Klaus. She climbs on to the machine and begins to remove her shirt. At this point the frame freezes, the camera draws back, and the image appears to be captured in a snow bauble. Rena is assuming the role that Angelo himself had occupied, suggesting that Klaus initiated a cycle of violence from which there is apparently no escape. Rena’s ambivalent and simultaneous fear and attraction toward the monstrous is akin to the attitudes of Ana and Teresa, and of Gothic heroines more generally. Although Rena’s role is less pivotal than that of Teresa or Ana, all three Gothic heroines show themselves to be trapped in the past, with only Ana continuing to resist at the end of El espíritu. There are different fates for the Gothic heroine: to resist the oppression of the past, to be sacrificed to it or to surrender to it. What the heroines have in common, however, is the sense of the past as an oppressive weight. I would argue that, while the specificities of that past are far from irrelevant, the sheer fact of the oppression of the past chimes more closely with the Gothic mode than the particular histories concerned. The use of the Gothic mode draws on national histories but is not tied down to them. Instead, the Gothic heroines confront not so much national history but the traumas and repressions imposed by those who have power over them, those who in turn derive their power from a flawed social ethos that both encourages and denies sexuality, covering the contradiction over with silence. National history may well affect how this is played out, but the universal decadence of an older generation is the core Gothic motif that unites these films. The dead hand of the past and the sins of an older generation map well on to the decrepit dictator and his tyrannical regime, both of which were in the process of expiring in the period during which these films were made. Tras el cristal was made in the democratic era, but it does not disguise the fact that it is looking back at a past with points of similarity to the Franco regime, and that the ailing figure of Klaus, kept artificially alive, is highly reminiscent of Franco himself in

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his last months. Yet, while readings alluding to Spain’s past resonate strongly, it is also possible to read these films generically, and trace the Gothic mode threading through despite their apparent differences. Although the influence of cinema styles more readily associated with Hollywood has been claimed for the cinema of the mid-1990s and beyond, the three films analysed here indicate the possibility of a Spanish Gothic that is not only a trope for figuring traumas in Spanish history but also part of a wider Gothic stream that has received little scholarly recognition hitherto. La residencia, after all, was a commercial success aimed at the international market while Tras el cristal evokes traumas beyond the Spanish border. For her part, Ana dreams of meeting a Hollywood monster, the monster that her sister insists is make-­believe. Like other Gothic heroines, Ana knows there is something else out there, something that is generally unrecognized but that is there for those who wish to see.

References Acevedo-Muñoz, E., “Horror of Allegory: The Others and its Contexts,” in Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre, eds J. Beck and V. Rodríguez Ortega. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008, pp. 202–18. Aguilar, C., “Fantasía española: negra sangre caliente,” in Cine fantástico y de terror español 1900–1983, ed. C. Aguilar. San Sebastián: Donostia Kultura, 1999, pp. 11–47. Allinson, M., “Not Matadors, Not Natural Born Killers: Violence in Three Films by Young Spanish Directors,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 74, no. 3, 1997, pp. 315–30. Botting, F., Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996. Fiddian, R., “El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973): To Kill a Mockingbird as neglected intertext,” in Spanish Cinema 1973–2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory, eds M.M. Delgado and R. Fiddian. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, pp. 21–34. Kinder, M., Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Labanyi, J., “Coming to Terms with the Ghosts of the Past: History and Spectrality in Contemporary Spanish Culture,” Arachne@Rutgers, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001. Available from: [June 11, 2013]. Lázaro-Reboll, A., Spanish Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Lee Six, A., Gothic Terrors: Incarceration, Duplication, and Bloodlust in Spanish Narrative. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2010. Martín-Márquez, S., Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

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Monleón, J.B., A Specter is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Perriam, C., “El espíritu de la colmena: Memory, Nostalgia, Trauma,” in Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema, eds J.R. Resina and A. Lema-Hincapié. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008, pp. 61–81. Spooner, C., Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion, 2006.

9

Reframing Empire: Mediating Encounters and Resistance in Spanish Transatlantic Cinema since 1992 Noelia V. Saenz

In 1992, the Spanish film industry co-­produced a number of films about the discovery and conquest of the Americas, such as 1492: Conquest of Paradise (Ridley Scott 1992) and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (John Glen 1992). These productions crossed the Hollywood historical epic with the Spanish heritage film, creating a transnational product that transcended its local specificity. Like the British heritage film of the 1980s and 1990s, whose versions of history are mediated through the values of a particular political and cultural era, its Spanish counterpart had historically promoted certain nationalist myths that aligned with the conservative ideology of the Francoist government.1 For example, the film, Alba de América/Dawn of America (Juan de Orduña 1951), highlighted Spain’s imperial glory at a moment when the country was still recovering from the effects of the Spanish Civil War. As a historical epic about discovery and conquest, Alba de América envisioned a transatlantic history that bridged Spain with the Americas, positioning itself as the colonial motherland and therefore perpetuating the historical memory of the conquerors, not the conquered. This history and its subsequent appropriation by the Franco regime tainted the genre’s reception amongst the more liberal sectors of Spanish society as well as by filmmakers who sought to create a national cinema that reflected contemporary social issues in Spain rather than what scholars such as Renato Rosaldo (1989) and bell hooks (1992) have discussed as “imperialist nostalgia.” Films produced for the quincentennial celebrations of the discovery of the Americas in 1992 revised their narratives in order to rectify this one-­sided perspective by offering more complex depictions of the conquerors and indigenous, but maintained the idea of the discovery as inevitable and ultimately

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beneficial to progress and thus perpetuated the imperialist nostalgia of earlier Spanish heritage films. As a result, the films were subject to much criticism in the Americas on how a shared colonial history is to be remembered. This critical reception questioned the genre’s ability to transcend its national specificity within Spanish cinema. This essay compares the transnational discovery-­ conquest genre with a recent retelling of the Columbus story, También la lluvia/Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín 2010). A co-­production between Spain, Mexico and France, the film reworks the genre by overtly linking the history of colonization with contemporary neoimperial struggles in Latin America. Most crucially, the film’s reflexive structure raises questions about the role of film and film industries as both vehicles for exploitation and potential sites of resistance. In doing so, También la lluvia destabilizes the oppositional binaries between the colonizer and the colonized within the historical epic and revises the genre once again in order to present a shared history whose legacy informs contemporary global struggles and subsequently attracts global audiences.

The historical epic and the 1992 Quincentenary Since its heyday, the Hollywood historical epic has been heavily criticized for its limited and/or inaccurate representation of history, instead relying on an excess of spectacle to showcase historical figures overcoming obstacles of profound historical significance (Sobchack 2012). As a response to the genre’s critical denigration, Sobchack instead shifts attention to the genre’s “ ‘subjectively authentic’ representation of the production of History” (2012, 349, italics in original). Rather than focus on the historical inaccuracies of the genre, Sobchak highlights the manner in which the genre “engages human beings of a certain culture at a certain time with the temporally reflexive and transcendent notion that is History” (2012, 334). This cultural and temporal particularity of how the genre produces history is similarly pertinent to the critical study of the Spanish historical epic. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Spanish historical epic had a strong link to Francoist historiography, which sought to justify the Franco regime through the inculcation of certain nationalist myths (Mira 2004, 62). By highlighting the interrelationship between nationalist myths and Francoist ideology during this era, Mira emphasizes how the literal production of history in Spain had a significant impact on the historical epic genre’s aesthetic and thematic characteristics.

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Within Spanish national cinema, the historical epic falls within the broader generic tradition of the heritage film, which has largely been discussed by British cinema scholars. According to Belén Vidal, the heritage film is defined through its use of “period settings . . ., recurrent locations . . ., slow-­paced narratives that enhance character and the authenticity of period detail, and an opulent if static mise-­en-scène exhibiting elaborate period costumes, artefacts, properties and heritage sites” (2012, 8). Although the British heritage film engages with elements of national history and culture, its depictions reflect the transnational production and reception of British cinema by global audiences more so than an “authentic” English past (Vidal 2012; Higson 2012).2 While much has been written about the heritage film within British national cinema, its influence as a global genre as well as its local permutation within Spanish cinema calls for a critical evaluation. Like the British heritage film, the production of historical epics in Spain in 1992 reflected a desire to attract global audiences through the promotion of a certain nostalgic image of the country—that of its imperial past. Similar to Britain, the genre also reflects the negotiation of cultural shifts occurring within each nation during the 1980s and 1990s. For Spain, the early 1980s are informed by the transition to a democracy. As a result of the Transition, the 1980s and early 1990s in Spain are characterized by individual freedoms that ruptured from the country’s conservative Francoist past. As a type of heritage film, the historical epic in Spain is strongly linked to national identity through its emphasis on national history. However, the discovery and conquest film similarly embodies a transnational history that is shared with the Americas. These historical epics co-­produced to celebrate the Quincentenary during the 1980s and 1990s sought to unify the various national identities of the Americas with Spain by revisiting the discovery and conquest to emphasize a shared past. Although this is a shared history, the manner in which it is remembered and represented on-screen remains contested based on its point of enunciation. The discovery and conquest films present a one-­sided view of history through their depiction of determined conquistadors who discovered the Americas, helped convert millions to Christianity under the Spanish Crown and spurred Spain’s global and financial prominence for centuries. The depiction of these colonialist exploits as ultimately beneficial to Spain proved controversial when viewed from the perspective of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, who were killed, enslaved, and forced to acculturate to the language, religion and customs of the conquistadors. This tension surrounding the historical legacy of the discovery resulted in heated debate over the 1992 films focusing on

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Christopher Columbus. This controversy highlighted the genre’s limited ability to travel outside of Spain since its narratives remained rooted in a colonialist and nationalist perception of history. Since the upcoming Quincentenary would draw attention to Spain’s historical significance, Spanish officials and private enterprise took the opportunity to present the country as a global power predicated on the international promotion of Spanish culture. As cultural patrimony, Spanish cinema has strong ties to the politics of the nation. The production of historical epic films to commemorate 1492 is thus fertile ground to understand how the nation negotiated its new national identity with its colonial past, as well as its role in establishing a transnational Spanish cinema in the contemporary era. While the commemoration of the Quincentenary was a moment of national and transnational collaboration, Spain’s celebration of 1992 was seen as little more than imperialist nostalgia, which recalled Franco’s appropriation of history. “Imperialist nostalgia” as discussed by bell hooks “takes the form of reenacting and reritualizing in different ways the imperialist, colonizing journey as narrative fantasy of power and desire, of seduction by the Other” (1992, 369). In her analysis of “imperialist nostalgia” in mass culture, hooks explores how the desire for contact with and appropriation of the Other de-­emphasizes the unequal exchanges of power between colonizer and colonized in order to “assuage the guilt of the past, even tak[ing] the form of a defiant gesture where one denies accountability and historical connection” (1992, 369). Within both 1992 historical epics, “imperialist nostalgia” promotes the discovery and conquest as a spiritual mission that resulted in the conversion of millions of inhabitants in the Americas to Catholicism. Since Catholicism was viewed as central to Spanish national identity under the reign of the Catholic monarchs and later Franco, the discovery and conquest resulted in a transatlantic Hispanic community that expanded the nation beyond its geographical borders. Ironically, this conflation of Spain’s contemporary success and previous imperial exploits continued a discursive tradition of hispanismo that carried over from the Franco regime as noted by scholars such as Escudero (1996), Gabilondo (2003), and Trigo (2009). The use of this rhetoric in the post-Franco period illustrates how the newly democratic country continued to view its relationship with Latin America in hierarchical terms, albeit masked under the guise of developmental policies which aimed to assist Latin America in becoming more like Spain. As the driving force behind the commemoration of 1992, Spain emphasized its role as a key mediator between Europe and the Americas, exemplified in the State support of the numerous films retelling the “discovery” of the Americas.

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In spite of the illusion of community and dialogue promoted within the Quincentenary’s official rewriting of the “discovery” of the Americas as an “encounter” between two worlds, this celebration was largely told from the perspective of the discoverer, or conquistador, in films such as Carlos Saura’s 1988 film, El Dorado; Cabeza de Vaca (1991) directed by Nicolás Echevarría; Ridley Scott’s film, 1492: Conquest of Paradise; and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, directed by John Glen in 1992. All of these films were the result of international co-­productions with varying degrees of Spanish financial involvement and all but 1492 were at least partially filmed in Latin America. While El Dorado and Cabeza de Vaca focused on failed Spanish expeditions in the Americas, the framing of the narrative from the perspective of the colonizer minimized the remaining films’ ability to present alternative views and voices even as the genre tried to offer a more complex depiction of Columbus and the indigenous. According to Shohat, focusing on the point of view of the conquistador not only structures the narrative, but also the spectator, who assumes the gaze of the explorer as protagonist (2006, 25). Consequently, in telling the story of the “encounter” between the Old and New Worlds solely from this perspective, the films maintained a Eurocentric view of the idea of the discovery as inevitable and ultimately beneficial to a European understanding of “progress.” This is evident in the film, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, which portrays Columbus (Georges Corraface) as a swashbuckler and adventurer, who has the foresight to navigate the East Indies by sailing West. In spite of his many travails, Christopher Columbus is portrayed as a strong and resourceful man, who is given a hero’s welcome upon his return to Spain. He exits the ship to the cheers of the crowd and then proceeds to present his findings to the King and Queen of Spain. While the film shows the monetary and religious motives behind the expedition, it emphasizes the significance of the new route, which Columbus has drawn out on a map. The film ends with a shot of Columbus triumphantly standing on top of a cliff, arms extended as he overlooks the ocean. As the ending credits roll, the camera tracks back to reveal the sky and eventually an image of Earth from space. This ending reifies the image of Columbus as a Christ-­like figure who has accomplished an unworldly feat. Resistance to Christopher Columbus: The Discovery and to the larger commemoration of the Quincentenary from groups such as the American Indian Movement and Chicana filmmaker, Lourdes Portillo, questioned not only the films’ point of view, but Columbus’ legacy as celebrated during the Quincentenary. The American Indian Movement and the American Treaty

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Council staged a protest at the premiere of Christopher Columbus: The Discovery in San Francisco on August 21, 1992 (American Indian Movement 1992). Similarly, Lourdes Portillo’s short experimental film, Columbus on Trial (1992) questions the legacy of Columbus and, in particular, critiques State-­sanctioned visions of the discovery as envisioned during the Quincentenary. Made in conjunction with the Latino/Chicano improv comedy troupe, Culture Clash, Columbus on Trial is a satire that presents a fictional set-­up in which Christopher Columbus is placed on trial for the crimes perpetrated after his “discovery” of the Americas, which includes the rape and destruction of the indigenous populations. In his defense, Columbus cites the exact rhetoric used by officials of the Quincentenary, which emphasizes the benefits of his discovery in shaping contemporary society, as “a meeting between the Old and New Worlds.” Through this exchange, the film presents the commemoration of the Quincentenary as a moment of debate, highlighting the need to examine history through a critical lens (Saenz 2012, 61–3). Although the Columbus films were heavily criticized in the Americas, the Quincentenary’s legacy in shaping contemporary Spanish transatlantic cinema cannot be overlooked. Because of the international scope of the celebrations and Spain’s desire to promote hispanismo, the Quincentenary provided more support for film and audiovisual sectors in both Spain and Latin America than in the entire history of Spanish and Latin American relations (Elena 2009, 290). This financial support revitalized the production of Spanish-Latin American co-­productions in the 1990s. While there has been a substantial growth in these transatlantic collaborations, the one-­sided perspective of the discovery and conquest film has limited the genre’s transnational marketability and thus, its persistence in the contemporary era is limited.

Historical epics in contemporary Spanish cinema A recent retelling of the Columbus story, También la lluvia, revisits the discovery and conquest to draw attention to the legacies of domination and exploitation that persist in Latin America by its setting during the Cochabamba Water Wars in 2000, which resulted from the privatization of the municipal water supply. In addition to overtly linking the history of colonization with contemporary neoimperial struggles in Latin America, the film also provides a discursive critique of the role of film and film industries as both a vehicle for continued

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exploitation and potential resistance. También la lluvia relies on the narrative device of a film within a film to draw attention to the production of history evident in films about the discovery and conquest of the Americas as well as the politics that underlie international Spanish-­language film productions. By eschewing the narrator, the film avoids presenting an authorized version of history, instead opening up the topic of history and its production as a discursive site of negotiation. As a contemporary reinscription of the Columbus story, the film also dialogues back to the Quincentenary period and its films, including both 1492 and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, by foregrounding the limitations of the historical epic genre in respect to its negotiation of the perspectives of both the colonizer and colonized. Directed by Icíar Bollaín and written by Paul Laverty, También la lluvia tells the story of a Spanish film crew led by Costa (Luis Tosar), a Spanish producer, and Sebastián (Gael García Bernal), a Mexican director, who travel to Bolivia to shoot a revisionary film about Christopher Columbus and the conquest of the Americas. Financial constraints resulting from Sebastián’s desire to film in Spanish (as opposed to English) push the crew to shoot in Bolivia, despite their characters’ attempts to make a “realistic” portrayal of the first encounter between European explorers and indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. As a result, the fictional film within También gives the viewer an authentic Spanish protagonist at the expense of the indigenous Caribbean voice, since Andean indigenous peoples become substitutes for the now virtually extinct Caribbean Taíno. During the film shoot, growing discontentment over the privatization of water in Bolivia begins to disrupt the production. Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri), a native Bolivian cast as the rebel, Hatuey, along with other extras, mobilize on the streets of the city to protest the increase in their water bill and measures that restrict their access to water, even the rain. The resulting social unrest in Cochabamba forces the film crew to abandon the film shoot and flee the country. In revisiting the Columbus story, the film discursively attempts to revise the conquest of the Americas in a manner consistent with the revisionary debates of the Quincentenary, particularly through the discussion of the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, and Antonio Montesinos, priests who argued in favor of the rights of the indigenous. In a key scene in the film, the actors playing Columbus (Karra Elejalde), Las Casas (Carlos Santos), and Montesinos (Raúl Arévalo) debate the political dimension of these historical figures and the overall intention of the film they are making. Anton, the actor playing Christopher Columbus, challenges Alberto, who is playing Las Casas, for his

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“interest” in the native Andean culture. For Anton, Alberto’s attempts to learn some words in Quechua are just an attempt to get into the character of a missionary. When Alberto responds with a derogatory gesture, the two actors get into a heated debate about the historical perspective that the film is promoting. Anton criticizes the production as propaganda for its negative portrayal of Columbus and celebration of the historical roles of Las Casas and Montesinos. In the debate, he points out how Las Casas’ early writings advocated for the use of African slaves over the indigenous. Alberto counters by adding that Las Casas later regretted this proposal, and should be remembered as a radical for demanding equal treatment for the indigenous with the Spanish. As both men become increasingly agitated, Costa breaks the tension by joking about how Disney passed on the film. Through this reflexive discussion of the production of history, this scene not only foregrounds the marginalization of Spanish-­language thought and the Spanish-­speaking world throughout history, but also its continuation in the present through the marginalization of Spanish-­language film in regards to the global film industry dominated by Hollywood. This marginalization is voiced in the film when Anton proclaims that history is cruel to losers. Within the context of Spanish transatlantic history, there are several losers, whose voices have been silenced from dominant narratives of history: the indigenous, who lost their lands, language, culture, and lives; revolutionary thinkers, such as Las Casas and Montesinos whose position within the Catholic Church resulted in their marginalization by Enlightenment thinkers; and the Spanish, whose “national history [was] marginalized from Post-Enlightenment Europe” (Mignolo 2000, 50). Spain’s subsequent marginalization from European modernity, ultimately led to the marginalization of its language and culture, which was also transferred onto its former colonies. As a film about the making of a film, También la lluvia also brings up how the politics of representation within a global film industry dictated by Hollywood silences films that present alternate voices and debates as indicated by Costa’s reference to Disney, who declined to finance Sebastián’s film. This scene echoes an earlier discussion on the film’s financing. As Costa and Sebastián follow a giant crucifix across the city, they are interviewed for a “behind-­the-scenes” documentary. Costa criticizes Sebastián’s decision to make the film in the Spanish language arguing that both the money and audience would be doubled if they filmed in English since English-­language films can attract a larger audience and make larger profits for the studios. Sebastián’s decision to tell the film in Spanish

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also alludes to the use of English in both of the 1992 Columbus films, which was used to attract a larger global audience. In contrast, Sebastián’s insistence that the Spanish conquistadors in the film “speak Spanish” so as to portray an authentic Spanish voice subsequently resulted in a smaller budget. The need to secure funding therefore dictates the representational choices of international films in non-English languages. This is most evident in the film’s shooting location in Bolivia, which resulted in the casting of native Bolivian extras in the roles of the Caribbean Taíno. For Costa, the Bolivian extras are “native,” who will work for low wages. Because of the low rates of pay and the ability to negotiate prices in Bolivia, the film production can have thousands of live extras instead of being digitally edited to create the illusion of a larger cast. This inaccurate representation results from the budgetary constraints that bind the film-­within-a-­film, but also highlights a disregard for cultural authenticity outside of the Spanish project. In this case, despite being marginalized on a global scale, the Spanish language still maintains a position of privilege over the indigenous voice in Sebastián’s film since Columbus encounters Taínos who “speak Quechua.” While the issue of the indigenous voice within the film-­within-a-­film is problematic, También la lluvia depicts a continuation of indigenous struggle in the Americas from the conquest to the contemporary era, as portrayed by the parallel efforts of Hatuey, a sixteenth-­century Taíno leader who led a rebellion against the Spanish colonial empire, and the activism of Daniel, who plays Hatuey in the film-­within-a-­film, in the Cochabamba Water Wars. Daniel, along with his family, become the voices of resistance and ultimately point to a potential reconciliation between the past and the present as indicated through the film’s reflexive structure and between the former colonizer and colonized. The parallel layers of rebellion and activism become clear through the activity of Daniel/ Hatuey, and his impact on the sensitivity and awareness of Costa, the Spanish producer of the film within También la lluvia. As the character with the central emotional arc, Costa, the Spanish producer, is the protagonist whose character is most affected by the encounter with Daniel and the Bolivian struggle against the privatization of water. When we first meet Costa, he is indifferent to the local specificities of the Bolivians he encounters. At first he sees Daniel as a troublemaker, but becomes more aware of his own privileged existence as a European Spaniard as he gets to know him. When the riots in Cochabamba jeopardize the production of his film, Costa decides to move to another location outside of the city to ensure their safety and the completion of their film. However, as they are leaving, Teresa (Leónidas Chiri),

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Daniel’s wife, approaches Costa and pleads for his assistance in helping her locate and rescue her daughter, Belén (Milena Soliz), who has been injured in the protests and requires medical assistance. Ultimately, Teresa persuades Costa to help her by calling him her friend. Teresa defines her relationship with Costa as friendship, but understands full well that their friendship is not on equal terms since Costa’s Spanish citizenship and economic mobility grant them access through the blockaded city that she does not have on her own. Costa’s privileged position stems not only from his citizenship, but also from his ability to raise capital, which highlights the power of money to negotiate and cross national, sexual, and legal boundaries. Even as Costa falls victim to this symbolic paternalism, the film clearly points out that his change of heart stems from a mixture of guilt and selfishness rather than his inherent goodness. He agrees to help “save” Belén because he would feel guilty otherwise. Even at the end of the film, after the riots are over and Costa and Daniel have made peace, their transatlantic alliance is precarious. Costa promises Daniel that he will help Belén, who has suffered injuries leaving her permanently disabled, but when asked if he will return to Bolivia, he responds, “I don’t think so.” His dismissive response leaves the viewer to ponder whether his money will be the only legacy he leaves behind, providing another parallel to the damaged colonial relationship constructed by the Spanish in the colonial period. The ambiguity of this ending brings up questions about the potential for transatlantic encounters to form long-­term alliances. While alliances may be made that result in economic and cultural exchange, particularly in filmic co-­productions, the longevity of such alliances, like Daniel and Costa’s friendship, remains questionable since neither party has overcome the shared hierarchical legacies that structure their relationship. While Daniel and Costa’s relationship remains rooted in hierarchical conceptions of race and citizenship, the film destabilizes the oppositional binaries between the colonizer and the colonized through the character of Sebastián. Although Sebastián aims to broaden the history of the conquest by depicting moments of resistance against the colonial power, he fails to see the parallels between his historical epic and the local struggle over water rights. He refuses to become involved and resents how the protests have put his film production in jeopardy. His political sympathies are relegated to the ideological potential of cinema rather than in the lived experience of resistance to neoimperial struggles. Sebastián justifies his inaction by claiming, “long after this dispute is done and forgotten, our film will last . . . We can’t fight with rocks

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. . . we fight with this (tapping his head) . . . our ideas . . . our imagination” (Laverty 2011, 140). In this regard, Sebastián’s belief in the need to revise official history ignores the history that he is witnessing unfold in Cochabamba. Sebastián’s ideological positioning is also symbolic in the film given that a Mexican actor, Gael García Bernal, portrays him. Like Bolivia, Mexico has been similarly shaped by neoimperial struggles and has formed its national identity through indigenismo, a movement in which native culture and history are appropriated by the State as foundational to the nation. Yet just as Sebastián’s ideological motive to shape the world through film has prevented his physical involvement in local political struggles, Mexico’s celebration of indigenismo, has not translated into an actual practice of improving the lives and treatment of its indigenous inhabitants. Given Sebastián’s politics and nationality, he is the character who is most expected to side with the Bolivian struggle. Instead, the film eschews the division between Spaniards and Latin Americans by emphasizing historical acts of resistance by both Spanish and indigenous actors whose legacy informs contemporary struggles in Latin America. In doing so, Tambíen la lluvia presents a shared history that transcends the national specificity and the colonialist perspective of the discovery and conquest film.

Conclusion As cultural patrimony, the Spanish State viewed cinema as a crucial link in fostering a transatlantic alliance between Latin America and Spain, and used the Quincentenary as an opportune moment to revitalize the production of SpanishLatin American co-­productions. Although the Quincentenary was officially rewritten as an “encounter between two worlds” in order to convey the mutual benefits of the discovery, this historical revision led to protests and criticisms in the Americas over the negative impact of the Spanish colonial project. This public discourse was foregrounded through the production and reception of films, which were designed to attract audiences under the guise of a shared identity and history. Many of the Quincentenary films, though intended to present an “encounter,” ended up presenting a perspective that still privileged the Spanish point of view. También la lluvia provides an opportunity for revision of the traditional historical epic narrative by layering the retelling of the epic Columbus story over the narrative of a contemporary political protest. The film draws parallels between the indigenous struggle against the Spanish colonizers

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and the struggle of working-­class Bolivians over the privatization of water by foreign policies. In doing so, the film presents multiple points of conflict— between European Spaniards and native Bolivians, between upper and lower classes, between international developmental policies and developing countries, and between English-­language film and Spanish-­language film. Despite their intentions to create a historically “accurate” film, the filmmakers within También la lluvia ultimately demonstrate that the production of history cannot be viewed objectively and outside of the temporal moment in which it is constructed. Through its discourse, the film foregrounds the need to question and be critical of the representation of the past and ultimately to find parallels between history as it once happened and history as it unfolds in the present.3

Notes 1 The question of how to categorize and discuss films that engage with history and/ or are set in the past is subject to much debate amongst scholars in different disciplinary traditions as well as national contexts. Rosenstone, a historian, uses the broad term, “history film,” to refer to those “works which consciously try to re-­create the past” (2012, 3). This broad term includes a wide landscape of historical production on film and television, including both fact and fictional works, as well as different genres (Rosenstone 2012, 4). As an umbrella term, the “history film” eschews the local specificity of any particular mode of historical storytelling on film, such as the case with the heritage film in studies on British national cinema. Monk points to the “field of ‘British screen fictions set in the past’ as a complex, hybrid and contradictory terrain” in which scholarly discussions of the heritage film “needs to be understood as a historically specific discourse, rooted in and responsive to particular cultural conditions and events” (2002, 177–8). My use of the term, heritage film, in this chapter shifts focus from its British specificity to Spain, whose national cinema has a similar history of historical production reflecting its national heritage. More specifically, Spain’s production of films dealing with its colonial heritage through the discovery-­ conquest films in the 1980s and 1990s parallels the reinvigoration of the heritage film genre in Britain and shares its local-­global dimension. This parallelism is most apparent in the British Empire and Raj Revival films produced during this time period, such as Heat and Dust (James Ivory 1983) and A Passage to India (David Lean 1984). 2 The British heritage film has been subject to much criticism for its failure to address contemporary issues of British society, as is the case with films classified

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under kitchen sink realism. According to Higson, the heritage film’s invocation of a pastoral and often aristocratic English past is one way in which the Thatcherite government negotiated the changing social and cultural climate of British society in the 1980s (2012, 606–7). 3 I would like to thank Julian Gutiérrez-Albilla and Jennifer Black for providing helpful comments during the various writing stages of this chapter.

References American Indian Movement, Flyer for American Indian Movement and International Tribunal Protest-Premiere of Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, Columbian Quincentenary Collection, MSS–582/36/14. Albuquerque, NM: Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico, 1992. Elena, A., “Medio siglo de coproducciones hispano-­mexicanas,” in Abismos de pasión: Una historia de las relaciones cinematográficas hispano-­mexicanas, eds E. de la Vega and A. Elena. Madrid: Filmoteca Española; Instituto de Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales; Ministerio de Cultura, 2009, pp. 278–303. Escudero, M.A., “Hispanist Democratic Thought versus Hispanist Thought of the Franco Era: A Comparative Analysis,” in Bridging the Atlantic: Toward a Reassessment of Iberian and Latin American Cultural Ties, ed. M. Pérez de Mendiola. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1996, pp. 169–86. Gabilondo, J., “Historical Memory, Neoliberal Spain, and the Latin American Postcolonial Ghost: On the Politics of Recognition, Apology, and Reparation in Contemporary Spanish Historiography,” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 7, 2003, pp. 247–66. Higson, A., “Representing the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film,” in Film Genre Reader IV, ed. B.K. Grant. Austin: University of Texas, 2012, pp. 602–27. Hooks, B., Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. Laverty, P., Even the Rain. Pontefract: Route, 2011. Mignolo, W., Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University, 2000. Mira, A., “Spectacular Metaphors: The Rhetoric of Historical Representation in Cifesa Epics,” in Spanish Popular Cinema, eds A. Lázaro-Reboll and A. Willis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 60–75. Monk, C., “The British Heritage-­Film Debate Revisited,” in British Historical Cinema: The History, Heritage and Costume Film, eds C. Monk and A. Sargeant. London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 176–98. Rosaldo, R., “Imperialist Nostalgia,” Representation, 26, 1989, pp. 107–22.

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Rosenstone, R.A., History on Film/Film on History. London: Routledge, 2012. Saenz, N.V., Mediating Hispanidad: Screening the Hispanic-Atlantic, PhD thesis University of Southern California, 2012. Shohat, E., Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Durham, NC: Duke University, 2006. Sobchack, V., “‘Surge and Splendor’: A Phenomenology of the Hollywood Historical Epic,” in Film Genre Reader IV, ed. B.K. Grant. Austin: University of Texas, 2012, pp. 332–59. Trigo, A., “Global Realignments and the Geopolitics of Transatlantic Studies: An Inquiry,” in Proceedings of the Title VI 50th Anniversary Conference: Celebrating 50 Years, March 19–21, 2009, Washington, DC. [January 22, 2010]. Vidal, B., Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation. New York: Wallflower Press, 2012.

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The Transnational Dimension of Contemporary Spanish Road Movies Carmen Indurain Eraso

The road movie, like the musical or the Western, is a Hollywood genre that catches peculiarly American dreams, tensions and anxieties, even when imported by the motion picture industries of other nations. Cohan and Hark 1997, 2 The fluid genre of the road movie has room for protagonists of any nationality, gender, race and sexual orientation. Roberts 1997, 61 After giving the road movie the status of film genre in The Road Movie Book, Steven Cohan, Ina Rae Hark, and Shari Roberts (1997) argue that, despite its undeniable American origins, the road movie is a genre that has opened up its scope to other nationalities. Although “the automobile culture is coterminous with Americanism” (Mottram 1983, 88), nowadays all sorts of characters, regardless of their country of origin, can feel the call of the road either to experience new adventures on a car or to escape from an unfulfilling present. This does not only mean that we may find foreign protagonists wandering along US American roads, as happens in Stranger than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch 1984), Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismäki 1989) or Borat (Larry Charles 2006).1 As Pohl Burkhard claims, “The road movie is the international genre par excellence” (2007, 54). The genre’s traveling storyline promotes an international scope that has resulted in international co-­productions,2 casts, and settings, mainly European and US American like The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki 1995, Fr-US), Lost Highway (David Lynch 1996, US-Fr), Jeepers Creepers (Victor Salva 2001, Ger-US), but also US American and Mexican like Perdita Durango/Dance with the Devil (Álex de la Iglesia 1999), Highway Patrolman

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(Alex Cox 1992), and Y tu mamá yambién/And Your Mother Too (Alfonso Cuarón 2000). Furthermore, the road genre has been in regular contact with what critics denominate “the European Way of Seeing” (Jones 1996, 46), either through a variety of European émigré directors like Wim Wenders, Ridley and Tony Scott, Andrei Konchalovski, Richard Sarafian, Michaelangelo Antonioni, and Alex Cox or through the work of independent American directors with a “European sensibility” and financing like Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch. However, as Paul Willemen argues, a film’s nationality “is primarily a question of address, rather than a matter of the filmmaker’s citizenship or even the production finance’s country of origin” (1994, 212). So, what happens when an essentially American genre is addressed to a European audience? Or as Eyerman and Löfgren have put it: “If the road movie is particularly American, why have European (in this case, Spanish) directors been so fascinated by this genre and why are they finding an audience across the Atlantic?” (1995, 54) As the ever-­ increasing road movie production shows, European audiences have responded to the universal appeal and vicarious pleasure of the genre’s essential search for freedom. As David Laderman claims in his book chapter dedicated to the European road movie: “Indeed, many contemporary European road movies seem a reaction to, or a reformulation of, the American genre” (2002, 247). The prolific number of road movies made in Spain along two decades, more than twenty from the mid-1990s until the present day, constitutes a significant sign of the European importation of this genuinely American film genre and of its subsequent American cultural codes. Spanish audiences in particular may feel an extra appeal for the genre, given our country’s history of migration within Spain or to other countries like France, Germany or even to America, which is unfortunately reviving with the current economic crisis. Furthermore, we cannot forget a very important Spanish tradition of pilgrimage along Saint James’s Way.3 In addition, Spanish Golden Age literature offers what could be considered a precedent of the road movie, the picaresque novels of heroes on the road, like El Lazarillo de Tormes, El Buscón Don Pablos and, of course, Don Quijote de la Mancha. The influence of these nomadic stories can also be seen in Spanish films of the 1980s like El viaje a ninguna parte/Voyage to Nowhere (Fernando Fernán Gómez 1986) and ¡Ay Carmela! (Carlos Saura 1990), which presented the travelling of theater troupes across Spain.4 But it was in the last decade of the twentieth century that the Spanish road movie came into its own with films such as Hola, ¿estás sola?/Hi, Are You Alone? (Icíar Bollaín 1995), Antártida/Antarctica (Manuel Huerga 1995), Carreteras secundarias/Backroads (Emilio Martínez

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Lázaro 1997), Airbag (Juan Manual Bajo Ulloa 1997), Perdita Durango (1997), Los años bárbaros/Barbaric Years (Fernando Colomo 1998), Lisboa/Lisbon (Antonio Hernández 1999), Carretera y manta/To the End of the Road (Alfonso Arandia 1999) or Pídele cuentas al rey/Ask the King to Explain (José Antonio Quirós 1999). Thus, as Pohl Burkhard puts it, except for the odd exception, “it was only in the mid-1990s that, together with an introduction of new themes and genres in the national cinematography, the road movie started to proliferate as a narrative option in the representation of national and transnational landscapes” (2007, 56). And significantly, the production of Spanish road movies has remained regular up to the present day (two decades later) as David Trueba’s highly successful film, Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados/Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed (2013), shows.5 This chapter explores the contribution of the road movie genre to the specific ways in which US culture permeates European culture by examining what happens when such an American icon as the road is assimilated by Spanish cinema. To this end, Spanish road cinema will be analysed historically, with a focus on two main tendencies in contemporary Spanish production: a postmodern trend and a realistic trend. In the former, the Spanish road movie follows in the footsteps of Hollywood’s commercial comedies, as a thorough analysis of Juan Manuel Bajo Ulloa’s Airbag (1997), will show. As a contrast, in the second trend we find road movies that illustrate a social drama, usually featuring women, as happens in Miguel Hermoso’s Fugitivas/Fugitives (2000), a representative road feature which is also examined in detail. When Ángel Quintana explains the formal and thematic renewal of Spanish cinema that started in the 1990s, and that seems to continue in the present day, he mentions two main cinematic trends. Firstly, he names the “postmodern cinema” of such directors as Juan Manuel Bajo Ulloa (Alas de mariposa/Butterfly Wings, 1991), Julio Medem (Tierra/Earth, 1996), and Álex de la Iglesia (El día de la Bestia/ The Day of the Beast, 1996; Perdita Durango, 1997) (2005, 12). The generational renewal brought about by these directors rejects previous Spanish classical models and adopts more globalized cultural parameters that follow patterns from both an audiovisual culture (comics, video clips, television) and from genre cinema. Secondly, Quintana remarks upon what he denominates the “timid realism” (2005, 15) of the late 1990s of Spanish filmmakers such as Montxo Armendáriz (Las cartas de Alou/Letters from Alou, 1990), Icíar Bollaín (Hola, ¿estás sola?, 1995; Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World, 1999), Benito Zambrano (Solas/Alone, 1998), Fernando León de Aranoa (Barrio/Neighborhood, 1998) or

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Miguel Hermoso, the director of the road movie Fugitivas (2000) analysed below. Remarkably, as the following titles show, this timid realism has remained constant during the first decade of the twenty-­first century: No tengas miedo/Don’t Be Afraid (Montxo Armendáriz 2011), Los lunes al sol/Mondays in the Sun (2002), Princesas/Princesses (2005), and Amador (2010), all by Fernando León de Aranoa, Te doy mis ojos/Take My Eyes (Bollaín 2003), Heroína/Heroine (Gerardo Herrero 2005), Una palabra tuya/One Word from You (Ángeles González-Sinde 2008) or the road movie Retorno a Hansala/Return to Hansala (Chus Gutiérrez 2008). As Quintana puts it, this is a “cinema of social commitment.” These emotional stories focus on a wide range of global subjects dealing with current social problems like unemployment, domestic violence, incest, prostitution, immigration, or institutional corruption. The influence of the American road movie genre is to be seen mainly in the road films that can be categorized according to these two different inclinations within Spanish cinema: the postmodern trend on the one hand and the realistic and socially-­committed on the other. Thus, this chapter aims to examine these two Spanish tendencies within the road movie, considering the transnational potential of this genre. The movies that fall in the first category adhere to one of the main products of the American road movie of the 1990s, the Hollywood road comedy (Laderman 2002, 176). This subgroup follows in the footsteps of Hollywood mainstream cinema, with a clear focus on male action. This model was set by a variety of road comedies like True Romance (Tony Scott 1993), Dumb and Dumber (Peter Farrelly 1994), Flirting with Disaster (David O. Russell 1996), From Dusk till Dawn (Robert Rodríguez 1996), Play It to the Bone (Ron Shelton 1999) or O Brother, Where Art Thou (Joel and Ethan Coen 2000).6 Thus, like their US predecessors, Spanish road movies hybridize at the turn of the century with the comedy genre—e.g. Los años bárbaros, Carretera y manta, Trileros/Card-­ sharps (Antonio del Real 2003), Al final del Camino/Road to Santiago—and especially with the teenage gross-­out comedy. Films like Todd Phillips’s Road Trip (2000) use the road movie genre as a narrative framework for the kind of gross-­out sex comedy of the late 1970s and early 1980s like National Lampoon’s Animal House (John Landis 1978), Porky’s (Bob Clark 1982), and Revenge of the Nerds (Jeff Kanew 1984), and that successfully revived in the late 1990s with Paul Weitz’s American Pie (1999). This is the case of Airbag, the most popular and successful Spanish road movie of all time, but also of Slam (Miguel Martí 2003), El mundo alrededor/The World Around Us (Álex Calvo Sotelo 2006), and Los

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managers/The Managers (Fernando Guillén Cuervo 2006).7 These four Spanish road films characterize their young male stars as the sex-­crazed protagonists of gross-­out gags in brotherly relationships.

Airbag: a hybrid and glocal product Juantxo (Karra Elejalde), a well-­off, red-­haired thirty year old, is dragged into a brothel by his friends Konradín (Fernando Guillén Cuervo) and Pako (Alberto San Juan) on his stag night. There, he loses the valuable engagement ring he was offered at a family reunion inside the body of a prostitute with whom he surprisingly falls in love. In an attempt to recover the ring the three men set out on a crazy three-­day trip from brothel to brothel during which they get involved in a war between two mafia gangs. Villambrosa (Paco Rabal), a mafioso whorehouse owner and gang leader, refuses to give the ring back to Juantxo, while his Portuguese rival, Souza (Luis Cuenca), sends femme fatale Fátima do Spirito Santo (María de Medeiros) to check things out. In their search for the ring beyond the Basque country, the place where the journey starts, these three upper-­class guys come across vice in its most varied forms, drugs, corruption, sex, etc. all tossed up with extreme violence. Eventually, Juantxo recovers his wedding ring just before the wedding ceremony only to cancel it and leave with Vanessa, the prostitute he lost the ring and his virginity with. Airbag, one of the biggest box-­office hits in the history of Spanish cinema, illustrates how an American road movie formula is “translated” into a Spanish context and becomes rather significant in Spanish culture. Its success arguably lies in its conscious fusion of a Hollywood global road and action frame and of what is specifically national and even regional or local in the film, mainly its humor. Although Juanma Bajo Ulloa denies his conscious assimilation of American genres, both the road genre and the action genre,8 he contradicts himself by stating that what he really wanted in Airbag was “to mock the conventions of the road movie, to try to be critical with North American genre cinema,” which proves his awareness and capitalization on this genre. Moreover, he even mentions his special interest in metamorphosis, an essential staple element in road cinema. Like the average US road hero, Juantxo undergoes the generic metamorphosis of the journey, changing from childish to more liberated and mature in only a few days on the road. Following the genre’s conventions, his experiences and encounters on the road introduce him to a world of vice and

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extreme excess regarding issues of sex, weapons, alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc. Eventually, this transformation makes him reject an aristocratic girlfriend for a mixed-­race prostitute, leaving the comfortable and safe bourgeois life that awaits him for a more liberal one on the road. This open ending, which rejects the reigning patriarchal social system, also follows the generic formula of American road movies. Apart from this, Airbag shows some further elements of “Americanization,” which Bajo Ulloa fully admits and calls aesthetics a la americana. Some settings like the desert of Las Bardenas Reales in Navarre, the Great Casino in Santander, and the Kokotxa Club, show the director’s intention to offer a Spanish equivalent of American deserts, casinos, and road clubs, like the Mojave Desert or Las Vegas. The vehicles in the film also recreate this American aesthetic: a car that is a Starsky and Hutch model,9 a huge truck, and a yellow school bus, which give the film a typically American look. Airbag offers a spectacle of male action proper of Hollywood cinema, which relies on excessive violence and visual and aural elements to the detriment of plot and dialogue (the film won the Goya Award for Best Special Effects and Best Editing in 1998). Numerous crashes, explosions, and chases remind us of Robert Rodríguez’s, Quentin Tarantino’s, and Tony Scott’s works (e.g. From Dusk till Dawn and True Romance) and also, as William J. Nichols suggests, of the stylistic references to John Woo and Oliver Stone (2003, 137). But what is most significant is the film’s negotiation and/or fusion between what is genuinely American and globalizing in Hollywood road movies with its typically Spanish elements. The Spanishness of Airbag is layered on the specific US conventions of the genre. It is to be found in its depiction of popular customs and hobbies, in its use of mise-­en-scène, character development (regardless of how shallow and stereotyped they are), and soundtrack. But it particularly lies in its typically Spanish black humor, which brings to mind Berlanga’s and early Almodóvar’s cinema. Airbag succeeds in merging a foreign formula with local comic resources like irony, picaresque, and trash culture. The film, for example, mocks the current Spanish obsession with football and with learning languages as well as the country’s derisory view of its own technology. Spanishness is also presented through the handling of regionalisms and nationalisms. We find a very funny mixture of Basque, Galician and Portuguese characters, accents, and folk songs and dances, including a casino croupier wearing the regular attire of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela and a black Basque Governor (something still extremely unlikely in this country and therefore amusing). In addition, we witness a humorous and accumulative critique of powerful Spanish institutions

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that have no equivalent in US road movies, like politicians, the aristocracy, the Roman Catholic Church (by means of a postmodern priest) or the Civil Guard. Humor is also verbal; the film mocks the Spanish tendency to talk a lot, using mispronounced, fixed, silly, empty phrases like those that Pazos (Manuel Manquiña), Villambrosa’s assistant, uses: “el conceto es el conceto” (“the concet is the concet”), “profesional, muy profesional” (“professional, very professional”) or “a las pruebas me remito” (“I refer to the existing evidence”), which proved very popular among Spanish youngsters. As Bajo Ulloa explains, the main downside of this successful verbal and local humor is that it limits the film’s distribution abroad to only a few Spanish-­speaking countries like Argentina and Cuba. The film’s production values also follow Hollywood’s models. As a source of audience attraction it showed a well-­known, attractive cast, full of cameos including Javier Bardem, Santiago Segura, Alaska, Julio Medem, and some popular television figures like the chef Karlos Arguiñano and the singer Albert Plá. As Antonio Méndez Casanova argues, the film’s commercial success results from both this wide array of cameos and from limiting the film’s vulgarity by manufacturing a Hispanic product with an American-­style lay-­out (2002). All in all, Airbag clearly departs from previous Spanish classical models. Its success lies not only in its postmodern generic hybridization of road movie, comedy, and action but also in its conscious mixture of what is global and what is local, the latter being revealed mainly through its humor. Airbag is the product of the transposition of a genuinely American genre with aesthetics and marketing a la americana, to a Spanish context, which is ultimately colonized by Hollywood. Airbag’s director made a sly, typically postmodern move: he turned a genre with a traditionally progressive pedigree like the road movie into a commercially secure formula. However, in reproducing the methods of its powerful big brother, it reveals its ultimate cultural dependence on it. Bajo Ulloa’s film constitutes a brave, praiseworthy, and successful attempt to experiment with something new. His film wittily illustrates that, with the right funding, Spanish cinema can also offer entertaining, visually and aurally spectacular films full of action, speed, and gunfire, but it is also true that the road in Airbag follows the trajectory of its US predecessor, capitalizing on a tried-­and-tested profitable formula. On the other hand, as Pohl Burkhard claims, “the European versions of the road genre appropriate and reformulate its conventions . . . but the European road movie is less fascinated by speed, is more introspective and prone to reflect

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upon national identity, presenting the journey as a search” (2007, 55). Thus, within the second Spanish trend of film production in the 1990s—the aforementioned cinema of commitment and timid realism—we find a remarkable influence of a less commercial US road cinema which rejects this predominance of male action, spectacle and excesses. Under its influence, the Spanish road film is particularly inclined to follow the path of US female road movies such as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese 1974), Crazy Mama (Jonathan Demme 1975), Bagdad Café (Percy Adlon 1987), Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott 1991), Leaving Normal (Edward Zwick 1992), Boys on the Side (Herbert Ross 1995), Manny and Lo (Lisa Krueger 1996), Crazy in Alabama (Antonio Banderas 1999), Tumbleweeds (Gavin O’Connor 1999) or Bonneville (Christopher N. Rowley 2006). These road movies offer a less traditional and more visible, innovative, introspective, and realistic representation of women. They revolve around female experience, drawing attention to dire social circumstances of injustice and mistreatment, which force their heroines to get away from the reigning authoritarian patriarchal order. Many Spanish road movies made from the 1990s onwards, including the aforementioned Hola, ¿estás sola?, Lisboa, Fugitivas, and Retorno a Hansala, as well as other, more recent examples, like Huídas/Escapes (Mercedes Gaspar 2014), or even the co-­production like Sin Dejar Huella/Without a Trace (María Novaro 2000, Sp-Mex) and Cleopatra (Eduardo Mignogna 2003, Ar-Sp), follow this US trend of marked female visibility and exposure of social drama on the road.

Fugitivas: social drama in the Spanish female road movie Corre esa chica, corre, corre. Y al mismo paso agónico, aterrado, corre a su lado una niña. Oye, ¿quiénes son? ¿De dónde vienen? ¿Desde qué lugar o de qué insospechado pliegue de la memoria? Corred, corred las dos. Huid. Heridas, repudiadas, asustadas, sólo os queda la vida. Y la vida es lo único que tenéis. . . . Ya os conocemos. A los desesperados de Lang. A los marginados de Huston. A los olvidados de Buñuel. That girl runs, yes, she runs. And beside her, at the same agonized, terrified pace runs a little girl. Listen! Who are they? Where do they come from? . . . Run, run, both of you. Run away, hurt, repudiated, scared, the only thing you have left is your life . . . We already know you. Lang’s desperate ones, Houston’s marginalized ones, Buñuel’s forgotten ones.

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These poetic words open the director’s notes for Fugitivas, a 2000 road movie by Miguel Hermoso with a significant representation of “hurt, repudiated, scared” heroines. Hermoso himself openly confesses his films usually show his “own attraction for the underclass, for the desperate and the marginalized” (Casanova 2000, 114). This is the kind of fear suffered by its two female protagonists, who are shown holding hands and running away in the advertising poster of the film. We only see their backs and a sentence that reads: “A desperate escape with a single goal: to start again.” In a similar way, some slanted opening credits crash against the road and the landscape. They are remarkably shown at a very fast speed and accompanied with some background shrieking sounds. All these elements announce the bitter experience awaiting these two girls on the road. As its title indicates, Fugitivas is a female road movie (and chase film) that narrates the story of Tony (Goya Award-­winning actress Laia Marull), a young girl from a marginal neighborhood who teams up with her boyfriend Juanjo (Jesús Olmedo) and two pals, Maxi (Miguel Hermoso Arnao), a martial arts buff, and Moco (Roberto Cairo), a terminally-­ill junkie, to hold up a lottery administration office in Madrid. But Juanjo has another plan: to betray his two friends and escape with Tony and the money. Juanjo’s sister, a prostitute, lends them a runaway car on condition that they take her seven-­year-old daughter Laura (Beatriz Coronel) to Tarifa to meet her father. But at the beginning of the trip, with Maxi, Moco, and the police on their tail, Tony is betrayed by her boyfriend, who disappears with the money, abandoning her and Laura in a dismal road-­side restaurant. Thus, Tony is forced to keep running and to take Laura with her father Raimundo (Juan Diego), an alcoholic flamenco singer. Along their runaway journey to the south, Tony and Laura suffer not only their chasers’ violence but also Raimundo’s rejection, until Tony leaves the child with his aunt, symbolically called Ascensión (María Galiana). Eventually, Maxi and Moco find Tony, beat her to death and, when they are searching for Juanjo, the police arrest the three of them. Fugitivas illustrates the realist, socially-­conscious trend in the Spanish cinema of the 1990s. Hermoso himself confessed his aim was “to transmit authenticity in his films” (Casanova 2000, 115). In addition, Fugitivas follows another major trend within the American road movie of the 1990s: the reinvention of the road as a free space for marginality (Laderman 2002, 179) or as “a vehicle for the representation of otherness” (Mills 1997, 323). Furthermore, Fugitivas, not unlike Huídas, follows the pattern of some previous US road movies such as Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich 1973), Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders 1974), A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood 1993), Manny and Lo, or even the Brazil-France

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co-­production Central do Brasil/Central Station (Walter Salles 1998), which pair up two marginal protagonists, a grown-­up with a child he/she is not related to. This adult acts as a surrogate parent for the child with whom he/she gradually builds up a strong bond. Moreover, as is customary in US road movies, at the beginning of the film Tony and Laura are two totally different, mismatched characters. Tony does not share Laura’s values, nor does she abide by the rule of the three m words that Laura learned from her grandmother: “no matar, no mangar y no mentir” (“Do not kill, do not steal and do not lie”). Right from the beginning the stolen car plates on Tony’s bedroom wall mark her expertise in car thefts, a skill that, despite Laura’s disapproval, she has to resort to again during their runaway ordeal. However, they suffer the staple generic metamorphosis of the road journey that facilitates their final confluence, turning their initial distrust into a valuable friendship with a redemptive effect. Like a mother, Tony worries about feeding Laura and keeping her warm. She even throws her gun away for her not to panic. Tony makes Laura meet her father, but finally helps her grow aware that she can neither live with him or with her mother because none of them love her. On her part, Laura opens up Tony’s eyes by telling her not to follow Juanjo after his betrayal for the same reason. Eventually, she saves Tony’s life by shooting Maxi. Furthermore, Laura teaches Tony something she finds really difficult, to love again and to reveal her feelings, as she does when she finally embraces Laura. Along their trip to the south we learn that they share the same rootlessness and lack of affection in their childhood. Tony’s father dumped her in an orphanage when her mother died, and Laura was raised by her grandmother, and now she is dead, her mother, a prostitute, does not want her because she scares her clients away. As Pohl Burkhard remarks, Fugitivas is a road movie presenting a recurrent motif in the genre: “The disintegration of the family and the community” (2007, 59). Indeed, Tony and Laura share the condition of fugitives without a home in the world and without anybody’s love, or as one of the songs in the soundtrack says: “Solita como la luna sin más paredes que el aire/Solita como la luna, sin nadie que querer.” (“Alone like the moon, with the air as the only door/Alone, like the moon, with nobody to love.”) In a key scene in the film, after her father repudiates her for the second time, Laura runs away and lies on the railway. She says that she wants to die because she is alone and nobody loves her. Once she gives Raimundo a beating, Tony replies to her: “Escucha, no necesitas que nadie te quiera para vivir, no necesitas a nadie, ¿me oyes? A nadie. Como yo. Yo tampoco.” (“Listen, you do not need

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anybody’s love to live. You need nobody, you hear me? Like me. I do not need anybody either.”) In addition, neither of these heroines has the support of a family, whose great importance is also reminded by the lyrics in another soundtrack song: “Si yo tuviera un hermano le contaría mi dolor/Pero como no lo tengo, no veo mano de Dios.” (“If I had a brother I would tell him my grief/ But, as I do not have one, I do not see God’s hand.”) Luckily, Tony and Laura’s initial distrust turns into a “female bonding” typical in the road genre, which compensates for their lack of affection. In addition, the friendship of a third generation of “runaway” women is represented by Ascensión, who offers them refuge from male abuse. Ascensión, an elderly, single woman, escapes from her awful loneliness through fantasies and alcohol. Ascensión feels lonely since her sister died and is now eager to show love toward her unexpected visitors. She helps Tony and Laura find Raimundo, and she offers them her home as a shelter from such a painful world and from the deep loneliness they share. Like the heroines in US female road movies, these women run away from the patriarchal system and the negative effects it has in their lives. This is why the only way out for fugitive women in such a destructive world seems to be the refuge provided by their own “female bonding.” As happens in such films as Bagdad Café, Thelma and Louise, Leaving Normal, Boys on the Side, or Manny and Lo, the union between mismatched women culminates in the creation of a hopeful alternative family, which has a redeeming effect for them. As Kay Dickinson comments about road movies with lost travelling children, “the quests which structure this type of film are for mother figures (not the traditional princess/partner), and consequently, relay the idea that the nuclear family or its unwavering substitute provide the ultimate in reassurance” (1999, 200). Despite their own dysfunctional family experiences, Dickinson continues, these kids “still instinctively seek out a family-­type arrangement” (1999, 200). Nevertheless, although it adopts the generic conventions of the American road movie, Fugitivas also offers a great national and local content, especially by means of genuinely Andalusian settings and flamenco songs. Miguel Hermoso himself, as well as the film’s producer (Antonio Pérez from Maestranza Films), comes from Andalusia, and this is the first time he willingly shoots a film in this Southern Spanish region. The Andalusia of Fugitivas shows a great amount of generic realism, both visual and aural. It presents beautiful Andalusian landscapes and locations such as Carmona, Cádiz, Puerto de Santa María, Tarifa, Chipiona, Caños de Meca, Algeciras, and Puente Genil, which deviate from the usual depiction of touristy white villages. Hermoso depicts these Spanish settings by

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over-­exposing the film and using high-­contrast lighting for the extensive range of colors, relying especially on different shades of blue. The Spanishness of the film is also put forward through the music. Hermoso enhances the bitter-­sweet and beautifully sad tone of the film with a well-­chosen, genuinely Andalusian soundtrack. The customary American country music of US female road movies is replaced in this case by the flamenco of a new generation of singers, among them Niña Pastori (with a small role in the film), José “El Francés,” Pepe Luis Carmona, Chonchi Heredia or Chaleco. As happens with country soundtracks (e.g. Thelma and Louise), the sad lyrics and whining tone successfully match the tone of the films. As Raimundo claims in the film, “El flamenco no soluciona na’, pero sirve pa’ que la gente se desahogue y olvide lo jodía que es esta puta vida.” (“Flamenco does not sort any problem out, but it helps people to give vent and to forget how fucking hard life is.”) In addition to its Andalusian soundtrack, Fugitivas successfully adapts local characters, settings, locations, and symbols to the dynamics of an American genre. Firstly, most characters in the film, for example the motherly Ascensión, the embittered drunkard Raimundo or even the thugs Maxi and Moco, are easily recognizable Spanish types. Secondly, as regards locations and symbols, Fugitivas depicts the typically Spanish petrol stations with their tacky souvenirs (castanets, bull, and flamenco dolls, etc.) and trashy cassette tapes. Moreover, the film shows the reprieved Spanish Osborne bull and the Tío Pepe billboards, both advertising logos of Andalusian wine companies (Osborne and González Byass) located in Jerez de la Frontera (Cadiz) that have become Andalusian and Spanish cultural symbols, themselves an illustration of how the local and the national have gone global. However, unlike Airbag, the Spanishness of Fugitivas does not rely on culturally-­specific humor, so it does not hinder its international marketing. In conclusion, like Benito Zambrano in Solas, Icíar Bollaín in Te doy mis ojos and Flores de otro mundo, Fernando León de Aranoa in Princesas, or Ángeles González-Sinde in Una palabra tuya, Miguel Hermoso successfully represents the dramatic situation of victimized women in Spain. Together with Hola, ¿estás sola? or Lisboa, Fugitivas illustrates how Spanish cinema from the 1990s onwards started to assimilate the model established by US female road movies, which overturned the average male bias of the road and introduced, instead, an innovative representation of women. Fugitivas uses the realism and liberal connotations of US American road movies to expose the male abuse and abandonment of Spanish women at the turn of the century. By means of the road

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genre, Miguel Hermoso depicts oppressed, repudiated, terrified, miserable, lonely women on a journey of transformation and mutual knowledge. As Laia Marull comments, Tony is a tough girl who hides behind a protective mask of sullenness and distrust, but this mask will gradually dismantle (in Carrasco 2000). Thus, behind her leather jacket, a tough expression and a man’s name, Tony hides her female body to protect herself from men-­inflicted pain. As happens in Thelma and Louise, women in this road movie are victims of men; they suffer their parents’ rejection, their boyfriends’ betrayal, brutal male violence and the emptiness of men’s sexual demands. Like its US role models, despite its dramatic and melancholic touch, Fugitivas finally presents a ray of hope for women in the form of female bonding and the creation of a symbolic alternative family of women. Miguel Hermoso reflects this relatively optimistic message in the film with these beautiful closing words: “Corre esa chica, corre. Corre por caminos nuevos. Sigue, sigue corriendo, y no desesperes. Tal vez, en algún recóndito e impensado escondrijo, al sur del sur, te sonría al fin, limpia, deslumbrante, azul marina, la felicidad serena que persigues desde hace tanto tiempo.” (“Run, girl, run. Run along new paths. Keep running and do not give up. Maybe, in a remote and unexpected hiding place in the South, the serene, clean, sea-­blue happiness you’ve been looking for so long will finally smile at you.”) As these words point out, unlike the staple US road movie trajectory from the East to the West, in many Spanish road movies the journey of liberation leads from the North toward the South, to Morocco or Portugal.10 It is noteworthy that the title of Casanova’s article on the film claims (2000), “La esperanza, al sur.” (“Hope lies in the South.”) As happens in The Living End (Gregg Araki 1992), in many of them, the leading characters either go (or take a detour) to the sea, and take a bath in the sea as a symbol of freedom and/or rebirth—e.g. El puente/The Long Weekend (Juan Antonio Bardem 1977), Y tu mamá también, Los años bárbaros, A+ (Amas) (Xavier Ribera 2004), El mundo alrededor).11 In Fugitivas, Tony illustrates the aforementioned “sea-­blue happiness” when she recalls the best day in her life, when her father took her to see the sea for the first time and to eat some steak. To conclude, all things considered, despite their big differences in appropriation and reformulation, the Spanish road both in Airbag and Fugitivas leads inevitably to the other side of the Atlantic, mirroring Hollywood’s successful generic patterns and showing Spanish cinema’s ultimate dependence on it at the turn of the century. However, neither of them constitutes a merely repetitive Spanish version of the US road movie model. Despite their belonging to two different

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major trends in the Spanish cinema of the 1990s, the postmodern and the realistic trend, the success in both cases lies in their “glocal” quality, in their combination of a global American road movie formula with local elements from Spanish culture, may those be based upon culturally specific verbal humor or upon genuinely Andalusian settings, soundtrack and iconography.12

Notes 1 But American citizens only occasionally wander along European roads, as happens in Everything is Illuminated (Liev Schreiber 2005) or in The Way (Emilio Estévez 2010). 2 Walter Salles’s The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), for instance, was co-­produced by eight countries. 3 In fact, we could speak about a subgroup of pilgrimage road movies including Al Final del Camino/Road to Santiago (Roberto Santiago 2009) and The Way. 4 This trend survives in the present day with films like Pájaros de papel/Paper Birds (Emilio Aragón 2010). 5 This road movie won six Goya Awards, regarded as the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, including Best Film and Best Director, and was selected to represent Spain in the 2015 Academy Awards. 6 Later examples would include Todd Phillips’s Due Date (2010). 7 These three Spanish road movies also share a music motif, since their protagonists either head for a music festival (the Cactus Festival in Slam and the Viña Rock festival in El mundo alrededor) or are musicians touring picaresque style as in Los Managers. 8 Bajo Ulloa’s opinions are taken from a personal interview held on April 22, 2002 in the Public University of Navarre in Pamplona. All translations are the author’s except where otherwise noted. 9 The protagonists’ car is an example of European and American hybridization in the film since, as Bajo Ulloa noted (pers. comm.), it is “a Volvo, the European car par excellence.” 10 There are exceptions to this trait, namely those road movies heading North toward France like Los Años Bárbaros and Carretera y Manta. 11 In Marc Recha’s Días de agosto/August Days (2006), the protagonists go to a reservoir in Mequinenza, Zaragoza. 12 Research toward the writing of this article has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project no. FFI2013–40769–P.

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References Burkhard, P., “Rutas transnacionales: la road movie en el cine español,” Hispanic Research Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 2007, pp. 53–67. Carrasco, M.J., “Miguel Hermoso rueda en Andalucía Fugitivas, una película sobre la marginación y la esperanza,” El País, April 7, 2000. Available from: [April 7, 2000]. Casanova, M., “La esperanza, al sur,” Cinemanía, 56, 2000, pp. 114–15. Cohan, S. and I.R. Hark (eds), The Road Movie Book. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Dickinson, K., “Such Time When Young’uns Run the Roads: The Depiction of Travelling Children,” in Lost Highways: An Illustrated History of Road Movies, eds J. Sargeant and S. Watson. London: Creation Books, 1999, pp. 194–206. Eyerman, R. and O. Löfgren, “Romancing the Road: Road Movies and Images of Mobility,” Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 12, no. 1, 1995, pp. 53–79. Jones, S., “Wenders’ Paris, Texas and the ‘European Way of Seeing,’ ” in European Identity in Cinema, ed. W. Everett. Exeter: Intellect, 1996, pp. 45–52. Laderman, D., “Travelling Other Highways: The European Road Movie,” in Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002, pp. 247–80. Méndez Casanova, A., “Airbag” Alohacriticon.com, 2002. Available from: [September 30, 2012]. Mills, K., “Revitalizing the Road Genre,” in The Road Movie Book, eds S. Cohan and I.R. Hark. London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 307–29. Mottram, E. (ed.), Blood on the Nash Ambassador: Investigations in American Culture. London: Hutchinson Radius, 1983. Nichols, W.J., “Selling Out Spain: Screening Capital and Culture in Airbag and Smoking Room,” in Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre, eds J. Beck and V. Rodríguez Ortega. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, pp. 133–53. Quintana, Á., “Modelos realistas en un tiempo de emergencias de lo político,” Archivos de la Filmoteca, February, 49, 2005, pp. 10–32. Roberts, S., “Western Meets Eastwood,” in The Road Movie Book, eds S. Cohan and I.R. Hark. London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 45–69. Willemen, P. (ed.), Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural Studies and Film Theory. London: British Film Institute, 1994.

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Rural Spain as a Transnational Space for Reflection in Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo (1999) Chantal Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy

Following Franco’s death in November 1975, Spain underwent an unprecedented leap forward in capitalist-­oriented economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization which led to the transformation of the country from a backward, almost Third World nation to, in Marie Louise Graff ’s words, “a super-­slick Eurostate” (1993, 176).1 Clearly, the swift transition from a dictatorial regime to democracy which Franco’s chosen heir, King Juan Carlos I de Borbón, and his collaborators peacefully and legally brought to Spain over a three-­year period was exceptional. After the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE; Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) took office at the end of 1982, the country was admitted into NATO (1982) and then joined the European Community in 1986. As a result of increased domestic and foreign investment in the 1980s and in the 1990s, Spain continued to grow economically, and diligently worked toward creating a certain margin of manoeuvre and influence, both in the Community and internationally (Rodgers and Rodgers 1999, 168). In sum, Spain managed to prove that her transformation into a fully fledged democracy and a stable economic power could be carried through in a highly civilized manner. Looking back on all these years of rapid advancement, it seems that the grand celebrations in 1992 of the 500-year anniversary of the discovery of America offered a perfect opportunity for Spain to proclaim and promote its new, transnational identity. By combining a look to the past and a look to the future,2 the festivities highlighted both Spain’s unique history and the redefinition of the country as a modern nation, on a par with other elite members of the European Community. That said, while 1992 was a year in which Spain appeared impressively on the world stage as the organizer and host of the World Exposition in Seville, the Olympics Games in Barcelona, and when Madrid was proclaimed

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the European City of Culture, it appears (with hindsight) that the preparation and pulling-­off of such mega and culturally prestigious events served in part to screen from sight the necessity of major adjustments in the domestic landscape (Pavlović et al. 2009, 180–4). For instance, Spain’s entry into what was then the EC prompted a new socio-­political situation which urged a more carefully conceptualized politics of immigration. The truth is that, for generations back, Spain, especially its poorer parts, such as Galicia, Extremadura, and Andalucía, had been a major labor exporter. Only in the past two decades or so has the pattern of migration been reversed, Spain now experiencing one of the fastest rising rates of immigration in Europe.3 In this sense, an interesting aspect of the modernizing Europeanization process undertaken by the country has been its transformation from a dominant monoculturalism, based on the two key components of “Hispanidad” (the rejection of all things considered foreign) and National Catholicism, and its replacement by a new, emergent multiculturalism. In the changing context of a “Europe without frontiers” now turned “Fortress Europe” with the throwing up of protectionist barriers against those perceived as menacing outsiders (Ballesteros 2005, 3), a number of Spanish filmmakers have opted for creating pictures that refigure or reinscribe past notions of Spanishness and national specificity to reflect on transformations in Spanish society. On this view, contemporary Spanish films may be organized along two very loose groupings: on the one hand, the work of leading directors like Pedro Almodóvar, Fernando Trueba, and Carlos Saura, among others, in which age-­old signs of Spanish cultural identity are treated obliquely or with a parodic, self-­critical twist;4 and on the other, a newborn cinematographic trend or genre, categorized by Isolina Ballesteros as “immigration film” (2005, 4), that characterizes itself for its realist treatment of social issues such as immigration and xenophobia. Surveying the many stories produced since the 1990s that deal with the difficulties faced by Spaniards and migrants when confronted with each other,5 Daniela Flesler discerns a certain evolution from what she calls “dramas of arrival,” that center on the discrimination and injustices suffered by newly-­ arrived, illegal immigrants, to a later set of films, more focused on depicting the daily life and work of immigrants in Spain (2004, 105). Whether the issue raised in the movie is the racism encountered by immigrants upon arrival or a (comparatively) gentler concern with the “cultural distances” that separate natives from newcomers (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, 22), a common denominator in all these immigration films spotlighted by Flesler is their

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recourse to intercultural/interracial romance as an evaluating parameter of either insuperable differences or potential commonality (2004, 105).6 A case in point is Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World (1999), a film in which romance plays a pivotal role in the exploration/ representation of migratory currents to, and in Spain.7 The film tells the story of Santa Eulalia, a small, depopulated Castilian village. The bachelors in town, desperate to find partners, organize a three-­day celebration for prospective single women from all across Spain. During the festivities, Alfonso (Chete Lera), a plant nursery owner, and Marirrosi (Elena Irureta), who works as a nurse in Bilbao, become infatuated with each other. For his part, farmer Damián (Luis Tosar) finds his better half in Patricia (Lissete Mejía), an illegal, Dominican immigrant mother of two small children. Later in the film, the local building contractor, Carmelo (José Sancho), sets up with his new girlfriend, Milady (Marilyn Torres), a mega attractive and sexually liberated black woman whom he has brought back from one of his trips to Cuba. In the end, things only work out for one of the couples. Once Patricia manages to befriend her sullen mother-­ in-law, she and Damián can contemplate a future together. In between times, Marirrosi has decided to break her relationship with Alfonso and return to her solitary life in Bilbao. As for Milady, tired of ill-­treatment, she simply “hitchhikes her way out of rural Spain” (Schroeder 2008). The credit sequence immediately sets up a contrast between the colors and sounds inside the bus crammed full of lively, rowdy female passengers from the city and the arid, eerily quiet and people-­less Castilian scenery. While the women are joking and laughing, the shots of the wide-­open, empty, and muted landscape outside the bus convey a sense of the stagnancy of the rural world the vehicle is traversing. Thus, even before the plot lines begin to develop, Santa Eulalia, the destination the bus is heading toward, is presented as disconnected and alienated from recent developments. The fact is that behind the grand celebratory events of 1992 which proclaimed to the world Spain’s modernization and new, transnational status, the country, Fuchs notes (2003), was going through challenging domestic circumstances as rural populations were lured en masse to jobs and easy money in the big cities. Although the rhythm of demographic decline has not been homogeneous in all regions in Spain, as Marini and Mooney argue (2006, 94), the phenomenon of rural depopulation has severely affected those left behind, endangering their local economies, complicating the provision of public services, and/or actually wiping out of existence hitherto inhabited settlements.

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Still today, this is the generally held perception of the problems in rural areas in Spain. Implicit in this view, however, is a comparison between urban and rural areas—a mental appraisal that denotes a way of conceiving social reality as a linear, chronological evolution toward never-­ending progress. Taking into account Luis Martin-Cabrera’s reasonings concerning the pertinence of time as a defining characteristic of modernity (2002, 44), it may be argued that precisely because “progress,” understood in this sense, is tantamount to vibrant urban life and the ongoing expansion of technology and capital, such a notion indirectly establishes—or at least implies—a certain hierarchization of territories and places according to their level of advancement in this scheme of progress. Since many rural areas like the fictional Santa Eulalia of the film are considered to be outside of the rhythm of modernization, they are mentally expelled to the margins of contemporaneity as backward and primitive places. This said, as Stuart Hall aptly remarks (in Martin-Cabrera 2002, 46): Paradoxically, marginality has become a powerful space. It is a space of weak power, but it is a space of power, nonetheless . . . New subjects, new genders, new ethnicities, new regions, and new communities . . . have emerged, and have acquired through struggle, sometimes in very marginalized ways, the means to speak for themselves for the first time.

From this optic, the camera’s insistent focus on the immensity and silence of the countryside surrounding the village can now be seen to serve the double purpose of, on the one hand, drawing attention to the devastating consequences of rural depopulation while simultaneously highlighting—by contrast—the effervescence of power plays at work in this little Castilian town. We are presented, for example, with a bachelor community’s repopulation initiative in their effort to counter the consequences in their region of Spain’s Europeanization and modernization. The sponsoring of visits from single women to the village in the hope of finding wives in turn forces encounters and interconnectedness between Santa Eulalia’s inhabitants and creatures from “other worlds.” At the deeper microcosmic level of the private sphere, the film also pointedly addresses latent, unvoiced issues by exposing the conflictive relationships between three migrant women and their monocultural village partners. Santa Eulalia is thus presented as, in Stuart Hall’s words, a “powerful space” where contemporary upheavals, disjointed realities, and struggles for a better life are enacted. Such a view immediately brings to mind Doreen Massey’s call for a reconfiguration of the concept of space as a social, cultural, and political process

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rather than as a flat, fixed, and pre-­given surface. Importantly for my analysis of Flores de otro mundo, Massey’s alternative understanding of space invites a view of the fictional Santa Eulalia created in the film, not as the static “other” of progress and modernity, but rather as a location—however rural it might be—in throes of adaptation to “the fluxes and confusions of contemporary cultural movements” (Nair 2002). The three main points that together outline Doreen Massey’s proposed way of thinking space are: first, that space should be conceived of as produced through contacts and interactions; second, that space is the sphere in which multiplicity, plurality or heterogeneity co-­exist; and lastly, precisely because space on this reading is constituted by social relations, a conjuring of space as “always in process . . . never a closed system” (2005, 11). My aim in the following discussion is to examine Bollaín’s foray into the immigration genre in the light of Massey’s proposed shift in outlook respecting space. Each of her three propositions, or “ruminations” as she also calls them (2005, 9), will therefore serve as analytical frames from which conventional notions of home, of displacement and of cultural difference may be problematized. In her book, For Space (2005), Massey introduces her new conception of space by asking readers to consider how the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his two years of bloodshed, rout, and retreat can still be described today as “voyages of discovery” (2005, 4). As she explains, imagining space as merely an expanse of land that was marched through and taken over by the Spaniards has implications, if only because it implicitly entails a vision of other places, peoples, cultures as simply “lying there, on space, in place” (2005, 4; my italics), that is, existing on a conquerable surface and without histories and/ or trajectories of their own. By means of this opening narrative that describes Cortés’ “exploits” in Mexico from both a Spanish perspective and from a very differing Aztec point of view, Massey invites readers to envisage space as “not a mere surface, or a single narrative but a multiplicity of trajectories” (2005, 9). By taking this proposition seriously, it turns out that Santa Eulalia is not simply a rural spot, at a stand-­still on the bleak surface of Castilian Spain, passively awaiting revolutionary change. If, as Massey’s theory reminds us, any space or place carries with it a history of its own, the logical deduction is that the fictional village of the film is a site where—one may presume—lives have pushed ahead and business been done before the arrival of a bus-­load of female voyagers who themselves step off the bus, each carrying with them their own particular histories, experiences, problems, and potential to take decisions respecting the future.

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Following Massey’s reasoning, the important point here is that Santa Eulalia is not an already coherent, “pre-­given” location but the tangible, dynamic “product” of a complexity of links, relations, exchanges, and connections across time (Massey 2003; 2005, 107). In a word, space makes, and is made, by people, their social practices, and how they connect with each other. Although the strength of this understanding of space is the attention it pays to the minutia of social texture, by the same stroke of hand, it also provides a means of apprehending a micro-­context like Santa Eulalia as part and parcel of bigger, broader trends at work in the world. Indeed, Schroeder Rodríguez observes (2008): “From a strictly synchronic perspective, the presence of Caribbean women of color in Flores de otro mundo is tied, like the out-­migration from Santa Eulalia, to the logic of corporate globalization, one of whose salient features is the mass movement of peoples.” From this broader prism, and as Massey would emphatically argue, it is the very interaction of historical and contemporaneous forces from the “immensity of the global to the intimately tiny” (2005, 9) that makes a village like Santa Eulalia a constantly evolving, multi-­dimensional, transnational social space. This idea of space as constructed out of a complexity of connections at play may be said to be the film’s central narrative concern. As the women of diverse racial and social backgrounds step out of the bus, they are greeted with sounds of music in the village’s plaza. The mayor gives a welcome speech, ending with “conoceros y divertiros” (“may you all meet each other and enjoy yourselves”). Then, to the sound of a salsa rhythm filling the international-­flag-adorned plaza, the camera frames the first contact and conversations between the villagers and the recently arrived guests. It is at this moment that we hear the words of the song the band is playing: “Contamíname” (“Contaminate me”).8 Although, as it turns out, the chorus lines of this song will serve as a leitmotif throughout the film; the important point is, as Pavlović et al. point out (2009, 215–16), that already in these first scenes, the lyrics—“Contamíname, mézclate conmigo/Que bajo mi rama tendrás abrigo” (“Contaminate me, mix with me/Under my branch you will have protection”)—suggest to the viewer the villagers’ knowledge of, and their supposed acceptance of the growingly multicultural composition of contemporary Spanish society. Massey’s second proposition, it might be recalled, is that space should be understood as “the sphere of possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere in which distinct trajectories coexist; as the sphere of coexisting heterogeneity” (2005, 9). Certainly, Santa Eulalia’s space offers a sphere of possibility but the point of the film, as Bollaín

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took pains to emphasize (Nair 2002), is not so much the excitement of new encounters and meetings (the film begins and ends with a welcome fiesta in honor for potential wives and/or partners), but rather its focus on the (at times) extremely strained, daily interactions between outsiders and locals. It thus appears that the purpose of Flores de otro mundo is/was also to give visibility (and voice) to the many pitfalls on the bumpy road toward the merging (or not) of distinct trajectories. A gendered reading of the film, for example, reveals first and foremost the fact that the three female protagonists—Marirrosi, Milady, and Patricia—are commodities in the eyes of their male suitors. Indeed, from the very beginning of the film, it is the men who invite the women to come to town to conduct what may be considered a commercial transaction; the men who exhibit them in the village, and more importantly, the men who have the power to dispose of them if they don’t like the product. The case of Milady is most pronounced in this respect. Carmelo parades her like a sexual object as if she were a trophy from a hunt overseas, and when Milady displays her independence by spending a night dancing in Valencia, he lashes back by beating her in full public view. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Marirrosi, an economically independent woman from Euskadi—a region to the north of Spain still often thought of and described as a country in its own right. Apart from challenging the idea of a culturally homogeneous Spain, the presence of Marirrosi in the village forces upon the imagination a recognition of Santa Eulalia as a scenario where, alongside broader, more globalized movements and displacements, distinct national or regional histories, experiences and trajectories meet and interact. Although as a self-­ supporting, white, city girl, Marirrosi offers an encouraging indication of changing realities and perceptions of women in contemporary Spain, her affluence (she has a house, a car, and a job) and fairly privileged social status do not protect her from suffering the harmful effects of patriarchal power. Indeed, she finds herself unable to break Alfonso’s insistence that it is she who must sacrifice her job, her independence, and town life for them to live as a couple in Santa Eulalia, while he never even contemplates moving with her to Bilbao. Finally, Patricia’s situation vis-à-vis her partner, which occupies a center position in the narrative, can be seen as proffering a sanctioned “midway course” between the extremes represented by the other two couples. However, even in her relationship with Damián, Patricia is an object that can be disposed of and dispensed with, as in fact Damián does when, upon learning of her marriage in the Dominican Republic, he feels his position as patriarch called into question.

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If, over and above gender, we consider how cultural contexts and race enter into the film’s narrative, the picture becomes even more complex. As Parvati Nair points out (2002), many of the female migrants who come over to Spain in the hope of bettering their lives are mostly urban women who, like Patricia in the film, have moved from their own cities back home first to urban centers in Spain, such as Madrid or Barcelona, before shifting to rural contexts. Already subjected to the experiences of cultural dislocation, the move from town to village therefore represents for them a further displacement brought on by transnational and transcultural currents. Thus, while on paper, women like Milady and Patricia are Third World citizens, and the village men—as Spaniards—members of the First World, the question the film seems to pose is whether, in the context of the new, Europeanized, transnational, “modernized” Spain, the Santa Eulalia inhabitants are not themselves more “marginal” than their migrant female guests. Through the lens of Massey’s second proposition therefore, it appears that the Third World is not presented or represented in the film as simply “out there,” in the beyond, but rather, as Nair observes (2002), as a phenomenon that is tied into the very local fabric, to be detected in terms of the men as well as the women. Moreover, as “city girls,” the women are shown to be more cosmopolitan than the village men, as denoted by Milady’s constant use of the phone for her long-­ distance calls and her cravings for “city” entertainments, reflected or “translated” as a frenzied (but innocent) dancing night in a Valencia discotheque, leaving Carmelo fuming in her absence in the village bar. Patricia may also be urban, but her trajectory so far is seen to catch up with her when her ex-­husband, who deserted her and her two children, turns up again, sensing she may have money. Strange contrasts are thrown up by these mixed couples: Damián implicitly foregrounds the city over the village, showing his awareness of himself as a marginal figure—despite the transnational and transcultural currents running through his life—by lashing out at her that, once she has obtained legal residence through marriage, she won’t have any further reason to put up with a country bumpkin like himself (“No tienes porque seguir aguantando al paleto”). Yet, Damián, by dint of his nationality, can provide Patricia with the means of a good life for herself and her children. The interconnectedness of transnational currents with traditional, rural life is staged by having Damián and Patricia making a go of their marriage despite the geographical gulf between their two countries. On the other hand, as commented before, Alfonso and Marirrosi remain divided despite a much greater degree of apparent commonality in terms of nationality and race.

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Conversely, if we consider the body as cultural signifier, then a sense of the racial and sexual hierarchies at play in the film springs up. None of the characters, for example, questions the fair-­skinned Marirrosi’s motives in going out with Alfonso. It is taken for granted that they are in love and trying to make things work out for themselves. This is certainly not the case with either Patricia or Milady. As soon as it is clear they are there to stay, they come up against the villagers’ distrust of the alien, the different, as evidenced by the following comments made by Aurora, the town’s bar owner: “¡Madre de Dios! Lo que nos faltaba . . . Todas buscan lo mismo, dinero y papeles. En cuanto los tienen, se van.” (“Mother of God! That’s all we needed . . . [They’re] all looking for the same thing, money and residency papers, and as soon as they have those, they’re gone”). Although Milady’s first appearance in the village is comically constructed as a way-­out act of a voyeuristic exhibitionism, her explosive exoticism—clad as she is in a braless top and lycra pants imprinted with the USA flag, her appearance causes old-­aged villagers to gasp for air9—is a way of showing how the “disruptive difference” she represents invites both racist and sexual violence.10 Constantly exposed to the libidinous gaze of villagers and treated as an imported commodity by Carmelo, her dark skin and foreignness make of her the victim of an objectification no Spanish, or white European woman is likely to suffer nowadays. For her part, Patricia, more subdued and more conservative in her attire, opts for marriage and integration in the village for the sake of her two children. However, she finds herself having to daily stand up to her mother-­in-law’s racist censoring of her tastes and customs: cooking beans with or without broth, sounds of love-­ making, as well as “foreign” music, and visitations. Only when the two women speak in confidence about their love for their respective husbands in a poignant scene in the cemetery are Gregoria’s racist prejudices eradicated and a bond of mutual understanding created between them. More parallels may be drawn between Bollaín’s screened account of the transformative powers of migration and the particular conceptualizations of space spelt out by Massey in For Space. Indeed, in her third proposition for a re-­figuration of space, Massey claims that space should be imagined “as always in process, as never a closed system,” and that such a formulation rests on a conviction about the full implication of time—and hence politics—in the spatial. As she states, “[O]nly if the future is open is there any ground for a politics which can make a difference,” and therefore, “[F]or the future to be open, space must be open too” (2005, 11–12). On this reading, an important point to note is that Gregoria would be in the same situation as Alfonso or Carmelo, that is, left alone

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in “her” house without the company of her son and family, had she not found a way to see Patricia as an ally. Thus, rather than antagonism promoted by the limitations of space “at home” (which could be metaphorically associated with the resurgence of racist attitudes in Spain over the last decade) the transnational unity and solidarity we see develop between the political mother—representative of “una madre patria” (Van Liew 2010)—and the Dominican immigrant is shown to transform the home into a new space of reciprocity—a space of shared responsibility in the forging of the family’s (Spain’s?) future. Consistent with its sympathetic picture of Santa Eulalia as an open interactional space where potential links, relations and/or connections may or may not be established, the film releases Milady from her position of abused but desirable object. Indeed, despite her vulnerability to racism and sexism, Milady remains autonomous and decides to face other possible arrangements lingering beyond the frame—Town life? Another relationship? Deportation? Making it to Italy to live with her boyfriend? Whichever way, it is supposed that she will continue her migration in search of a location within Europe and First World capitalism. This critical aspect is underscored by Marirrosi’s prerogative to abandon her “transnational relationship” (internal to Spain) and to return to her former life as a single working woman/mother in Bilbao. Empathy toward these female characters may lead the spectator to read their refusal to adapt to village life and their disappearance from the scene as a cheerless finale to two stories of failed relationships. However, as Doreen Massey would argue, the flaw in such a consideration is that it is predicated upon a vision of Santa Eulalia as an already constituted, fixed, and unchanging entity. For Massey, what is needed is to uproot “space” from closed and dead-­end imaginings of the type and settle it instead “among another set of ideas (heterogeneity; relationality; coevalness . . . liveliness indeed) where it releases a more challenging political landscape” (2005, 13). In a word, only if space is thought of as relational can it be fundamentally open (i.e. always under construction); and only if apprehended as an ever-­changing scenario can it become the very ground of a relational politics based on all levels of open-­ended negotiations and configurations. At a very practical political level therefore this change in the angle of vision proposed by Massey enables a more positive reading of Milady and Marirrosi’s short-­lived sojourn in Santa Eulalia. Indeed, by virtue of their fleeting presence in the village, the rural set-­up they abandon will have (however minutely) evolved, just as the two women will themselves have changed as a result of their lived experiences in the locality. Space in this sense is shown to be

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constantly in the making—shifts, adjustments, and adaptations taking place at multiple and complex levels, from Milady and Marirrosi’s discreet impact on the locality, to the villagers’ acceptance of Patricia and her two black children as new “national” subjects. This idea of incessant move toward ever more transnational space is further reinforced in the film by means of its concluding scenes that reflect the cyclical return of the “love bus” one year later, as now both black and white children swarm the vehicle in renewed expectation. To conclude, just as the 1992 celebrations broadcast to the world the reversal of Spain’s history of failed modernization and backwardness, Spanish cinema saw the emergence of a new filmic trend that focused specifically on the recent phenomenon of immigration to the country, now perceived as an up-­andcoming, European, First World nation. As an artistic coming to terms with encounters between people of different cultures, Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo clearly belongs to this contemporary filmic genre through its treatment of how three, very distinct, “love bus” female voyagers, Milady, Patrica, and Marirrosi, fare in the remote and isolated Castilian village of Santa Eulalia. From the dynamic perspective on space proposed by Doreen Massey, Patricia and Miranda’s exotic otherness and the different worldview of an economically independent woman like Marirrosi have been shown to offer new insights into how the complexities of transnational relations can be envisioned. Indeed, by applying a relational understanding of how foreign-­born citizens and native Spaniards share spaces both on and off screen, it turns out that the Espagne profonde setting of the film is not a static relic of the past, but a lively, socially structured space where cultural, gender, and race tensions and negotiations eventually lead to the forging of a new community. The film’s foregrounding of the fictional Santa Eulalia village as context for encounters between rural men and migrant women thus serves to fuel a perception of rural Spain’s transnational interconnectedness.

Notes 1 Funding from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the research project FF12013–40769–P is gratefully acknowledged. All translations are the author’s except otherwise noted. 2 As prominently emphasized in the Spanish pavilions at the Expo ’92 (World Exposition) in Seville (Morgan 2000, 60–3).

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3 For more details, see Migration Information Source at 4 A decade after José Luis Garci’s Volver a empezar/To Begin Again (1982) won the first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Spain, Spanish cinema achieved new international prominence with the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film awarded to Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque (1992) and Pedro Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre/All About My Mother (1999). With hindsight, these 1990s films show just how much Spanish cinema had evolved in a relatively short time. Whereas Garci’s formulaic melodrama about remembrances of the Civil War relied heavily on stereotypical clichés about Spain, Belle Époque and Todo sobre mi madre offered daringly unconventional images of Spain and Spaniards. Although Carlos Saura’s surrealist film Mamá cumple cien años/Mama Turns 100 (1979) only reached nomination stage for the Oscars, he has received much critical acclaim during his career for his films’ allegorical reflections on Spanish identity as exemplified, for instance, in his particular and very personalized way of capturing the essence of Spain’s most emblematic dance and music in musicals like Bodas de sangre/Blood Wedding (1981), Carmen (1983), El amor brujo/Love the Magician (1986), and Flamenco (1995), as well as in his more recent Flamenco, Flamenco (2010) that brings to the fore a new generation of talents in this Iberian art. 5 For a list of films on immigration and emigration, directed and produced in Spain, see Emigración/inmigración: Todas las miradas at 6 Interestingly, representations of romantic relationships between North African or African immigrants and Spaniards consistently end in failure. Thus, movies like Las cartas de Alou/Letters from Alou (Montxo Armendáriz 1990), Bwana (Imanol Uribe 1996), Saïd (Llorenç Soler 1998), Susanna (Antonio Chavarrías 1996), or Tomándote/Two for Tea (Isabel Gardela 2000), among others, stand in contrast to other contemporary Spanish films that present, also through romance, the gradual but successful integration of Latin American migrants to Spain. 7 Although by the 1990s Icíar Bollaín was already a well-­known actress in Spain, her real debut in film directing came with the launching of Hola, ¿estás sola?/Hi, Are You Alone? (1995). After Flores de otro mundo, her reputation as a film director was consolidated with Te doy mis ojos/Take My Eyes (2003) which won seven Goya Awards in 2004. 8 “Contamíname” (Pedro Guerra) was popularized at that time in Spain by the singer and actress Ana Belén. 9 As Milady steps out of Carmelo’s car, a chorus of old men express their racial confusion and sexist reactions:

Rural Spain as a Transnational Space for Reflection Abuelo 1  Abuelo 2  Abuelo 3  Abuelo 2  Abuelo 1  Abuelo 2  Abuelo 3  Abuelo 2  Abuelo 1  Old man 1  Old man 2  Old man 3  Old man 2  Old man 1  Old man 2  Old man 3  Old man 2  Old man 1 

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¡Qué buena está! ¿Y esta cuala es? La cubana. ¿No era la dominicana? Que no, que la dominicana es la del Damián. ¡Que no te enteras! Oye, pues yo creo que está mejor esta que la otra. Sí, bastante, bastante mejor, bastante. ¡Qué dentadura! ¡Qué labios! ¡Qué besazos tiene que pegar, madre mía! ¡Quién fuera . . .! ¡Quién tuviera ahora veinte años! Whoah! She’s hot! Which one is she? The Cuban. Wasn’t she Dominican? No! The Dominican is Damián’s. Don’t you get it! Listen, I think this one is hotter than the other one. Yes, much better. What teeth! What lips! Wow, what kisses she must plant on him! If only . . .! Ah, to be twenty again!

This receiving party, seemingly innocuous owing to their advanced ages, nonetheless serves as precursor to racism and the sexist violence that Milady, the darkest and youngest of this trio of displaced protagonists, will endure. 10 For further reading on this point see Martin-Cabrera 2002 and Van-Liew 2010.

References Balibar, E. and I.M. Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 1991. Ballesteros, I., “Embracing the Other: The Feminization of Spanish Immigration Cinema,” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, 2, 2005, pp. 3–14. Emigración/Inmigración: Todas las miradas. Available from: [January 10, 2012]. Flesler, D., “New Racism, Intercultural Romance, and the Immigration Question in Contemporary Spanish Cinema,” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, vol. 1, no. 2, 2004, pp. 103–18. Fuchs, D., “In Spain’s Lonely Countryside, a Cupid Crusade,” The Christian Science Monitor, 2003. Available from: [February 2, 2012].

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Graff, M.L., Culture Shock! Spain. London: Kuperard, 1993. Marini, M.B. and P.H. Mooney, “Rural economies,” in Handbook of Rural Studies, ed. P. Cloke. London: Sage, 2006, pp. 91–103. Martin-Cabrera, L., “Postcolonial Memories and Racial Violence in Flores de otro mundo,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no.1, 2002, pp. 43–55. Massey, D., “Some Times of Space,” in Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project, ed. S. May. London: Tate Publishing, 2003, pp. 107–18. Massey, D., For Space. London: Sage, 2005. Migration Information Source. Available from [January 10, 2012]. Morgan, T., “1992: Memories and Modernities,” in Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies, eds B. Jordan and R. Morgan-Tamosunas. London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 58–67. Nair, P., “In Modernity’s Wake: Transculturality, Deterritorialization and the Question of Community in Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo,” Free Patents Online. Available from: [January 10, 2012]. Pavlović, T., I. Alvarez, R. Blanco-Cano, A. Grisales, A. Osorio, and A. Sánchez, 100 Years of Spanish Cinema. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Rodgers, E and V. Rodgers, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Spanish Culture. London: Routledge, 1999. Schroeder Rodríguez, P.A., “Migrants and Lovers: Interculturation in Flowers from Another World,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media. Jump Cut, 50, 2008. Available from: [January 10, 2012]. Van Liew, M., “New Modernity, Transnational Women, and Spanish Cinema,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 12, no. 2, 2010. Available from: [January 7, 2012].

Part Three

Appropriating the Global: Self-­Conscious Transnationalism

12

Isn’t it Bromantic? New Directions in Contemporary Spanish Comedy Beatriz Oria

Contemporary Spanish cinema is no longer what it used to be. In the decade of the 1990s a new wave of directors revitalized the Spanish cinematographic scene, veering away from the conventions of the social realism which had become one of Spanish cinema’s trademarks. This generation of filmmakers thrived and renewed itself during the 2000s and 2010s with new names, who continued making movies about their present, strongly influenced by new visual codes coming from popular culture, television, publicity, and music videos. As Ángel Quintana points out, Spanish directors in the 2000s “reflect a more globalized culture, whose points of reference no longer lie in empiric reality, but in the (sub) cultures of the image” (2005, 12, my translation). These directors do not only get inspiration from Spanish TV culture, as some authors have argued (Smith 2009), but also from recurrent patterns in Hollywood cinema. Given their postmodern taste for intertextuality, hybridity, and generic pastiche, it seems logical that this new generation of filmmakers considers Hollywood as a constant source of inspiration in an increasingly globalized cultural context (Heredero 2003; Quintana 2005; Pavlović et al. 2009). Moreover, these directors have no problem in admitting that “they look to certain genre formulas habitual in US cinema in order to extract the vitality and energy that—according to them—they found missing and whose absence alienated them from both the images and the goals of the Spanish cinema of the 1980s” (Heredero 2003, 36). This prompts the question: are these borrowings enriching or damaging for Spanish cinema? Are they eroding the “essence” of a national cinema, contaminating it with American influences and doing away with its local specificity? Debates about the legitimacy of Spanish filmmakers’ replication of Hollywood’s formulas is connected to the ongoing controversy over the globalizing power of Hollywood and its effects on national film industries. Some people see this influence as a

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menace to local cultures, as an “agent of a global culture industry and a threat to the cultural sovereignty of other nations” (Semati and Sotirin 1999, 178). Among other things, they tend to fear the uncritical adoption of American values on the part of the public. This does not need to be the case, though. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to maintain the “purity” of a national culture—if such a thing existed, to start with (Morris 2002), foreign cultural products are not simply “transplanted” into local cultures, they are often adapted and creatively reworked by particular markets (Demont-Heinrich 2011, 670). Hollywood texts are subject to local interpretations and they are susceptible to being appropriated by different national audiences for their own purposes, resisting the unfettered importation of American values (Tracey 1988; Liebes and Katz 1991; Feigenbaum 2011, 111). In this context, Hollywood’s output may be seen as a source of creative richness upon which national filmmakers may choose to dwell, in a more positive context of cultural hybridity and interculturalism. Some authors like Tom O’Regan, for instance, prefer the term “cultural exchange” when referring to Hollywood’s (and other large cinematographic industries) interaction with smaller national cinemas. He sees this interaction as intertextual conversation rather than as straightforward domination (2009, 508). In his view, Hollywood’s influence does not necessarily have to be perceived as an element which erodes local national identities, but as a useful tool to better understand them and even reinforce them. In any case, whether we choose to perceive Hollywood in terms of cultural domination or cultural exchange, one thing is clear: its influence is inescapable and it can be traced back much earlier than the last decade, in which globalization has revealed the real extent of its reach (Feigenbaum 2011, 109). Hollywood’s transnational spirit was already pointed out by critics a couple of decades ago, when terms like globalization, multiculturalism or cosmopolitism were far from becoming buzzwords. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, for instance, suggested that Hollywood’s transnational vocation should be traced back to the very beginning of cinema: since early American audiences were a melting pot of émigrés, movies were never meant to address an all-American culture (1985, 154). On the other hand, Frederick Wasser, who believes that Hollywood is no longer an institution of American national culture, identifies a critical audience shift in the 1970s as a result of the development of new economic practices based on the international pre-­selling of unproduced films (1995). The precise date at which Hollywood became a transnational rather than a national cinematography is probably impossible to pinpoint. However, it is difficult to dispute the fact that, unlike

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Spanish, French or Iranian cinema, Hollywood films tend to be perceived by local audiences as “free” from the mark of nationality. As Edward Buscombe says, “at times Hollywood appears to be . . . no longer a national cinema but the cinema” (1981, 141). This assertion, made in the 1980s, still rings true today: Hollywood is rarely referred to as a national cinema nowadays, it has become a global cinema, an inescapable influence on Western cinematographies, so deeply ingrained in local cinemas that it is likely to go unnoticed by the public, unable by now to distinguish between American and local forms and values. This is the case of many Spanish films, which revolve around a global/local dialectic in terms of form and/or content. This essay will focus primarily on the former, that is, on the formal tools borrowed from Hollywood by Spanish productions. It will interrogate the “globalizing effects” of American genres on Spanish films, focusing on Spanish self-­constructions of national identity in the context of Hollywood’s influence. With this purpose, this article will deal with a genre which has been comparatively disregarded by academia: comedy. Much has been written about Spanish social realism, both set in the past (such as the Civil War) or in contemporary times. Comedy, on the contrary, has not received so much attention on the part of critics. This essay will examine Spanish cinema’s take on a particular generic model present in today’s Hollywood cinema, and its dialogue with the Spanish idiosyncrasy. It will explore how recent Spanish comedy draws on the bromance, a very popular cycle of recent US comedy. My aim is to show how Hollywood’s formal elements are appropriated and combined with vernacular tropes in order to produce texts preoccupied with upkeeping both a local and a global agenda, preserving the marks of Spanish “difference” in the age of global media. The bromance is a cycle of comedies that started to gain momentum in the mid-2000s. Its success is generally attributed to Judd Apatow, producer (and sometimes writer and director) of many of these films. They deal with the relationship between their male characters, as they interrogate the limits and nature of male friendship. These films usually feature a heterosexual love interest, but it tends to play second fiddle to the homosocial bond established between their male protagonists. Although many of these films’ plots include some sort of romantic relationship with the opposite sex, it often feels like a means to assure the characters’ heterosexuality, as the true focus of the narrative tends to lie in the development of their friendship, which is frequently portrayed as a learning process comparable to the establishment of the romantic couple. Examples include Swingers (Doug Liman 1996), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd

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Apatow 2005), Wedding Crashers (David Dobkin 2005), I Love You, Man (John Hamburg 2009), Funny People (Judd Apatow 2009), Superbad (Greg Mottola 2007), Get Him to the Greek (Nicholas Stoller 2010), Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green 2008), Hall Pass (Peter and Bobby Farrelly 2009), The Hangover (Todd Phillips 2009), Role Models (David Wain 2008), Due Date (Todd Phillips 2009), The Dilemma (Ron Howard 2011), Humpday (Lynn Shelton 2009), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Dennis Dugan 2007), The Green Hornet (Michel Gondry 2011), Chuck & Buck (Miguel Arteta 2000), Dinner for Schmucks (Jay Roach 2010), Ted (Seth MacFarlane 2012), Step Brothers (Adam McKay 2008), Crazy, Stupid Love (John Requa and Glenn Ficarra 2011), You, Me and Dupree (Anthony and Joe Russo 2006), or The Internship (Shawn Levy 2013). The success of this kind of films has been such that some critics have gone so far as to declare the bromance the “new romantic comedy” (Setoodeh 2009). These movies are redefining the boundaries of the representation of male friendship in the genre, displaying a preoccupation with the rules of romance and friendship between men, what is “gay” and what is not (Carman 2010). As Ramin Setoodeh says, the bromance shows us that straight guys, even without the aid of a high-­speed car chase, can bond almost as strongly as heterosexual lovebirds. To succeed, a bromance must walk a fine line. It must lightly indulge in gay stereotypes, but never in a mean-­spirited way. The bromance allows straight men to share their feelings—or, in Superbad, their sleeping-­bag space—with their buddies without fear of ridicule by the audience. 2009, 73

Although the bromance’s approach to male bonding is more ambivalent than Setoodeh’s quote suggests, as it also includes an important homophobic element (Hansen-Miller and Gill 2011, 44; Alberti 2013, 168), on the whole, this genre can be considered as an ironic twist on conventional romantic comedy, since the relationship between its male protagonists often follows the same pattern as the traditional heterosexual couple does. The new-­found centrality of male characters in these films and the emphasis on sexual and/or eschatological elements have helped to reach a wider male audience, as men have not been traditionally fond of this genre. However, this apparently “commercial” motivation has also expanded the boundaries of representation of the romantic hero, depicting a more complex and varied model of masculinity, one which is aware of previous representations of both traditional and

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non-­normative masculinities and the various discourses that have accompanied them, including feminism. As Claire Mortimer says, “these films work to reclaim masculinity for a generation that sees feminism as a historical movement and is familiar with the conflicting representations of men in popular culture” (2010, 135).1 The growing centrality of male characters in Spanish romantic comedy is noticeable in films like Pagafantas/Friend Zone (Borja Cobeaga 2009), El otro lado de la cama/The Other Side of the Bed (Emilio Martínez-Lazaro 2002), Los 2 lados de la cama/Both Sides of the Bed (Emilio Martínez-Lazaro 2005), Días de fútbol/Soccer Days (David Serrano 2003), Una hora más en Canarias/One Hour More in the Canary Islands (David Serrano 2010), Bon appétit (David Pinillos 2010), Que se mueran los feos/To Hell with the Ugly (Nacho G. Velilla 2010), Fuga de cerebros/Brain Drain (Fernando González Molina 2009), Fuera de carta/Chef ’s Special (Nacho G. Velilla 2008), Bypass (Aitor Mazo and Patxo Tellería 2009), Muertos de amor/Dead for Love (Mikel Aguirresarobe 2012), ¿Estás ahí?/Are You There? (Roberto Santiago 2011), or Ocho apellidos vascos/Spanish Affair (Emilio Martínez-Lazaro 2014). More specifically, the “bromantic tendencies” of Spanish comedy are especially evident in films like La gran familia española/Family United (Daniel Sánchez Arevalo 2013), Primos/Cousinhood (Daniel Sánchez Arevalo 2011), La torre de Suso/Suso’s Tower (Tom Fernández 2007), and No controles/Lovestorming (Borja Cobeaga 2010). The following lines will try to explore the transnational dimension of the bromance, analysing how this genre has appropriated and reworked the conventions of this genre, adapting them to the Spanish context. While maintaining the formula of the Hollywood bromance and the complexities associated to the new model of masculinity it puts forward, a local identity is preserved by means of a series of strategies which propose a concept of “Spanishness” strongly linked to stereotypes of the past, both in terms of characters and mise-­en-scène. The result is a “glocal” product, one that is easily “transferable” to other contexts but immediately recognizable for the Spanish audience at the same time. To illustrate this point I will focus on one of the movies mentioned earlier: No Controles.

The Spanish bromance No Controles tells the story of Sergio (Unax Ugalde), a regular thirty-­something who tries to win back his ex-­girlfriend Bea (Alexandra Jiménez) just before she

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moves to Germany with her new boyfriend Ernesto (Miguel Ángel Muñoz). They split some months ago because he refused to move in with her. The action takes place in a hotel next to the airport, where the characters are trapped by a snow blizzard on New Year’s Eve. Sergio will be assisted in his mission by Juancarlitros (Julián López), an offbeat childhood acquaintance he reencounters by chance and whose weird behavior is as annoying as well-­meaning. Although the plot revolves around Sergio’s attempts to recover Bea’s love, it is his relationship with Juancarlitros that steals the audience’s attention from the very beginning. Their relationship actually follows the conventions of the classical romantic comedy, which usually includes a cute meet, a series of adventures, a fight, and a final reconciliation. The final aim of the romantic comedy’s structure is to propel the characters into a learning process that will redeem them from their initial eccentricity and reward them with each other’s love. In the case of the bromance, the learning process by which the protagonist proves himself worthy of his girl’s love is made possible through his interaction with his male sidekick, not with the girl herself. Although both characters are coded as Beta males, Juancarlitros is presented as Sergio’s true opposite: hyper-­ sociable and irritatingly talkative, but also good-­hearted and well-­intentioned. By contrast, Sergio is shy, introverted and, much like Apatow’s child-­men protagonists, slightly stunted in his “sentimental development,” as his refusal to consolidate his relationship with Bea shows. Despite Juancarlitros’ uncountable flaws, Sergio ends up assimilating those qualities he does possess, which will be necessary to captivate Bea again: his sense of humor, expansive personality, and ability to express emotions and value his loved ones in the right measure. In this way, the film makes clear, as is the case in other bromances, that the crucial relationship for the protagonist’s learning process is his homosocial bond: the heterosexual relationship is only the reward for this process, it is the final end, not the means.2 Despite these films’ appropriation of a mainstream Hollywood genre they still succeed in retaining a vernacular flavor, a Spanish “essence.” If, as Ann Davies says, “the transnational still has the national buried within it” (2011, 7), the following lines will argue that despite these films’ conscious adoption of a Hollywood generic model, they try to retain their “Spanishness” by resorting to the myths of a national past, sometimes in a parodic way and other times in an openly nostalgic manner. This “mythical” past materializes in these films in two aspects: a stereotypical characterization of some of their protagonists; and an idealized setting evocative of a time long gone.

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The characters For John Alberti, the unstable, highly-­troubled models of masculinity present in the contemporary bromance stem from a generic crisis in which the traditional Alpha male is replaced by a bifurcated model of male identity, represented in the two protagonists of the bromance. These movies usually feature a “destabilized” male (what he calls the melodramatized Beta male). He is a “well-­groomed but depressed superego,” who mirrors the crisis over the Alpha male in contemporary romantic comedy. He is usually paired with a “slovenly id-­like” character who embodies those features repressed by the other (2013, 168). The Spanish bromance imitates this model, featuring two kinds of characters: the protagonists, who represent a model of masculinity more in tune with contemporary discourses of gender identity (Diego—Quim Gutiérrez—in Primos, Cundo—Javier Cámara—in La Torre de Suso, Daniel—Miquel Fernández—in La gran familia española or Sergio in No Controles); and secondary characters, who are usually less complex constructions meant for comic effect, often resorting to dated national stereotypes (Julián—Raúl Arévalo—in Primos, Mote—César Vea—in La Torre de Suso, Benjamín—Roberto Álamo—in La gran familia española and Juancarlitros in No Controles). It is through these characters that the Spanish bromance introduces a local element in a “global” generic model. The protagonists of these films seem to embody a new model of Spanish masculinity for the twenty-­first century, but it is their sidekicks who tend to steal the show. They play second fiddle to the main character’s quest for identity and love, but provide the majority of comic gags. Coincidentally, they all portray an outdated identity model connected to stereotypes of the past that is deeply rooted in the national cinematic collective imagination. This is done in different ways in the aforementioned films but in the case of No Controles, Sergio embodies Alberti’s “melodramatized Beta male,” the sensitive, depressed superego who reflects the masculinity crisis pervading the romantic comedy genre. On the other hand, Juancarlitros represents the carnivalesque, albeit repressed side of the protagonist, and this repressed “id” displays a remarkably local character. Juancarlitros’s “Spanishness” is highly stereotyped and crucially dependent on a shared national memory of a “mythical” past. We all have known someone like him: tawdry and tasteless, a social outcast. He wants to become a professional comedian, but his jokes are outdated, stuck in the 1980s. He is a nuisance, but he is also kind and selfless. Despite his social ineptitude, he turns out to be an

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endearing character, not only on account of his intrinsic goodness, but also because, whether we like it or not, spectators cannot help but recognize a part of themselves in him. The laughter he elicits stems alternatively from a feeling of superiority and self-­recognition. This duality reflects the double agenda of the text toward the concept of “Spanishness,” which is also partly representative of contemporary Spanish comedy: Juancarlitros embodies the tacky Spanishness of the españoladas of the 1960s and 1970s. The film ridicules that stereotype and that kind of unsophisticated, coarse humor, but it celebrates it simultaneously, because he is a charismatic and lovable character. We laugh at the “Spanishness” he represents but at the same time he ends up stealing the show: the kind of dated humor he sports is made fun of but it is also deployed as an effective comic device to elicit the audience’s laughter, a kind of laughter that is often self-­ conscious, partly because it brings back memories of a shared national past in which we all participated in those—now outdated—jokes. These films resort to the resuscitation of stereotypical characters of the past reminiscent of the españolada of the 1960s and 1970s to rescue the Spanish essence from the tumultuous hybridization of identities brought about by globalization.3 However, as these examples have shown, this is done in a parodic way mainly. The popularity of these characters, despite—or precisely because of—their recycling of dated stereotypes of Spanish national cinema seems to support José Luis Fecé’s argument about the different concepts of “Spanishness” upheld by critics and audience: the academia’s sense of “Spanishness” is mainly associated to social realism, a kind of social cinema disconnected from contemporary audiences; whereas today’s box-­office hits are linked to the 1960s and 1970s españolada. For Fecé, this playful revisitation is a postmodern and transnational phenomenon: This ‘return’ of the tradition of the españolada and its success with a young audience, born after Franco’s death, cannot be understood simply as nostalgia for a time and cinema long gone; it is rather an undoubtedly transnational phenomenon related with one of postmodernism’s main features: the irreverent recycling of genres, the predominance of pastiche and nostalgia, as well as the interconnection between auteur and commercial cinema. 2005, 94

Juancarlitros makes us laugh because he connects with the Spanish collective imagination, but at the same time we are embarrassed at his jokes, maybe because we recognize ourselves in him. Following Alberti’s classification, he represents the protagonist’s repressed id, and indeed, the text is trying to “repress” him

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all the time, constantly ridiculing his antics. Does this mean that the text is trying to repress the “Spanishness” of the text to better conform to the Hollywood model represented by Sergio? If it does, it does not succeed because he ends up stealing the show, as the tacky Spanish identity he epitomizes comes out triumphant over Sergio’s more evolved, contemporary and “global” identity— which is also much more troubled. In this light, the Spanish bromance’s Torrente-­ like sidekicks can be read as a “return of the repressed” of sorts, the repressed being everything we dislike about our national identity but we cannot drop because it is part of us, and which finds an appropriate outlet in this sort of kind-­ spirited parody.

Mise-­en-scène: back to the past In the Hollywood bromance, the setting where the action unfolds does not tend to play an important role in the narrative. The characters often interact in places of little geographic specificity and sometimes in “non-­places,” as is the case of road movies like Due Date or Get Him to the Greek. In the Spanish films the place where the plot unfolds plays a more relevant part in the characters’ journey toward adulthood, and this place is remarkably “local.” That is the case of the family country house in which the brothers of La gran familia española spent their childhood, or the Spanish villages in which the characters of Primos and La Torre de Suso grew up. These settings are strongly linked to an often idealized past shared by the characters—and I would dare say by the audience as well, as they often feature very recognizable tropes shared by most Spaniards. That is the case of the “Spanish village’ ” featured in these films, which is reminiscent of the place in which many Spaniards used to spend their holidays as children, encapsulating fond memories of youth. In the case of these three films, the place where the action unfolds is evocative of easier, happier times for the protagonists’ troubled male identities. In No Controles, the setting is not rural and it does not involve family connections, but as happens in the other Spanish bromances, it does imply a “return to the past” in order to help its protagonist find himself a future next to Bea. As in the previous cases, this is a past very specifically rooted in the Spanish reality. The action takes place in a single spot: a hotel. This hotel displays an evident vintage aesthetic that, inadvertently, takes us back to the 1980s. Everything in the mise-­en-scène is subtly inspired by this decade: from the

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hotel’s décor to the female lead’s shoulder pads. However, it is Juancarlitros’s characterization that most contributes to this 1980s “vibe” as he seems stuck in this decade not only on account of his hairstyle, wardrobe and “accessories,” but also on his dated jokes and puns. Another element which helps to take us back to the 1980s is the soundtrack: the recurrence of the musical theme after which the film is named (“No Controles,” a song performed by Olé Olé and written by Nacho Cano in 1983) is especially meaningful: this is the song that reminds Sergio and Bea of their first encounter, and it is the song she plays at the piano twice in the film: the first time, with Sergio, it is used to confirm their compatibility as a couple. The second time it shows his lack of chemistry with Ernesto, Bea’s “wrong partner” (Neale 1992). In the end, it is the song that ends up making the protagonist couple come together: when Bea is about to set off for Germany with Ernesto, she finds Sergio’s present in her purse: a small 1980s digital keyboard with the song recorded in it. Ernesto does not know the song, which confirms for Bea that he is not The One for her. The song, and the universe it evokes (a period of optimistic freedom after the stifling times of the dictatorship associated to Madrid’s “Movida”), serves to make the characters come together while highlighting Sergio’s metamorphosis, who learns to “lose control” of his emotions with the help of Juancarlitros, thus winning back Bea’s love. So, as happens in the Hollywood bromance, male bonding in No Controles “operates as a catalyst for self-­discovery” while the “narrative resolution is largely configured in heteronormative terms” (Boyle and Berridge 2014, 12). However, despite its allegiance to Hollywood’s generic patterns, it is the specificity of its local context (the meanings evoked by the decade of the 1980s in the socio-­cultural panorama of post-Franco Spain and Juancarlitros’s “national” idiosyncrasy as facilitator of the romantic union) that ultimately makes possible the happy ending and the protagonist’s successful completion of his learning process and entrance in the world of full-­blown adulthood.

Conclusion Edward Buscombe said in 1981 that for a national cinema to be successful it must work with the myths of the nation (145). As this article has tried to show, this still rings true today: the Spanish bromance resorts to “mythical” national tropes to try to preserve a Spanish identity that is imagined to lie in the past.

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However, today’s cultural, social, economic and cinematographic panorama is significantly different from the context in which Buscombe made that assertion. Nowadays, national cinemas cannot turn their back to transnational trends in a world more and more defined by globalizing forces. They need to be permeable to these influences if they want to connect with their audience’s sensibility, which is increasingly familiar with the homogenizing force of globalization. As Tatjana Pavlović points out, the national myths defended by Buscombe need to be redressed for the new millennium: Spanish film needs a “creative repackaging of the representation of Spanish national culture for the global audience and the world market” (2009, 183). As this essay has shown, this is done in contemporary Spanish comedy through the adoption of a successful Hollywood genre: the bromance, a formula whose success and transnational appeal has been sufficiently proved by now. However, this is combined with local specificity: these films hold on to a model of Spanishness firmly rooted in the past. This past is approached in a parodic way in the case of its characters, who are often depicted as playful resuscitations of dated stereotypes which, in its reworked version, produce ironic detachment and self-­recognizing laughter simultaneously. Quite fittingly with Alberti’s classification, these characters seem to stand for the film’s id: they represent what “lies beneath” the Hollywood bromance when made in Spain. They are constantly “repressed” by the text, as these Torrente-­like characters often produce embarrassment in the spectator—an embarrassment which often comes from a glimmer of self-­recognition. The Spanish “flavor” is also preserved by means of a nostalgic return to settings which evoke an idealized past, bringing to mind happier, more stable times for national identity. Contemporary Spanish comedy can be said, therefore, to be engaged in the upkeeping of a double agenda, preserving the marks of Spanish national idiosyncrasy in the “myth” it chooses to support, while fully participating in the arena of global media through its engagement with transnational genres, which includes the updating of gender identity discourses. This dynamics of combination of “global” and “local” elements is more productively perceived as a knowledgeable dialogue with Hollywood rather than as a mere copy or “translation” of its exports, one which is symptomatic of the “naturalization” of certain US generic models in Spanish cinema and which should not be necessarily seen as a threat to the Spanish cultural identity. The result may be seen as a “gloca” product: easily exportable but immediately recognizable for a national audience, whose acquaintance with the conventions of Hollywood cinema, together with its familiarity with the Spanish context,

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raises knowledgeable laugher at one of Juancarlitros’ most celebrated lines: No Controles could certainly be the Die Hard of (Spanish) love.4

Notes 1 These films therefore represent a masculinity in desperate need of definition but for some authors, this does not imply a real alternative to traditional models of masculinity, since gender and race privilege remains intact (Greven 2013). 2 Even though No Controles replicates the general pattern of the US bromance, it actually follows the conventions of an even more specific “subgroup”: those films in which the male characters have to surmount their initial antagonism before bonding. No Controles features a more or less “regular” character and an eccentric who does not really fit in society and whose unrequested company is “endured” by the other. No Controles seems to draw inspiration from films like Due Date, Planes, Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes 1987), Get Him to the Greek or Dinner for Schmucks. In these films, the “normal” characters (played by Robert Downey Jr., Steve Martin, Jonah Hill, and Paul Rudd) have to put up with annoying, eccentric, or simply idiotic companions. Comedy is thus motivated by the deep antagonism between both characters. These movies are a clear inspiration for No Controles, which presents a deeply stereotyped weirdo in generic terms, but remarkably idiosyncratic in his characterization. 3 The other films mentioned in this article represent other kinds of dated national stereotypes, equally recognizable for the Spanish audience. For instance, Julián (Primos) and Mote (La Torre de Suso) fit into the macho, Torrente-­like stereotype of Spanish masculinity, while Benjamín (La gran familia española) embodies the “town’s fool.” 4 Research toward this book was partly funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the research project no. FFI2013–40769–P, “Vistas locales de un cine global: diálogo textual y cultural entre los cines estadounidense, británico y español.”

References Alberti, J., “ ‘I Love You, Man’: Bromances, the Construction of Masculinity, and the Continuing Evolution of the Romantic Comedy,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 30, no. 2, 2013, pp. 159–72.

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Boyle, K. and S. Berridge, “ ‘I Love You, Man’: Gendered Narratives of Friendship in Contemporary Hollywood Comedies,” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 2014, pp. 353–68. Buscombe, E., “Film History and the Idea of National Cinema,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, vol. 9, no. 10, 1981, pp. 141–53. Carman, C., “ ‘Bromance’ Flix and the State of Dudedom,” The Gay and Lesbian Review, vol. 17, no. 1, 2010, p. 50. Davies, A., “Introduction: The Study of Contemporary Spanish Cinema,” in Spain on Screen: Developments in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, ed. A. Davies. New York: Palgrave, 2011. Demont-Heinrich, C., “Cultural Imperialism Versus Globalization of Culture: Riding the Structure-Agency Dialectic in Global Communication and Media Studies,” Sociology Compass, vol. 5, no. 8, 2011, pp. 666–78. Fecé, J.L., “La excepción y la norma. Reflexiones sobre la Españolidad en nuestro Cine Reciente,” Archivos de la Filmoteca, 49, 2005, pp. 83–95. Feigenbaum, H.B., “America’s Cultural Challenge Abroad,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 126, no.1, 2011, pp. 107–29. Greven, D., “ ‘I Love You, Brom Bones’: Beta Male Comedies and American Culture,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 30, 2013, pp. 405–20. Hansen-Miller, D. and R. Gill, “Lad Flicks: Discursive Reconstructions of Masculinity in Popular Film,” in Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema, eds H. Radner and R. Stringer. New York and London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 36–50. Heredero, C., “New Creators for the New Millennium: Transforming the Directing Scene in Spain,” Cineaste, vol. 29, no. 1, 2003, pp. 32–7. Liebes, T. and E. Katz, The Export of Meaning. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991. Mortimer, C., Routledge Film Guidebooks: Romantic Comedy. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Neale, S., “The Big Romance or Something Wild? Romantic Comedy Today,” Screen, vol. 33, no. 3, 1992, pp. 284–99. Nowell-Smith, G., “But Do We Need It?” in British Cinema Now, eds M. Auty and N. Roddick. London: British Film Institute, 1985, pp. 147–58. O’Regan, T., “Cultural Exchange,” in The Contemporary Hollywood Reader, ed. T. Miller. London, New York: Routledge, 2009, pp. 500–25. Pavlović, T., I. Alvarez, and R. Blanco-Cano, 100 Years of Spanish Cinema. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Quintana, Á., “Modelos realistas en un tiempo de emergencia de lo político,” Archivos de la Filmoteca, 49, 2005, pp. 11–31. Semati, M.M. and P.J. Sotirin, “Hollywood’s Transnational Appeal Hegemony and Democratic Potential?” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 26, no. 4, 1999, pp. 176–88.

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Setoodeh, R., “Isn’t It Bromantic?” Newsweek, vol. 153, no. 23, 2009, p. 73. Smith, P.J., Spanish Screen Fiction: Between Cinema and Television. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. Tracey, M., “Popular Culture and the Economics of Global Television,” Intermedia, vol. 16, no. 2, 1988, pp. 8–25. Wasser, F., “Is Hollywood America? The Trans-Nationalization of the American Film Industry,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12, 1995, pp. 423–37.

13

Malamadres and Bertomeus: Transnational Crime Film and Television Luis M. García-Mainar

This chapter analyzes the presence of a contemporary transnational trend of crime film and television in Spain. In the last decade, this trend has increasingly gained visibility in US American crime film and television, also emerging in some European products modeled after Hollywood’s classical crime genres, from the gangster to the detective film or the procedural. Spain has produced few examples of it, the most relevant of which would probably be Daniel Monzón’s prison film Celda 211/Cell 211 (2009) and gangster television mini-­ series Crematorio/Crematorium (Canal+, 2011). Both Celda 211 and Crematorio illustrate the condition of contemporary Spanish film and television as local industries influenced by global conditions. More specifically, they illustrate the ways in which a local industry tries to emulate models originated in mainly the US industry. Both represent attempts to produce quality film and television that audiences would perceive as above the average of the Spanish audiovisual landscape, and which would even aspire to distribution in the international market. Celda 211 was mainly produced by Vaca Films and Morena Films, which by 2008 had already participated in international co-­productions that exhibited an obvious vocation to travel beyond Spain’s border. Both had been involved in Clive Gordon’s Cargo (2006) and Mexico-­based Rodrigo Plá’s La zona /The Zone (2007), while Morena Films had also participated in Steven Soderbergh’s two-­part Che (2008) together with Telecinco Cinema, the film branch of the television channel that was the third production company involved in Celda 211. The film would receive eight Goya Awards, for best film, director, actor and adapted screenplay among them, and was also successful at the Brussels, Nantes or Seattle international festivals. Crematorio was the attempt of a premium television channel, Canal+, to imitate HBO’s strategy of quality television. The mini-­series’ website introduced it as

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such in an explicit way, an aspiration to quality and distinction that would be rewarded with wide critical acclaim, the prize for best television program at the FesTVal de Vitoria, and the Ondas Prize for best Spanish series. It was financed by Mod Producciones, a company managed by Fernando Bovaira, a former head of Canal+’s film division, well known for imitating Hollywood industrial modes and genre forms in, for example, the films of Alejandro Amenábar. Spanish television’s look to US referents, and more evidently to HBO, in order to improve its output, represents the last step of a process that started in the early 1990s, when private channels Antena 3 TV, Telecinco, and Canal+ (later Cuatro) appeared. They introduced a new televisual fiction based on new narrative forms that managed to conquer a certain presence in international markets. Its most recent developments have been the production of auteur series such as Vientos de agua/Winds of Water (Juan José Campanella, Telecinco 2006), prestige mini-­series such as Adolfo Suárez: el presidente/Adolfo Suárez: President (Sergio Cabrera, Antena 3 2010), and the production of their own fiction by premium channels like Canal+ (Palacio 2012). To date, ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz?/ Whatever Happened to Jorge Sanz? (David Trueba 2010) and Crematorio are the best examples of Canal+’s new approach to televisual fiction, which relies on adopting the concept of quality television represented by HBO. In US television, the claims to quality are based on the recruitment of personnel from prestigious media like film, large ensemble casts and multiple plots, the self-­conscious nature of its narratives, the refashioning of classical genres, complex writing often originated in literature, its deliberate attempt to create controversy, and its realism (Thompson 1996). Crematorio seems to have been carefully designed to fit this model: it was directed by reputed film helmer Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo, who had already proved his taste for the Hollywood thriller in La noche de los girasoles/The Night of the Sunflowers (2006); it is built on several storylines that follow a number of characters simultaneously and self-­consciously appropriates the conventions of the gangster film; it is based on Rafael Chirbes’ novel of the same title, a critical success that had won the Critics’ National Prize in 2008 and which was regarded as an account of the generation of Spaniards who had lived under dictator Francisco Franco and had then hoped to change the country after his death in 1975. By engaging with such a delicate matter as Spain’s problematic relation with its recent past and by using a realist visual style, Crematorio maximized its appeal through an obvious imitation of HBO’s model of quality television.

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This model has changed narrative forms, mainly affecting genre narratives in ways that have extended outside television and reached feature films. According to Colin Tait, HBO has transformed television genre drama by refreshing its syntax, narrative and iconography. The longer format of series such as The Sopranos (1999–2007) or The Wire (2002–2008) lends increased emphasis to the subjectivity and psychology of characters, iconography is subverted and no longer provides clear-­cut moral positions, while narrative agency extends from individual characters to groups or communities. This genre revisionism is completed by an increased realism expressed through more excessive language, nudity, and violence than is usually found in the respective genres, and by an introspective, negative view of the American dream (Tait 2008). Interestingly, these characteristics can also be found in genre films, the crime genres being particularly sensitive to these transformations, which leads me to propose the main hypothesis of this chapter. Since the early 2000s, both the United States and Europe have produced a significant amount of film and television that, framed by well-­established Hollywood crime film conventions, have nevertheless shifted their focus away from the expected action and onto the characters’ personal, emotional experience of crime’s social context. Elsewhere, I have argued that this trend is particularly evident in US crime films such as A Mighty Heart (Michael Winterbottom 2007), Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck 2007), In the Valley of Elah (Paul Haggis 2007) or The Good Shepherd (Robert de Niro 2006), and in European films that imitate the US crime film, such as Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 2006) or L’affaire Farewell/Farewell (Christian Carion 2009) (García-Mainar 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013). The transnational appeal of the trend is confirmed not only by the influence of US crime film forms on European products but also by the interest of the United States’ industry in such European television drama as the British State of Play (BBC 2003), remade as a film of the same title (Kevin Macdonald 2009), the Danish Forbrydelsen/The Killing (Danmarks Radio 2007), remade as The Killing (AMC 2011–), or the more recent Swedish-Danish collaboration Bron/ Broen/The Bridge (Sveriges Television, Danmarks Radio 2011–), remade in the United States as The Bridge (FX 2013–). The coherence of this crime film corpus is not created by a sense of strict belonging to a completely homogeneous group of texts, but by family resemblance, that is by chains of connection and similarity formed between members individually. Films and television dramas belong to this crime film trend in the same way as members of a family belong

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to it, not by virtue of their exact resemblance but of individual connections and similarities between them. This chapter analyzes the presence of this contemporary transnational trend of crime film and television in Spain, discussing Celda 211 and Crematorio as convergence points of several social and textual currents that illustrate the global and local condition of contemporary Spanish film and television. These currents include the role of Celda 211 and Crematorio in the strategies of Vaca Films, Morena Films, Canal+, and Fernando Bovaira’s Mod Producciones to expand by looking to the industrial modes of the United States and creating quality genre film and television, the adoption of a visual and narrative language meant to yield the complexity associated with that quality film and television, and the capacity of the two stories to connect with the social context of contemporary Spain. Furthermore, Celda 211 exemplifies the tendency toward realism, social awareness, and generic revisionism that Tait has noted about HBO drama, while Crematorio illustrates a crossover of production modes and personnel from film to television not unlike HBO’s in the United States. The study of both will also prove that the trend under analysis has been shaped by the mutual influence between film and television. Crematorio is the story of Rubén Bertomeu (José Sancho), a powerful real estate promoter who lives in Misent, a fictional Valencian town that represents the fast housing development of the Mediterranean coast that took place from the late 1970s to the late 2000s, when the housing bubble created in those thirty years finally burst and carried the country to an economic depression. The death of his brother, Matías, connects Rubén’s professional and personal lives, initiating a series of flashbacks that alternate with the present to tell the story of a country that dreamt of social change when dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, but has seen those dreams shattered, replaced by generalized corruption. Seven of the mini-­series’ eight episodes follow this structure, through which we learn about Rubén’s shady business in the 1980s, which degenerated into drug trafficking, political corruption, and collaboration with the Russian mob. One of his men, Collado (Pep Tosar), causes his downfall by passing to the police information about his practices and relations with local politicians. In the final episode, Rubén is shot by a man whose land he was trying to grab for his new housing project. Celda 211 is the story of Juan Oliver (Alberto Amman), a prison guard who reports for his new job a day early. Accidentally knocked unconscious while being shown around, he is carried into an empty cell just as a prison riot breaks out in the FIES ward of violent inmates. Abandoned by his fellow guards and to

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save his life, Juan pretends to be a recently admitted inmate and joins the rioting prisoners. These are led by Malamadre (Luis Tosar), a lifer with nothing to lose who is seduced by Juan’s personality and gradually turns him into his friend. Juan’s initial instinct for survival changes as he learns about the guards’ brutality toward inmates and, in a key scene, when old-­school officer Utrilla (Antonio Resines) beats Juan’s pregnant wife Elena (Marta Etura), who had joined the demonstrating families outside the prison, to death. Desperate, Juan sides with the prisoners wholeheartedly, realising the extent of institutional repression over them. In the end, a negotiator sent from Madrid, Almansa (Manuel Morón), reveals Juan’s true identity to Malamadre, hoping that the rioting prisoners will kill him. In the final scene and as the police assault the prison, both Juan and Malamadre die at the hands of another inmate who seems to have made a deal with the warden. Both texts borrow Hollywood crime film conventions and give them a twist. Celda 211 revises the tradition of US prison films like George W. Hill’s The Big House (1930) by emulating such prison dramas as Oz (HBO 1993–2003) or Prison Break (Fox 2005–9). It adheres to conventions associated with Hollywood’s prison films, such as melodramatic attempts to escape from the strictures of prison life, a riot in this case; the use of well-­established types such as the “fresh fish,” ill-­equipped for prison life and struggling to survive, and the gang leader, who usurps authority and controls men inside; or the central role of setting to signal institutional regulation (Jarvis 2004, 167–73). However, it also deviates from them in the place accorded to individualism and self-­reliance, since the riot relies on the inmates’ strength as a group and characters are ultimately controlled by a system beyond their reach. The conflict between a bad warden, symbol of totalitarian order, and a hero, who embodies independence, is complicated by splitting the hero’s traits between Malamadre and Juan, who represent the two sides of independence: initiative and violence. Violence will eventually triumph and indirectly furnish a critique of a contemporary Spain that stifles initiative. This frustrated impulse is incarnated in the prisoners’ bodies, whose prominence as index of character echoes the role of the body in HBO’s prison drama Oz (Jarvis 2011, 159–62). Crematorio borrows the figure of the gangster family man from the tradition of The Godfather and modifies it by introducing the social and historical specificity of Spain. It follows the conventions of the gangster film when it constructs a dense social context for its main character, as Nochimson argues that gangster films do (2005, 186), and when it structures Rubén’s story as a

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rise-­and-fall one concerned with social mobility through initiative and risk-­ taking. But it departs from mainstream models of the genre by not pitting Rubén against the advance of modernization, and most relevantly by not sharing the connotations of racial difference or foreignness looking for integration that have defined the US models of the gangster film. Actually, Rubén takes advantage of Spain’s rapid development in the 1980s and 1990s by joining the booming real estate business and he does so from the inside, he has no difficulty integrating into the social fabric as he belongs to a wealthy Misent family. The variations are probably most evident in the ways both Celda 211 and Crematorio inflect the crime genre, the prison and gangster variations respectively, with renewed realism, introspective characters, and a complex, ambiguous morality that openly criticizes Spanish society. These inflections, in part provided by the transnational sources on which they draw, are central to the new tendency of the 2000s crime film explored in this chapter. A key factor in the two texts’ revision of genre is their investment in realism, produced through both their aesthetic and narrative choices. Visually, the versions of realism found in both Celda 211 and Crematorio reveal their coincidence with the HBO aesthetic. Their use of a documentary look or a stylized naturalism contributes to the two texts’ engagement with the context in which they were created. Shot in the old Zamora prison, Celda 211 opts for a combination of real locations, gritty mise-­en-scène, and an almost documentary aesthetic of handheld cinematography in the action scenes. Crematorio attempts to imitate the look of film by using high resolution digital cameras that produce an almost flat, pictorial image of crisp contrasts, and by choosing natural locations, many of them exteriors. Furthermore, the two texts create a sense of authenticity by providing dense, complex narratives capable of explaining the social causes of events. Both follow several parallel story lines, each of them featuring their own main characters. Celda 211 is Juan’s story but also Malamadre’s, a man with a vision who inhabits a world of desperate men ready to jump at each other’s throats led by Apache (Carlos Bardem) and Tachuela (Vicente Romero). But it is also the story of Utrilla and Almansa, representatives of the dark side of institutional power, and of Armando (Fernando Soto), the guard who is conscious of injustice but lacks the support to oppose it. Crematorio follows Rubén’s fall but this is couched in his daughter Silvia’s (Alicia Borrachero) discovery of her father’s real nature, his girlfriend Monica’s (Juana Acosta) difficulties to adapt to Rubén’s life and family, his former henchman Collado’s (Pep Tosar) slide into drugs and debt, and in the

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shady world of Russian mobster Traian (Vlad Ivanov). The final product is stories that evoke true events, where characters are contradictory and ambiguous, a sense of privileged access to a narrative that in the case of Crematorio is enhanced by weaving the present and past threads of Rubén’s life together. This potent realism affects the crime narratives in two main ways: they are not centred on the action expected from the genre but on the characters’ emotional, subjective experience of crime, and they are particularly interested in the milieus that cause crime, while they suggest authenticity by evoking true historical circumstances. Thus, the story of Celda 211 centers on Juan’s subjectivity. The film uses him to allegorically illustrate the course of the common citizen who enters the prison imbued with the official discourse only to discover the brutality and disregard of human rights that reigns inside. Although the film follows the progress of the riot and Malamadre as its leader, it constantly returns to focus on Juan’s reaction to events, granting the audience a range of knowledge about his emotional journey unlike any other character’s. Juan is the insider whose real identity we know from the beginning but the rest of the characters ignore, a privileged point of view that allows viewers to trace the nuances of his emotional transformation, through which the film expresses the change of his political attitude. Although there is plenty of action, the film does not concentrate on it but on Juan’s emotional response to his gradual discovery of the reality of the prison. Subjectivity in Crematorio gains relevance as the mini-­series proceeds to its final episodes and Rubén’s downfall becomes increasingly evident. Hated by a daughter who cannot forgive his manipulation of the family, and betrayed by his men, Rubén is finally shot by a widower whose land he has unsuccessfully been trying to buy for his new housing development, Costa Azul. The narrative pace slows down and a melancholy tone sets in while the camera lingers on the characters’ sad faces. The solemn performance style of most actors and actresses matches this mood, whose ultimate effect is an exaggerated attention to the characters’ subjectivities that echoes the shift toward introspection of HBO dramas. Both Celda 211 and Crematorio are attentive to the social context that causes crime and attempt to create a sense of authenticity by evoking true historical circumstances. Celda 211 provides an explicit comment on Spain’s relation to violence and crime, which institutions view as morally wrong but at the same time still appropriate if no other solutions are available. Utrilla, the officer who favors torture and violence with inmates, brings this contradiction to the surface. While the prison warden and the other officers stand for a democratic take on

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prison life, they choose not to restrain Utrilla when they need information about the leak that he provides by torturing a prisoner in the infirmary. This institutional ambivalence has defined a great part of Spain’s political and social history since the death of dictator Francisco Franco, the scandal over the illegal war against terrorism during president Felipe Gonzalez’s terms perhaps being the most obvious example. The country’s transition to democracy is even more explicitly present in the film through the ETA prisoners, who are kept in separate cells from the rest of inmates and whose exceptional status is made clear when Almansa informs Juan that the Madrid government has reached an agreement with the Basque authorities to keep them alive at all costs. The film illustrates the country’s social ambivalence toward ETA as it implicitly complains about the exceptionalism they represent in Spanish politics, when the state shows a higher consideration of them than of the rest of inmates, and at the same time confirms their status as political prisoners by making them more literate and less brutal than the other inmates (one of them is repeatedly called “the professor”). The film’s desire to place its interest in Spain’s social and historical milieu at the center of the narrative reaches a climax when the prisoners watch CNN’s coverage of the riot. Their only connection with the outside world, a television set shows prisoners the news, centered on the presence of the ETA prisoners and the terrorist organization’s history since the transition. But when they switch to a different channel’s coverage of the same news they see their families gathering outside the prison to protest, a demonstration that will end in the death of Juan’s wife. The film links the events inside the prison with those outside, in the public sphere, turning the riot into a symbolic reference to Spanish politics where the inmates qualify as “the people” fighting against the institutionalized versions of history and politics disseminated by the media. Consequently, the riot’s leader becomes a social reformist, as when Malamadre demands of the prison warden that the inmates’ living conditions be improved, or when Malamadre proves to have more consideration for the inmates’ lives than Juan, whose despair after his wife’s death makes him prefer bloodshed to real changes in the prison system. Similar issues are raised by Crematorio. As producer Fernando Bovaira mentioned in the mini-­series’ production notes, it was conceived as a comment on the situation of Spain, a country that since the mid-1970s had seen a fast development and finally suffered its consequences with the 2008 economic crisis (Canalplus 2014). Most relevantly, Crematorio also reflects Spain’s ambivalent attitude toward corruption. Rubén appears as a kind old man whose only aim has

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been to help his family, an attitude that José Sancho, the actor who played Rubén, said he could understand perfectly because he came from a similar social background and had known many men like him. To Sancho, Rubén represents the aspirations of Spaniards who wanted to get the country out of its poverty and did not find any other means to do so than corruption. In fact, the whole mini-­series provides stories and characters that seem replicas of Spain’s recent history of corruption. The most evident of them is probably the story of Llorens, since a corrupt councillor who becomes a millionaire by providing construction permits or contracts to run municipal services inevitably evokes the infamous “caso Malaya,” one of the main cases of urban corruption that affected the seaside resort of Marbella in 2006. Juan Antonio Roca, Marbella’s urban-­planning councillor, lived in the same luxurious and snobbish way Llorens does in Crematorio. Interestingly, Llorens is played by Manuel Morón, the same actor who in Celda 211 plays the negotiator sent from Madrid and who eventually betrays Juan. The connection between both characters, one a corrupt politician and the other a government representative, unconsciously points to the way Spanish society has come to perceive public service and graft as one and the same thing. By dealing with corruption in this way, Crematorio joins Celda 211 in indirectly showing Spain’s attitude toward modernization, and more specifically toward the modern ideal of the Good Society. If this ideal social organization aimed at a system in which the state could guarantee citizens’ welfare, both Celda 211 and Crematorio prove that Spanish society regards the aspirations of modernity in a completely different way. A twentieth century plagued by political instability, a cruel civil war, and a ruthless dictatorship has dissipated Spaniards’ taste for such social utopias as the Good Society, as a recent report by the Fundación BBVA has proved. According to it, Spaniards show one of the highest degrees of interpersonal distrust in Europe, since they believe that, generally, people are not reliable. A distrust that the report explains as the consequence of Spain’s traditional distrust of institutions, which are rarely looked upon as benefactors and often as obscure, unscrupulous organizations (Linera Paredes 2013). In a country that in the last four decades has moved from precariousness to a certain prosperity, cultural products like Celda 211 and Crematorio point to a deep ambiguity about change and modernization. Celda 211 and Crematorio prove the influence of global conditions, mainly of those originated in US American film and television, on a local audiovisual industry; while they also serve as examples of the ways in which crime film and television influence mutually. Film imitates the narrative and character

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complexity, realism, and social concerns of television series, while television imitates film’s aesthetic quality and plays with genres solidly established by film. Celda 211 exemplifies the tendency toward realism, social awareness, and generic revisionism that has been noted about HBO drama, while Crematorio illustrates a crossover of aesthetics, production modes and personnel from film to television. Both Celda 211 and Crematorio wear their social concern on their sleeve. They emerge gradually as metaphors of the conflicted relation between citizens and institutional power in Spain. And both inflect the crime genre, the prison and gangster variations respectively, with renewed realism, introspective characters, and a complex, ambiguous morality that criticizes Spanish society. These inflections are in part provided by the transnational influences that inform them. By choosing the form of the generic text with aspirations to originality, Celda 211 and Crematorio embrace a global formula that avoids the aesthetics most readily coded as Spanish. It rejects the postmodern play promoted by Santiago Segura’s Torrente series or by the cinema of Alex de la Iglesia, while also leaving aside the social realism associated with Fernando León de Aranoa or Icíar Bollaín. In adopting the genre of crime, mostly developed by Hollywood cinema, the two texts enter a territory where foreign influence blends with local concerns, producing a complexity that mirrors the current state of a country that in the last four decades has moved from isolation and poverty to global interconnection and progress.1

Note 1 Research toward the writing of this article has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project no. FFI2013–40769–P.

References Canalplus. Crematorio, 2014. Available from: [September 1, 2014]. García-Mainar, L.M., “Contemporary Hollywood Crime Film and the New Individualism,” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2009. Available from: [November 10, 2014].

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García-Mainar, L.M., “Generic Complexity and the Ethics of New Individualism in A Mighty Heart,” in Generic Attractions: New Essays on Film Genre Criticism, eds M.M. Azcona and C. Deleyto. Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2010, pp. 423–37. García-Mainar, L.M., “The Return of the Realist Spy Film,” CineAction, 88, 2012, pp. 12–19. García-Mainar, L.M., “Space and the Amateur Detective in Contemporary Hollywood Crime Film,” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 65, no. 3, 2013, pp. 14–25. Jarvis, B., Cruel and Unusual: A Cultural History of Punishment in America. London: Pluto Press, 2004. Jarvis, B., “The violence of images: inside the prison TV drama Oz,” in Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture, ed. P. Mason. London and New York: Routledge, 2011 (2006), pp. 154–71. Linera Paredes, R., “Con la picaresca en el ADN,” El País, July 10, 2013. Available from: [August 29, 2014]. Nochimson, M.P., “ ‘Waddaya Lookin’ At? Rereading the Gangster Film through The Sopranos,” in Mob Culture: Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film, eds L. Grieveson, E. Sonnet, and P. Stanfield. Oxford: Berg, 2005, pp. 185–204. Palacio, M. “La ficción televisiva española (2005–2011). Dos o tres cosas que sé de ella. Breviario de imágenes de la Transición,” in La ficción audiovisual en España: Relatos, tendencias y sinergias productivas, eds M. Francés i Domènec and G. Llorca Abad. Barcelona: Gedisa, 2012, pp. 63–73. Tait, R.C., “The HBO-ification of Genre,” Cinephile, 4, 2008, pp. 50–7. Thompson, R.J., Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. New York: Continuum, 1996.

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Local Responses to Universal Sufferings in Isabel Coixet’s Transnational Melodramas Hilaria Loyo

The shift of paradigm from the national to the transnational within Film Studies in the first decade of the twenty-­first century has led to the recognition of the transnational nature of Spanish cinema from its inception, and to the diversion of scholarly attention toward transnational contacts with other cinemas and professionals that have traditionally helped redefine its national character (Benet 2012; Perriam et al. 2007). The displacement of the “national cinema” conceptual model has run parallel to the assumed crisis of the nation-­state vis-à-vis the fierce challenge of globalization and the re-­emerging peripheral nationalisms in the post-Franco era, in particular since Spain’s full integration in the global neoliberal order of a “New Europe” in the late 1980s (Dapena, D’Lugo, and Elena 2013). This economic and political context has generated a cultural debate about the need to redefine the traditional identity of Spain as a nation, which has spawned a political and cultural discourse on the past (Navajas 2010, 168). The Catalan filmmaker, Isabel Coixet, however, has been recognized as part of a different group of artists who have sought instead to overcome the burden of national traditions by exploring new aesthetic and narrative venues able to broaden national cultures and contextualize them into various international currents (Navajas 2010). Recent discussions on national cinema have often challenged homogeneous and essentialist notions of the national in favor of more heterogeneous conceptualizations that account for its changing and contesting nature, subjected to contingent socio-­historical situations and straddling transnational cultural flows. In our global world, the uniqueness of Spanish cinema must be explored, following JungBong Choi’s suggestion, “not from the perceived particularity of styles or themes as such but from the relationships they maintain with the society and social processes by which they became meaningful in a unique way” (2011, 181).1

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Coixet belongs to a new generation of filmmakers who reacted against the dominant cultural parameters of Spanish cinema in the 1990s by adopting elements from a globalized media culture that constituted an important part of their own experiential world as cinephiles. These Spanish filmmakers adopted an auteur mode of production and showed a preference in their films for an aesthetic that combines elements taken from other media (comic books, music videos, and advertising) with Hollywood generic narratives (Vidal 2008; Quintana 2005) – a strategy designed to make their films commercially viable in national as well as global markets (Lázaro-Reboll et al. 2013, 152–89). Singled out for her very personal films, Coixet has deliberately been seeking a universality in her films, not only through specific and recurrent themes and narrative elements, but also through a transnational casting, co-­production with North American companies, the dominant use of the English language as a lingua franca in multilingual contexts, and an international distribution of her films (Triana Toribio 2006; Camporesi 2007; Pavlović 2013, 428). This universality initially constituted an obstacle to obtaining funds from various governmental institutions as it did not match the idea of national interest dictating the audiovisual policies of the central government in Madrid or the Catalan Generalitat in Barcelona, a discrepancy that forced her to look for finance elsewhere (Triana Toribio 2006, 53–6) and to create her own production company, Miss Wasabi Films. Thanks in part to carefully orchestrated public interventions proving her marketing expertise in the construction of her image as auteur (Triana Toribio 2006; Camporesi 2007; Vidal 2008), Coixet later gained an international auteur status that has placed her, as Belén Vidal has written, in “a preferred lineage of cinephile filmmakers, bypassing other more contested categories such as ‘Spanish director’ or even ‘Spanish woman director’ ” (2008, 222).2 Although Coixet deliberately resisted any identity hallmark (national, woman, Catalan) of her work, she never disowned her Spanish or Catalan origin, or her awareness of being a woman film director. Despite the discrepancies of her transnational cinema with institutional funding policies, Coixet received significant public recognition from the Spanish film industry in 2006, when La vida secreta de las palabras/The Secret Life of Words (2005) was awarded four Goyas (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars). More recently, she has also taken part, along with other significant directors and actors, in an important promotional campaign for the Spanish cinema. Coixet’s case does not so much signal “a paradox” between the funding policies intended to promote local cultures and transnational artistic interests, as Tatjana

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Pavlović has noted (2013, 429), but rather another instance of the contesting versions of national identity and conflicting nationalisms that have characterized the country’s struggle for modernity. Interestingly, in Coixet’s transnational films, localities (national, regional, and local) do not disappear, but rather serve to offer a dialectical tension between the universality of the themes and the ethnic and local aspects that modulate them, as is more explicitly articulated in her later films, Elegy (2008) and Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio/Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009). What distinguishes Coixet’s cinema from that of other Spanish filmmakers of her generation is that her films ultimately contribute toward a certain usefulness (Camporesi 2007, 56, 62) by her recurrent use of melodrama to deal with the central thematic concern of extreme human suffering, whether apparently inflicted by love and loneliness as in Cosas que nunca te dije/Things I Never Told You (1996) and A los que aman/To Those Who Love (1998), by terminal illness as in Mi vida sin mí/My Life Without Me (2001), by traumatic war wounds as in La vida secreta de las palabras, aging as in Elegy (2008), by suicide of a loved one as in Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio (2009), or by the tragic loss of a son as in Ayer no termina nunca/Yesterday Never Ends (2013).3 Her melodramas offer a significant range of experiences of human vulnerability within our global Western world. Vulnerability has gained considerable theoretical attention in the context of affect studies, and particularly after the impact of Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004). What critics have identified as the “return to vulnerability” (Murphy 2012, 67) refers to a theoretical feminist trend that focuses on painful affects, death, and loss as new ways of rethinking human relationships and how harm may contribute to create new forms of togetherness (Butler 2004, 40). Rather than attempting to measure the impact of Coixet’s melodramas,4 this essay will examine to what extent the generic treatment of human suffering in her films, characterized by the encounter of various localities, elicits new forms of human relationality. Melodrama as genre has generated extensive theoretical debate and has lately been reclaimed as a cultural mode running across distinct genres and media (Williams 2001). What makes melodrama a particular “mode of the world,” according to Agustín Zarzosa (2010; 2013), is that it addresses the problem of suffering as a universal experience in relation to the ideas that inflict it. Ben Singer distinguishes two main types of on-screen depiction of suffering in melodrama. One refers to suffering in action melodramas, where the protagonist’s struggle for survival inspires admiration rather than pathos (2001, 55). The other type, the

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pathetic melodrama, elicits pathos, a melodrama “where the protagonist suffers physical abuse and emotional distress without the power to fight back or respond without profound self-­sacrifice” (2001, 55). This type of melodrama, dramatizing the characters’ helplessness and psychological complexity, the result of externally induced emotional distress, is more appropriate for discussing human suffering in Coixet’s transnational melodramas. Human suffering in her films takes place in cinematographic worlds generally populated by uprooted characters participating in contemporary processes of global mobility. In these transnational worlds, the Spanish national and local referents are commonly present through secondary characters, as is the case of the hairdressers from Lérida and Segovia in Cosas que nunca te dije and Mi vida sin mí, or the cook, Simón (Javier Cámara), at the oilrig in Las vida secreta de las palabras.5 In Elegy and Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio, however, the casting of Spanish actress Penélope Cruz and Catalan actor Sergi López – both with transnational star personas – to play the protagonist roles of a second-­generation Cuban exile in the United States in the former film, and a Catalan wine seller in Tokyo in the latter, bring the national and the local to the fore. Whatever the cause, human suffering in these films is problematized by the connection of two distinct cultures, a connection narratively articulated through a romantic plot involving the Spanish characters with partners belonging to the host, dominant culture in which they take part. Elegy is the first film that Coixet directed but did not write, although she takes screenwriting credit. Using the screenplay written by Nicholas Meyer, the film is an adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal (2001), in which Coixet identified common thematic interests. In the film’s opening scene, David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley), a famous art critic and university professor, is being interviewed on the television program The Charlie Rose Show, where he is presented as an intellectual and author of a polemic book, The Origins of American Hedonism, in which he claims the origins of a more licentious American tradition, in favor of sexual happiness, that was destroyed by dominant Puritanism. Hidden and repressed, this tradition exploded again in the 1960s, the era with which he identifies. Kepesh’s rejection of the dominant Puritan values and his radical independence resonate with Roth’s own cultural position, which critics like Ross Posnock (2006) associate with a US literary tradition that rejects the values of a mature and restrained masculinity, commonly referred to as “immature.” Although in the film Kepesh believes that all his problems and pain have to do with aging, his cynical friend and accomplice,

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the poet George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper), and Consuela (Penélope Cruz), his love interest, insist that his problem derives not so much from old age, as from his immaturity. Aging is immediately introduced as a key theme in the film by the voice-­over narrator, Kepesh’s, in what seems a self-­reflexive commentary on the course of his life in the last few years, a transitory period in which his relationship with Consuela questioned his attitude toward marriage and commitment. The narration starts by quoting Bette Davies (“old age is not for sissies”) and Tolstoy (“the biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age”) as applied to the life crisis that old age precipitates for men when they cannot be involved in “the carnal aspects of human comedy” that their minds keep fantasizing with as if “nothing [had] changed.” The voice-­over narration accompanies the image of Kepesh in his home, alone, looking out of a window on a rainy day; a long shot and the double framing created by the doors emphasize his solitude in a well-­ordered inner space. An eye-­line match of an old woman also looking out of a window in the opposite building suggests a parallel in their occupying the same transitional space, the window, between interior and exterior spaces, a space commonly defined as feminine in classical melodramas. This spatial position signals his place as a protagonist narrator, being at once outside and inside the narrated events, thus creating an internal distance and narrative tension between the consciousness of the narrative voice and the visualization of the narrated psychical process. The voice-­over continues, introducing a visual recollection of his first encounter with Consuela Castillo, the woman he falls in love with, a relationship that will transform him to the point that their eventual separation will immerse him in a deep melancholy. The repetition of this initial image almost at the end of the film indicates that Kepesh’s narration has been motivated by suffering derived from the loss of Consuela, the news about her illness as well as the death of his best friend, George. The protagonist’s reflexive recollection of past events and experience elongates that present moment, to the extent that most of the film can be read as an “impasse,” a moment of radical contingency that demands creative activity (Berlant 2011, 4, 199). This temporal structure of the impasse, enabling anxious assessment and possibility, can be found in most of Coixet’s films and is usually rendered through the recurrent use of the voice-­over narrator addressing a “you,” and haptic images, which, according to Laura Marks, prompts in the viewer a sense of touch (Martín-Márquez 2013, 555), a sensory experience proposing to the spectator not only “a new way of knowing the world” but also “a

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new way of ‘being in the world’ ” (Marks 2002, xii). In this film, Kepesh’s revisiting of a recent past seeks the viewer’s complicit assessment of the present to engage in the possibility of transformation. The film follows the narrative order of his recollections and thoughts about past events and his present situation to relate a period of transition in his life and the suffering that goes with it. Suffering, as Mary Ann Doane has noted (2004, 14), is the “critical emotion” of pathos and, unlike the noble suffering of tragedies, melodrama’s pathos is associated with the “deviant” and “transient.” For Doane, “[p]athos is sometimes opposed to logos (speech, reason) and sometimes situated as the transient or emotional in opposition to ethos as the permanent or ideal” (2004, 10). Doane points out the structuring contradiction in the lexical history of the word “pathology” to indicate that if suffering is generally speechless, pathology suggests “the possibility of speaking suffering, an entanglement of the body and the word” (2004, 14). In Elegy, as in other Coixet’s films, the language of silence and trauma dominates (Martin 2013, 238), combining pathos and logos, suffering and its analysis, intense affect and distance, a blend that makes possible the articulation of an ethos. As on numerous previous occasions, Kepesh, a professor of Practical Criticism at the University of Columbia in New York, an art expert particularly vulnerable to female beauty, becomes fascinated by Consuela, one of his students. Seeing her as a work of art, he cannot stop contemplating her. In the novel, Kepesh compares her to a Brancusi figure and to Modigliani’s Reclining Nude. In the film, however, Kepesh compares Consuela with Goya’s Maja vestida/The Clothed Maja, and hence with the Maja desnuda/The Nude Maja of the same painter. This change from the original novel serves to highlight two physical features – her breasts and her black eyes – that characterize Consuela and the star persona of the Spanish actress, Penélope Cruz, incarnating Hispanic transnationalism in the US (D’Lugo 2013, 36). The hairdressers from Lérida and Segovia, two Spanish provincial towns, in Cosas que nunca te dije and Mi vida sin mí, or the Spanish cook in La vida secreta de las palabras, suggest the uprootedness and mobility of ordinary people, subjects to a precarious life aggravated by the socioeconomic contingencies in a globalized world. In Elegy, however, the universality of Goya and his work echoes the international stardom of Penélope Cruz while pointing to the cosmopolitan cultural milieu to which Kepesh belongs. His expertise on international art allows Kepesh to see in Consuela’s eyes the same exotic and defying expression he finds in Goya’s paintings. This look of defiance, showing an awareness of her own fascinating power, plays a central role in his jealousy

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fantasies, which recall the erotic scenarios in Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, suggesting a seductive Orientalism that stands as a contrast to the Occidentalism of Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), signaled by her blonde hair. His former student, and lover for more than twenty years, Carolyn is, as he confesses, the only point of contact with the man he used to be. In the film, Kepesh is often presented offscreen, or at one extreme of the frame, looking at and admiring Consuela. This recurrent framing technique translates visually the aesthetic and emotional distance toward female beauty that has allowed him to preserve his independence and freedom, a safe distance that Carolyn playfully reenacts in her strip-­tease number as sexual foreplay on one of their regular nights together. But framing is also used to convey a tension between what the male protagonist thinks and what he feels. From the very first moments of their relationship, Coixet’s hand-­held camera captures in extreme close-­ups a certain vulnerability in Kepesh’s face. From these initial moments, Kepesh is presented as a melodramatic figure incarnating a contradiction between his public image as a successful, self-­confident man and his gradual lack of control resulting from his jealousy and fear of losing Consuela to younger, more sexually potent men. The visualization of his jealousy reveals his anxiety about aging and the loss of virility. The conflict in this melodrama does not pivot around a moral dilemma in which the character is a victim of a social injustice, but about an inner distress caused by the protagonist’s reluctance to acknowledge his own vulnerability. In Coixet’s films, the romantic plot is quite often used as a narrative strategy to deal with the encounter of two different cultures. In Elegy, the couple, Kepesh and Consuela, show two transnational figures with different mobility capacities. Kepesh, a British Jew living and working in the United States, belongs to a cosmopolitan elite, highly educated and well enough off to travel and indulge his appreciation of beauty and art. For Kepesh, the world has no barriers. Consuela, however, of Cuban origin, is marked by her family’s trauma of exile. They seem to have undergone an assimilation process in the US while still suffering from the wounds of separation and uprooting. In the novel, this is an important moment of revelation for Kepesh, who discovers a truth about Consuela he knew nothing about; a suffering he did not perceive because, as his friend George admits, beautiful women are invisible to their male eyes. In the film, this cultural difference is mentioned briefly in a scene of a romantic walk on the beach. She confesses that she wants to overcome the limited mobility of her family and expresses her desire to travel and see the world. For her family, leaving Cuba was

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their first and last trip, despite being wealthy enough to travel to other places. The reasons for this lack of mobility are not explained in the film, but Kepesh offers her a chance to fulfill her wishes to travel, an idea of happiness associated with the lifestyle of a cosmopolitan elite. However, Kepesh, the cosmopolitan, avoids meeting Consuela’s family and the film reveals his prejudices against Latinos and their cultural differences. In particular, Kepesh is horrified by the idea of feeling completely out of place among Consuela’s Cuban relatives, a fear clearly disclosed by the images of the encounter that he conjures in his mind. It is his absence from Consuela’s graduation party that causes the couple to split up. This reflexive impasse dramatizes a male pathology about men’s incapacity to see beyond their fascination with the female body and to acknowledge their own vulnerability in what they believe they own and control. But it is in the character’s active response after the reflexive impasse that the film’s closure proves problematic, despite an apparently happy ending, a feel-­good romantic reunion of the couple. The final scene of the couple at the hospital room where Consuela recovers from her operation narrows down the possibilities opened up by the novel’s ending. The unknown interlocutor in the novel warns Kepesh that going to the hospital will be his downfall. To which he responds, “But I must. Someone has to be with her,” finally admitting his vulnerability and the fracture of his narcissistic shield. These last words in the novel leave open the possibility of loving Consuela with all that entails regarding her Cuban family. The possibility of an interaction with a different culture is cancelled out in the film by presenting the couple on their own in a hospital room, an unlikely situation in a close-­knit family, with Kepesh announcing to her that he is there for her. This moment is followed by a temporally undetermined scene of the couple walking on the beach, during the final credit sequence. This scene resembles a previous one where Kepesh, against his initial intentions, agrees to satisfy Consuela’s desire for mobility, an idea of happiness that the possibility of her death makes insignificant. This happy ending occludes the ethnic conflicts that the film introduces on the romantic (dis)encounter of two characters belonging to very different cultures.6 Tensions generated by insurmountable cultural differences are central to the narrative of Coixet’s next film, Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio, this time between Japanese and Western cultures. The opening scene before the credit sequence shows an all-­male business banquet where some Caucasian women lie on three long tables, serving sushi from their naked bodies. Nagara-­san (Takeo Nakahara), the head of a Japanese company, feels totally out of place and disgusted at what

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seems an embarrassing, vulgar, but effective way of doing business, which demands a performance matching the Western stereotypical idea of Japanese sensuality, a clear instance of what Thomas Elsaesser calls “impersoNation” or “self-­othering” (2005, 61). The opportunism in this form of self-­othering, sought by the younger generation, contrasts with the disgust experienced by the representative of the Japanese older generation. Disgust turns into deep pain when Nagara-­san receives the news of his daughter’s suicide, an emotion conveyed through the slow-­motion images and extreme close-­ups, haptic images accompanying his muffled screams. This conflicting cultural interaction is followed by a scene where the white models are shown rubbing themselves with lemon rinds while having a shower. This clear reference to the character of Susan Sarandon in Louis Malle’s Atlantic City USA (1980) foreshadows some thriller conventions in the film. Defined as a “metagenre” crossing other genres (Rubin 1999, 4), the thriller, bearing a close affinity to melodrama, stresses the social and political content of suffering. In the film, the structure of the thriller is used to represent another possible response to vulnerability: violence. As Simone Drichel has written on the negative understanding of vulnerability,“an exposure that is experienced as so threatening to the vulnerable self that the only possible response appears to be its defensive – and, if necessary, violent – shielding” (2013, 6), a vision of vulnerability trapped, according to Judith Butler (2009), in a “frame of war.” Nagara-­san’s vulnerability experienced in the economic sector of high finance is replicated in his personal life, to which he reacts by secluding himself physically and psychologically in a melancholic state, and by taking revenge on David (Sergi López), his daughter’s lover and the man blamed for her suicide. Ishida-­san (Hideo Sakaki), his loyal employee, will hire Ryu (Rikko Kikuchi) to kill David, a Catalan businessman who owns a wine shop, called “Vinidiana” – a name that is a play on the title of Viridiana (1961), directed by Luis Buñuel, the internationally renowned and transnational director of Spanish origin. Nagara-­san’s refusal to accept David’s condolences rules out the possibility of creating a tie between them based on their shared pain. Unlike Nagara-­san’s defensive response, David reacts to the experience of dispossession by exposing himself to further possible pain in his sexual encounters with Ryu at the love hotel La Bastille. These sexual encounters can be read, in the light of contemporary theory on the ambivalent potentialities of vulnerability (Drichel 2013), as a desperate attempt to gain some form of togetherness in sensuous satisfaction, a tie he failed to create with Midori (“nothing was enough for Midori”).

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The voice-­over narration in this film corresponds to a nameless sound engineer (Min Tanaka) that centers on Ryu’s mysterious personality after her death. His subjective narration explaining that he started to record her sounds and silences in order to understand her accompanies scenes of Ryu in her daily routines: her mechanical work at the fish market, where she also washes her body with lemon, and their meetings in various eating places. As in Elegy, the narration constitutes a reflexive recollection of past events, an impasse, that attempts to make sense of the present to open up a possibility of transformation, a possible active response, in the narrative unfolding of particular experiences of human suffering. Ryu is presented as a loner, a person suffering from isolation and alienation. The dark colors and scant furniture of her home not only set a contrast with Midori’s bright and exclusive home, but also convey her emotional detachment. Like Kepesh, she is repeatedly shown occupying the transitional space of the window, facing in this case the enclosed circuit of a driving school. The connection of Ryu’s character with the duplicitous female figures in thrillers is clearly established in a bar scene of their first night together. While David is commenting that there are no cultural differences between the Japanese and the rest of the world as far as male behavior is concerned, the camera pans along the bar walls wrapped with film posters of French, American, and Japanese noir films. The camera also registers a television screen showing a scene of a black-­and-white Japanese noir film at a moment of intimacy between a couple where the body of the woman occupies most of the frame in the foreground. The duplicity of this female figure, an ordinary worker on the night shift of a fish market and a hired gun, differs from the scheming femme fatale of Western noir film and literature. The clues to the film’s use of the elements of the thriller can be found in the reference to Haruki Murakami, a cosmopolitan writer who draws upon the American hard-­boiled literature, mainly that by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, to deal with a Japanese culture and tradition that is presented as “baffling or impenetrable” to Western readers (Hantke 2007, 3). Far from incarnating the traditional individualism of American culture, Ryu, the loner, gains a different significance. She is represented, as Urios-Aparisi has noted (2013, 86, 89), as a combination of the mystery of Japanese femininity, “inexpressive, quiet and very private,” a figure personifying the mystery of Japan as an Oriental other, and the action figures of manga, anime and the well-­known comic hired killer Nikita, played by Anne Parillaud in Luc Besson’s Nikita/La femme Nikita (1990). Her mystery is never disclosed, and Ryu, like Nikita, is trapped by the underworld law at the service of high finance economy.

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Coixet transfers this mysterious Orientalism to the visual rendition of Tokyo as space. In the credit sequence the camera travels along the Sumida River capturing the changing views of the city under its many bridges, from daylight to the artificial lights of the city in the darkness of the night. The smooth camera movement to the vibrant jazz rhythm of the soundtrack in this sequence conveys visually the quote from Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933): “The ‘mysterious Orient’ of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places” (1977, 20), with which Coixet introduces the published novelized version of the script.7 The scene not only introduces the recurrent elements of water, air and silence in Coixet’s cinematic world, but it also points to the important role of the city as prime locale in thrillers, where centers of commerce and high finance are transformed into mysterious and exotic locations (Rubin 1999, 21–2). The various locations and spaces of Tokyo are presented as relational places to convey the characters’ interpersonal emotions, memories, and perceptions (Urios-Aparisi 2013). Rather than threatening, the city spaces are presented as exotic and mysterious sites, almost like tourist postcards at times. Like the images showing the spaces separating houses in Tokyo, where the narrator senses the ancient voices of Japanese history, the spaces of the city are presented as enigmatic puzzles, traces of a cultural past that, like Ryu herself, is deemed by David to be unreadable. The narrator connects these non-­places, the spaces separating houses and trapping the voices of the Japanese past, with his recollection of Ryu’s words “people never change.” This comment on the burden of past traditions refers not only to Japan but also to Catalonia. The rigidity of Japanese traditions will lead to Ryu’s sacrifice and death at the end of the film. The inclusion of new elements in her room informs the spectator about Ryu’s transformation and her love for David, which will compel her, like Nikita, to defy the rules of the underworld, putting her life at risk. David, however, does not change: unable to catch Ryu’s emotions, he proves once more that he is the same “jerk” as always. Despite his efforts and the attraction he exerts on the younger generation, David cannot a find a “home” in Tokyo – interestingly, the space that best defines him is the wine shop. The star persona of Sergi López, a transnational actor between France and Catalonia, reinforces the local identity of David as a Catalan who will only find a proper home back in Barcelona where he typically commercializes the exoticism of the Japanese products. Meanwhile, he nostalgically preserves the memory of Ryu through the safe pleasures of watching the same black-­andwhite thriller of their first night together, thus maintaining his infantile obsession

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with Japan as an exotic world of adventure to escape to from his mundane routine. After all, as Ryu comments, a guy who watches two films everyday cannot be trusted. As in Elegy, the possibilities of creating new ties between two different cultures are presented as untimely, “too late” from the very beginning, as the narrator notes. Thus, the structure of the thriller, providing the spectator with information that is concealed from the characters, allows a critical comment on David and his “pequeño mundo cosmopolita” (“small cosmopolitan world”), to use Ángel Quintana’s words on the film’s depiction of cultural interaction (2009). In these two films, the Spanish, understood as a homogeneous, essentialist notion, is bypassed and replaced by a plural identity represented by both a transnational Hispanic and a trans-­local Catalan in contact with the two cultures that have traditionally epitomized the values of Occidentalism and Orientalism. These cultural interactions are presented as particularly problematic, displaying various forms of vulnerability. The various responses to forms of universal suffering in our global world can be understood quite aptly from the perspective of contemporary feminist theory on the ambivalent potentialities of vulnerability. The generic framing of the shared experience of suffering in these cultural interactions serves to highlight both the ideal creation of new forms of togetherness, acknowledging global interdependency, and its cultural blockages. In Elegy, the ideal recognition of the interdependency between the AngloAmericans and the Hispanics requires the abandonment of the dominant narcissistic individualism of US culture. In Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, the recognition of interdependency and the creation of new forms of community are made impossible by the defensive and retributive violence of the Japanese directed at what they perceive as an economic and cultural penetration as well as by the self-­serving, tourist-­like cultural openness of the Catalan. Unfortunately, Coixet’s narrative solution, which was the conveying of the desired recognition of global interdependency, necessary for the creation of new forms of relationality, requires the untimely death of the woman, the sacrifice of the exotic Other.8

Notes 1 Emphasis in the original. 2 The cusp of her global success as auteur was reached in 2010 when Coixet was commissioned for the international installation art in the Spanish Pavillion at the

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4

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Universal World Expo in Shanghai. This successful trajectory has been interrupted by the flop of her most recent film, Another Me (2013). Coixet’s last film is Another Me (2013), classified as a terror film, is not mentioned in this list because I was not able to see it when it was briefly released in Spain last May. The study of impact of her films would require a critical attention to their circulation, critical reception and consumption, a task exceeding the scope and extension of this essay. Ayer no termina nunca (2013) is set in the outskirts of Madrid and in a near future, where today’s Spanish economic crisis continues to wreak havoc, infusing all aspects of daily life. Dean Allbritton (2014) has included this film within a series of Spanish films known as “crisis cinema.” For a different reading of this film from the perspective of recent theories on cosmopolitanism, see Loyo, “Cosmopolitismo y melodrama en Elegy (2008) de Isabel Coixet” (forthcoming). This is the English translation of the Japanese original (1977, 20). The Spanish version introducing Coixet’s book reads, “cuando los occidentales hablan de ‘los misterios de Oriente’ es muy posible que con ello se refieran a esa calma algo inquietante que genera la sombra” (2009, 11). Research toward this article was carried out with the help of research project FFI2013–40769–P of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the DGA (reference no. H12).

References Allbritton, D., “Prime Risks: The Politics of Pain and Suffering in Spanish Crisis Cinema,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2014. Available from: [October 3, 2014]. Benet, V.J., El cine español: una historia cultural. Barcelona, Buenos Aires and México: Paidós Comunicación, 2012. Berlant, L., Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Butler, J., Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Butler, J., Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009. Camporesi, V., “A ambos lados de todas las fronteras. Isabel Coixet y el cine español contemporáneo,” in Las mujeres y los espacios fronterizos, eds C. Peña Ardid and M.A. Millán Muñio. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2007, pp. 55–69. Choi, J., “National Cinema: An Anachronistic Delirium?” Journal of Korean Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 2011, pp. 173–91. Coixet, I., Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio. Barcelona: Tusquets, 2009.

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Dapena, G., M. D’Lugo, and A. Elena, “Transnational Frameworks,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013, pp. 15–49. D’Lugo, M., “The Producer-Author as Transnational Entrepreneur,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013, pp. 30–40. Doane, M.A., “Pathos and Pathology: The Cinema of Todd Haynes,” Camera Obscura vol. 19, no. 57, 2004, pp. 1–21. Drichel, S., “Introduction: Reframing Vulnerability: ‘so obviously the problem . . .?’ ” SubStance, vol. 42, no. 3, 2013, pp. 3–27. Elsaesser, T., “ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries,” in European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, ed. T. Elsaesser. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005, pp. 57–81. Hantke, S., “Postmodernism and Genre Fiction as Deferred Action: Haruki Murakami and the Noir Tradition,” Critique, vol. 49, no.1, 2007, pp. 3–23. Lázaro-Reboll, A., S. Marsh, S. Martín-Márquez, and S. Zunzunegui, “Strategic Auteurism,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013, pp. 152–89. Loyo, H., “Cosmopolitismo y melodrama en Elegy (2008) de Isabel Coixet,” in Tras las lentes de Isabel Coixet: quince años de cine, compromiso y feminismo, ed. B. Zecchi. Zaragoza: Publicaciones Universitarias Zaragoza, Colección Sagardina (forthcoming). Marks, L., Touch: Film and Multisensory Theory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 2002. Martin, A., “Melodrama: Modernity’s Rebellious Genre,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: WileyBlackwell Publishing, 2013, pp. 224–40. Martín-Márquez, S.,“Isabel Coixet’s Engagement with Feminist Film Theory: From G (the Gaze) and H (the Haptic),” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013, pp. 545–62. Murphy, A.V., Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Navajas, G., “The Curse of the Nation: Institutionalized History and Literature in Global Spain,” in New Spain, New Literatures, eds L. Martín-Estudillo and N. Spadaccini. Vanderbilt, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2010, pp. 165–81. Pavlović, T., “Producciones La Iguana, Lamia Producciones, and Miss Wasabi Films,” in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, eds J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2013, pp. 426–30. Perriam, C., I. Santaolalla and P.W. Evans, “The Transnational in Iberian and Latin American Cinema. Editors’ Introduction,” Hispanic Research Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, 2007, pp. 3–9.

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Posnock, R. Philip Roth’s Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Quintana, Á., “Modelos realistas en un tiempo de emergencia de lo político,” Archivos de la Filmoteca, 49, 2005, pp. 11–31. Quintana, Á., “Pequeño mundo cosmopolita. Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio, de Isabel Coixet,” Cahiers du cinema España, 25 (July–August), 2009, p. 34. Rubin, M., Thrillers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Singer, B., Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Tanizaki, J., In Praise of Shadows, trans. T.J. Harper and E.G. Seidensticker. Stony Creek, CT: Leete’s Island Books, Inc., 1977 (1933). Triana Toribio, N., “Anyplace North America: On the Transnational Road with Isabel Coixet,” Studies in Hispanic Cinema, vol. 3, no. 1, 2006, pp. 47–64. Urios-Aparisi, E., “Dramatizing Intercultural Communication: Metaphors of City and Identity in Film,” Intercultural Communication Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, 2013, pp. 80–94. Vidal, B., “Love, Loneliness and Laudromats: Affect and Artifice in the Melodramas of Isabel Coixet,” in Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre, eds J. Beck and V. Rodríguez Ortega. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008, pp. 219–38. Williams, L., Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Zarzosa, A., “Melodrama and the Modes of the World,” Discourse, vol. 32, no. 2, 2010, pp. 236–55. Zarzosa, A., Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects. Lanham, Boulder, Toronto and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2013.

15

Transnational Contours and Representation Models in Recent Films about Immigration in Spain Alberto Elena and Ana Martín Morán

The 23rd Goya Awards in 2009 brought together, within its debutant directors’ section, two filmmakers hitherto unknown to the general public who presented their first feature films: Irene Cardona, director of Un novio para Yasmina/A Fiancé for Yasmina, and Santiago Zannou, director of El truco del manco/The One-Handed Trick. At a time when social policies appear to be unable to devise a coherent social model for the integration of immigrant communities, both films focused on characters involved in migration flows of different origin and provenance, and they had in common an attempt to update the cinematographic representations of immigration in Spain. But, whereas El truco del manco is an example of dialogue between genres, through which the latest Spanish cinema on immigration develops a fruitful relationship with certain film genres already acknowledged in the European context, Un novio para Yasmina adopts fresher perspectives, by explicitly resorting to romantic comedy recipes. This text will evaluate whether there are any significant changes between these narrations and those proposed over the last few decades, which might encourage new ways of projecting social and geographical environments, gender, and cultural identities, and transnational practices and links, in a society that comprises a 12–14 percent of foreign population. In particular, this study will address the possible similarities between these new genre and discourse forms and those showing at the neighboring countries’ cinemas, posing questions such as the following: is there any equivalent to the cinéma de banlieue—a (sub)genre of French cinema—in the latest Spanish production? How is the newly gained access to the camera of a new (or even a second) generation of immigrant filmmakers gradually leading to a new representation policy? Such questions will help us to examine the transnational links of recent immigration cinema in

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Spain, adopting a comparative approach that is a useful strategy for further research on the peculiarities of the Spanish case and its latest inflections.

El truco del manco The Goya for best novel director awarded to El truco del manco (2008) by the Spanish Academy of Cinema and Visual Arts1 shows the interest of the cinema qua institution in those proposals that follow well defined models in Spanish cinema but also come with new appeals for the audience. While the film brings up to date the imaginary which Spanish audio-­visual production has generated over the last twenty years concerning the immigrant communities and its disputes about their integration, it opts for a genre of transnational dimensions which had not yet taken root in Spain. This in effect introduces on the national scene formal and narrative alternatives that help renew such representation practices. While, on the one hand, El truco del manco should be studied within the corpus of immigration films, it is, on the other, closely related to the so-­called cinéma de banlieue, a genre recognizable within the French production since the 1990s (Tarr 2005; Higbee 2007).2 In these films alternative representations are exploited which in their turn show other genre devices: from American hoodmovies to teenpics, within the wider framework recently defined by Daniela Berghahn as diasporic youth films (2010, 238–9). As Konstantarakos has pointed out (1999), banlieue cinema is a genre defined by its geographical location. In the case of Spanish cinema, unlike the cinemas of other countries over the last few decades, representation of peri-­urban areas is marked by the absence of immigrant characters in leading roles, and therefore marked by a general non-­representation of such communities. Although distant in time from the imaginary created during the 1970s and 1980s by the so-­called cine quinqui, when Spain had not yet become a significant destination for migrant populations, Spanish banlieue cinema is indeed attuned to many situations shown in it—such as devastating urban redevelopment as the background, crime, marginality or illegal drugs, as well as to other (sub)cultural productions deeply rooted in popular taste: music—specially the rumba flamenca played by bands like Los Chichos; comics and illustrated magazines, gutter press, new leisure spaces and practices, etc.3 What could be defined as “barrio cinema” (a term not acknowledged by Spanish critics, though it may appeal to the audience due to its specificity in terms of genre identification) is basically an account of youth whose

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centre of gravity continues to be the outskirts of big Spanish cities—mainly Madrid and Barcelona, but also Seville and Bilbao. Peripheries are spaces long ago established in the Spanish national imaginary that nevertheless continue to exert a particular sort of fascination, which places them as objects of an exogenous look, a look which, as the case may be, makes them more or less permeable to fresh readings, to analyses ready to include differences (ethnic, cultural, genre, etc.) and ones that even allow a more incisive criticism—from an outsider position—of the hegemonic culture, and the transgression of certain narrative conventions. In other words, the concept of “periphery” emerges as an enormously powerful ideological construction, which serves to define and restore social fears, and to reassert the values of the prevailing ideology about the “center” and its margins, about what is normative and its violations. Such trends abound in contemporary Spanish audiovisual production, where television genres have progressively gained prominence and compete nowadays with cinema in the making of a national imaginary.4 It is a complex task which, in the case of cinema, has drawn the attention of various filmmakers who have found a common denominator, namely, that of locating their narratives within the geographical boundaries of one barrio, a malleable reality in its synthetic universality permeable to a more or less explicit localism. This may be observed, for example, in films like Salto al vacío/Jump Into the Void (1995) and Asfalto/ Asphalt (2000), by Daniel Calparsoro, Barrio/Neighborhood (1998) and Princesas/ Princesses (2005), by Fernando León; the multi-­awarded El bola/Pellet (2000), by Achero Mañas; Siete vírgenes/7 Virgins (2005) and Grupo 7/Unit 7 (2012), by Alberto Rodríguez; Tapas (2005), by Juan Cruz and José Corbacho; Azuloscuroc asinegro/DarkBlueAlmostBlack (2006), by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, and El truco del manco (2008), which in many cases are the first films of young Spanish directors.5 But, as has been pointed out, we are still far away from the stage in which immigrants and their descendants are the ones behind the cameras and propose their own fictions, a common situation over the last few decades in countries like France, United Kingdom or Germany, to mention only the most relevant ones in that respect. Therefore, it is particularly interesting to approach the work of a beginner: Santiago Zannou, son of an immigrant father from Benin and an Aragonese mother, born in Madrid in 1977 and raised in Carabanchel barrio. El truco del manco is his debut in feature films, though he had previous experience as director of video clips and short films.6 Zannous’s career took an important turn

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when he decided to move to Barcelona to study cinema, where he also came into contact with the musical scene associated with his brother Woulfrank’s recording studio. The film tells the adventures lasting a few weeks of two friends, Adolfo (the debutant actor, Ovono Candela) and Cuajo (“El Langui”), who try to make their dream come true: to set up a recording studio for hip-­hop musicians. Adolfo lives with his father—of whose origin we know nothing, except that he is African—and tries to resist his drift into alcoholism, while he himself writes demos and unsuccessfully strives to quit drugs abuse. Cuajo is disabled which makes his movement awkward, but he helps his family working at the street market stand they run. The narrative of El truco is based on a storyline of self-­ improvement, structured so that episodes correspond to the different obstacles both protagonists have to overcome: Cuajo’s parents struggle to guide the boys’ lives, while the youngest one is involved in petty thefts and rackets, a situation that will trigger the dénouement of the film. Meanwhile, life at Adolfo’s grows more and more difficult; there is no trace of the mother figure, a fact that makes it impossible to trace back his precise origins and hinders the exploration of possible intercultural marriages within the film. From the beginning, though, the film does take for granted the existence of interethnic friendships and the multiethnic nature of the barrio, expressed through secondary characters of Latin-American, Maghrebi or Gipsy origin, chosen in a well-­balanced casting of novice and non-­professional actors. The composition of the dialog sound track is remarkable, where different languages— subtitled for comprehension—and different accents are interspersed, and combined with the barrio’s own slang, which is sprinkled with Romany terms, as in the title itself: “el truco del manco” is a colloquial way of describing the act of rolling a joint with only one hand, something that Cuajo is bent on achieving throughout the whole film and which, at the same time, represents an explicit reference to the social and cultural milieu dealt within the film. Troublesome though it may be in cinéma de banlieue (Higbee 2007), the urban periphery becomes a symbolically loaded locus imposing certain priorities and predetermined narrative developments that allow its configuration as a particular genre within contemporary production. The Spanish model of this transnational formula is also pervaded by the requirements imposed by this locus. The film is hatched when Zannou meets “El Langui” in Madrid and decides to write the screenplay, but the shooting took place in various locations on the outskirts of Barcelona, La Mina among them.7 The barrio of El truco is not

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named: it is universal and interchangeable. In fact, there are no tell-­tale differences between these Barcelona periphery barrios and others located elsewhere in the country—Catalonian is not spoken, for instance. Zannou is not interested in the peculiar traits of a concrete place—as opposed to Alberto Rodríguez, for example, whose films are invariably located in Seville—but in the universality of a highly mediatized space upon which he designs an interesting stylisation process, retrieving in his mis-­en-scène certain elements which were to become habitual in his iconography, like graffiti and “non-­places” (waste ground, transit areas, railway tracks . . .), and editing transitions against a musical background that closely resemble those of video clip aesthetics. In El truco, as in the cinéma de banlieue, the characters’ mobility is essential: the car Cuajo will have to sell is his only means of moving out of the periphery, but he needs a friend to take him because he cannot drive. The efforts of both friends to attain a better life take the form of a lot of to-­ing and fro-­ing between the “marked” spaces they control (the streets, the market, the bar, the Gipsy wedding) or in which they are threatened, the best example of which is the town where Adolfo goes to take drugs, but also their own homes where family conflicts take place. The spatial dialectic between center and periphery becomes evident in the only sequence in which the characters drive through the city center streets, the outcome of which is a fortuitous encounter with the police and a night at the police station. While the extent of the interethnic friendship between both protagonists is not questioned and their differences (ethnic, social, religious . . .) are not explicitly mentioned, with the exception of Cuajo’s disability, the same is not true of their chances of forming a sexual or sentimental relationship. The waitress at the Arab bar they frequent is courted by both of them, but, when she decides to spend the night at Adolfo’s, the date falls through. The norm in this type of film, in which the female characters are usually underrepresented, sentimental ties are not developed, and in which interethnic sex is rarely staged, evens both protagonists up in El truco: each one carries his own burden, preventing him from having a normal experience in this respect. Thus, while the film supports the normalization of a multiethnic community on the one hand, on the other it cautiously addresses one of its most serious taboos, which will be examined later on. The fate that haunts both characters lies in the genre programming of the film, just as the narrative mainspring consists of their drive to self-­improvement – “don’t tell me it can’t be done” is Cuajo’s motto, as is usual in coming-­of-age films, where heroes undergo their own particular transition toward maturity.

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According to Berghahn, besides some other elements that would define the hybridization typical of this genre “music is a staple ingredient of the teenpic— and the diasporic youth film is no exception. Popular tunes reflect the spirit of a generation, or, rather, of a particular youth (sub)culture and its musical tastes . . . The soundtracks of diasporic youth films almost invariably consist of a mixture of Western and World music, underscoring the cultural hybridity of the protagonists” (2010, 249). Thus, a key element to understanding character developments in El truco is music: hip-­hop plays an essential role as a cohesive element and shared cultural background. It is a subculture suggestive of global affiliations and references adapted to the Spanish context, of which the band La Excepción, led by “El Langui”, is undoubtedly representative.8 Its popularity and musical blending with flamenco supports the concept of barrio culture as a difference-­enhancing discourse, through which alterity may cast a positive image while claiming hybrid and intermixed identities. Zannou’s debut was in general warmly received, although, as usual, the reviews of a film denouncing situations of evident social inequity did not measure the distance between reality and its representation.9 Nevertheless, Jordi Costa’s review imputing to Zannou the inability to confer realism on a film presented as realist, is understandable: “Despite his good intentions, he still shows the weakness of Spanish cinema when it comes to addressing realism, and, though he does not actually fall into stylistic tremendismo [a harsh and sordid version of realism] so common nowadays, his need to mix dramatic elements with social criticism drives the film to the brink of sensationalism” (2009). Autobiographical details apart, the director admitted when promoting the film his intention to portray a reality he knew well: “In El truco del manco I introduce not only situations I have personally experienced, but also those I have suffered through a neighbour or a friend . . . Cinema is not going to change things, but, if cinema could work as a kind of hammer to knock a chunk out of the wall so that the audience may see what is happening outside, that would be enough” (2008). The film therefore appeals to a politically “conscious” audience whose involvement in the action is triggered by established models of social cinema, but one which also seeks to attract a young audience that might enjoy its hybridization by means of a complex balance where the usefulness of previous models is acknowledged, from Barrio to La Haine/Hate (Mathieu Kassovitz 1995), whether it be to challenge them or to call up a set of references from a global subculture, like hip-­hop.

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Un novio para Yasmina While El truco del manco constitutes a fascinating example of inter-­genre dialog by means of which the most recent and innovative Spanish cinema about immigration points to a fertile correspondence with certain filmic traditions from Western Europe, Un novio para Yasmina opens up much less common perspectives by explicitly resorting to Hollywood romantic comedy conventions (and, of course, its countless imitations). Un novio para Yasmina, the feature film debut of Extremaduran filmmaker Irene Cardona, trained at Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) de San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba), was inexpensive to produce. It was co-­produced with Morocco, an experience that is quite exceptional in Spanish cinema; in fact, Saïd (Llorenç Soler 1998) excepted, no other Spanish-Moroccan co-­production had so far addressed the problem of migratory flows between both countries. Comparison with Saïd is, moreover, highly illuminating. On the one hand Soler’s film, which explicitly follows the guidelines of social realism established by the influential Las cartas de Alou/Letters from Alou (Montxo Armendáriz 1990), is decidedly representative of the first batch of Spanish films on immigration made from the 1990s onwards, in the wake of Spain’s entry into the EEC and under the marked effect of the 1985 Ley de Extranjería/Aliens Act (with its successive amendments from 2000 on). These films focus on the outward journey and first encounter with the “promised land,” naturally not free from hardships. Un novio para Yasmina, on the other hand, is fully representative of what some authors have already defined as a closure of this narrative, a noticeable trend in the second half of the 2000s, simultaneously implying an opening up to new and more complex perspectives (Zecchi 2010, 72).10 Furthermore, Cardona’s film stands out for using “an unusual comical tone when dealing with major subjects, as is the case of immigration” (Vall 2008, 22); or, to be more precise, with the no less sensitive subject of interethnic relationships in the context of the problematic migratory issue in twenty-­firstcentury Spain. There are, of course, some relevant precedents in this respect, like the already mentioned Las cartas de Alou and Saïd to start with, which open up lines of analysis and representation that are far from being exhausted, as the recent Alacrán enamorado/Scorpion in Love (Santiago Zannou 2013) clearly shows. In most cases, however, the view adopted by Spanish filmmakers is eminently dramatic and marked by a sense of failure in the relationship, which implies an

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integration failure in the so-­called host society.11 This idea is pointed up by Parvati Nair (2004, 113) precisely in relation to Saïd, though, in fact, it is a trope dating back to countless “colonial love stories,” where interethnic relationships are always doomed to an unhappy ending. As Marie Louise Pratt rightly states, “whether love turns out to be requited or not, whether the colonized lover is female or male, outcomes seem to be roughly the same: the lovers are separated, the European is reabsorbed by Europe, and the non-European dies an early death” (2004, 113). In recent European immigration cinema—and undoubtedly, by extension, in the Spanish case—it is equally arguable that “tragic love affairs point to the reluctance of European countries to become pluralistic, hybrid, multiethnic societies” (Smelik 2003, 72). That “disappearance as narrative destiny” as Isabel Santaolalla judiciously comments, with reference to Spanish immigration cinema—and which includes not just death, but also repatriation and other fateful vicissitudes that end up frustrating any possible attempt to achieve integration—may also be deemed in the case of interethnic relationships as a symptom of the deeply-­rooted fear of “white woman contamination’ ” (2005, 136). This fact, in addition, probably underlies the obvious difficulties filmmakers seem to meet when it comes to explicitly representing sex scenes between male immigrants and Spanish women, the paradigmatic example being Susanna (Antonio Chavarrías 1996). Needless to say, the opposite situation is addressed differently; in fact, some critics have opportunely underscored the recurrent cliché of the immigrant woman as prostitute, an occupation certainly “overrepresented” (Oliver 2011) as compared to other roles obviously played by immigrant women in our society, however surprisingly “underrepresented” in cinema (Argote 2003, 6–7). Surely it is this heavy inertia in the representation of otherness in immigrant cinema that has to be tackled as the basic framework and point of reference when weighing up the novelty of a romantic comedy like Un novio para Yasmina in the present state of the genre. If indeed “attitudes towards inter-­ethnic intimacy thus offer a unique insight into the limits of tolerance and the nature of prejudice” (Klocker and Stanes 2012, 2037–8), there is then no need to underline to what extent this “trope of intercultural romance . . . is . . . intricately linked to systems of discourse of regulation, such as policy, industry, national and, at times, globalised sensibilities of selfhood,” and therefore “consistently focuses and reflects these social configurations” (Smaill 2010, 2). Anneke Smelik has addressed the question of interethnic relationships in European cinema of the 1990s in a ground-­breaking

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study, examining her subject matter from the perspective of a cross between the Hollywood “unlikely couple” tradition and the thriving immigration cinema that began to gather force at that time in numerous countries in Europe. It is interesting to see that Smelik (2003, 72), in line with other studies on the subject focused on other contexts, perceived a growing fluctuation in representation discourses and strategies, which, by following some contributions from the field of comedy, could perhaps be interpreted as “a sign that Europe in its many different nationalities is ready to embrace multiethnic society.”12 Leaving aside for the moment the complex crux of the matter, comedies like Romuald et Juliette/Romuald & Juliette (Coline Serreau 1989) and Jalla! Jalla!/The Best Man’s Wedding (Josef Fares 2001)—reviewed by Smelik (2003, 70–2)—do in fact represent a significant turning point in a trajectory that supposedly leads from the universe of tragic colonial love affairs described above to a new and less troublesome multiethnic reality. However, it must be stressed that comedy continues to be a genre apparently at odds with immigration cinema in all latitudes, especially regarding the decisive question of interethnic relationships. French cinema has made some relevant contributions besides the aforementioned Romuald et Juliette,13 and Italian cinema—to mention just one more case—has also in recent years set off down this path, as shown by films like Bianco e nero/Black and White (Cristina Comencini 2008) (Cincinelli 2012); this trend, however, remains weak as a whole and the body of representative works is remarkably meagre. In Spanish cinema, films like Tomándote/Two for Tea (Isabel Gardela 2000) or El próximo Oriente/ The Near East (Fernando Colomo 2006) have attempted comparable approaches to the subject within the framework of comedy, while mixed couples begin to appear prominently in films like Cosas que hacen que la vida valga la pena/Things That Make Life Worth Living (Manuel Gómez Pereira 2004) or El penalti más largo del mundo/The Longest Penalty Shot in the World (Roberto Santiago 2005). Of all these, Tomándote, a modest Catalonian production with very limited circulation, is perhaps the one which most clearly flirts with Hollywood romantic comedy, having somehow forestalled the proposals made in Un novio para Yasmina. The fact that the love affair between the young writer and the Pakistani immigrant is finally doomed to failure, according to prevailing conventions in drama (and, as has been noted, in a long and copious literary tradition), absolves the film from the usual happy ending requirement in comedy and makes of Tomándote a transitional production that does not exactly fit its ascription to romcom.

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Although there are exceptions worth mentioning, the happy ending is one of those recurrent conventions of the romantic comedy genre that make up its familiar narrative codification. Irene Cardona and her co-­writer, Nuria Villazán, actually conceive the screenplay writing of Un novio para Yasmina as a formally canonical exercise whose narrative fissures may serve as a starting point for a “reflection on integration,” but also, in a broader sense, a “reflection on the search for a new identity” by a young Moroccan girl settled with his peasant brother in a small village in Extremadura with the aim of finishing her studies in Spain (Cardona). Although the film lavishly depicts the darkest Spain (la España profunda), where migratory flows are surely unleashing major transformations as well, and lets fly a few gibes at the frivolous political establishment, its tone is deliberately kind. In fact, some potentially delicate matters included in the screenplay have completely vanished from the film version.14 Cardona prefers to place high stakes on romantic comedy conventions, taking advantage of them to deconstruct clichés and commonplaces with a kind look but surgical accuracy: the marriage of convenience between Yasmina and Alfredo, a young unemployed man for whom—as the rules of genre require—she initially feels nothing but hate and contempt, becomes the main narrative focus, leading to an elegant and moderately elliptic ending where the protagonists find out they are (probably) made for each other.15

Conclusion According to the film’s director, Un novio para Yasmina is a romantic comedy that conceals a moral tale, a summer fable about marriages of convenience, life as a couple and social commitment. Messy love affairs, self-­serving marriages, Spanish courses for foreigners, divorce threats, soccer, cuscus and Iberian dry-­cured ham are just some ingredients of a story about people with different backgrounds living together, and about how social conventions and prejudices determine personal relationships. Cardona

This is quite an unusual register to address immigration problems in Spanish cinema—and, as noted above, in neighboring countries’ cinemas as well, allowing Cardona to introduce a “domestic” dimension that many critics deem missing in immigration representations in our cinema (and not only in ours) (Oliver 2011, 5). Unfriendly and grumpy, Yasmina is nevertheless depicted as a fragile and

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likable character below that hostile appearance, but her image is certainly alien to the “do-­goodism” stereotypes to which immigration cinema seems to be so given. The excellent acting of Sanna Alaoui, a French-Moroccan actress without previous experience in Spain, adds rich nuances and complexity to the character of Yasmina, who should undoubtedly belong in its own right to the distinguished array of new looks at immigration proposed by Spanish cinema over the last few years.16 In turn, the appearance of Santiago Zannou on the Spanish cinema industry scene is already a small sign of normalization that marks the beginning of a new stage in the shaping of the collective imaginary on minorities of immigrant origin. Zannou continues to show interest in making use of the genre key elements for the representation of this reality, as proven by his return to a periphery setting in his film about boxing Alacrán enamorado. In addition, he has made another documentary film in which he retraces his father’s trip back to his homeland Benin in La puerta de no retorno/The Door of No Return (2011). Thus, working through two proposals apparently distant from each other as Un novio para Yasmina and El truco del manco, it is possible to identify two possible lines of development in Spanish audiovisual production, in their effort to give visibility to the changing circumstances faced by a society definitively marked by the presence of immigrant communities. The possible links with other well-­established genres in Western cinema, like romantic comedy or cinéma de banlieue, reveal that the way to normalize this reality is through the assumption of transnational genres that have been shown to awaken correspondences with local audiences.

Notes 1 The film was also awarded a Goya for the best original song, “A tientas,” by Woulfrank Zannou and Juan Manuel Montilla “El Langui,” and a Goya for the latter as best breakout actor. 2 As Carrie Tarr states, “Cinéma de banlieue emerged within French film criticism in the mid-1990s as a way of categorising a series of independently released films set in the rundown multi-­ethnic working-­class estates (the cités) on the periphery of France’s major cities (the banlieues), the most significant of which was Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995)” (2005, 2). 3 The Barcelona Centre de Cultura Contemporània held an interesting exhibition in 2009, “Quinquis de los ochenta. Cine, prensa y calle,” curated by Amanda and

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4

5

6

7

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Mery Cuesta, about the influence of the quinqui phenomenon on popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, precisely from a cultural studies perspective, so that available materials are subjected to a new reading based on camp aesthetics, parody, humor, and nostalgia, although such an approach does not exclude a politically critical review of the period. Some fiction series where comedy prevails are worth mention, like, for instance, Pelotas/Balls (TVE 1 2009–10), Mujeres/Women (TVE 2 2006) and, more farcical, Aída (Tele 5, continuous Sunday night success since 2005). But it is also essential to bear in mind the thoroughness with which TV production has displayed a discourse on otherness over the last decade, by means of various formats like reports and docu-­shows, where reporters go deep into the heart of the periphery to show the conflicts and everyday struggles of their dwellers, adopting almost always a point of view half sensationalist and half patronizing about that “beyond” the limits of the centre. See, for example, Callejeros/Ramblers (Cuatro), Comando Actualidad/Hot News Commando (TVE), Crónicas/Reports (TVE 2), Conexión Samanta/Samanta Connection (Cuatro) or Vidas anónimas/Anonymous Lives (La Sexta). The barrio universe has also drawn the attention of long-­experienced filmmakers, who have resorted to auteur cinema devices rather than making use of the key resources specific to this genre in order to seduce their audience: this is the case of Almodóvar in Volver/To Return (2006), who finds in this locus the possibility of turning a village into a city; or the interesting “resetting” operation carried out by Bigas Luna in Yo soy la Juani/My Name is Juani (2006). Cara sucia/Dirty face, an autobiographical short film about the integration problems of a boy of African origin in Spanish school system, was shown at the 2004 San Sebastián Festival and nominated for a Goya Award that same year. Zannou has also made video clips for, among others, Marlango, Paula Domínguez, Ari, Frank T, Ruido or Cycle, several of whom have been awarded. He also directed the documentary film Barcelona Hip Hop (2001). The recent documentary film Jacques Leonard, el payo Chac/Jaques Leonard, Chac, the Gorgio (Yago Leonard 2011), written by Nuria Villazán, partially reconstructs the history of this barrio, where Gipsy families were rehoused in the late 1970s, through the personal experience of the French photographer. The Spanish hip-­hop scene over the last decade is marked by diversity of style, and La Excepción is one of the most successful bands, having reached a much wider audience—their first album, Cata Cheli (2003), sold 33,000 copies and received the MTV 2006 award for the best European band singing in Spanish. The trio, formed by “El Langui,” “El Gitano Antón,” and Dako Style, is characterized by its merry style, the musical blending of rap with Gipsy melodies and influences, and by its critical lyrics, filled with references to current social issues, but always addressed with a lively sense of humor.

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9 Indeed, in several reviews of the film a clear parallelism was drawn between the stories of the characters and their creators’ lives, specially once the latter had received an award and thus were noticed by the general public (Elola 2009; Fernández Santos 2009). 10 For a typology of the different subgenres or periods of immigration representation, basically shared by all Western cinemas, see Loshitzky (2010, 8). 11 Some examples of this tradition would be Bwana (Imanol Uribe 1996), Sé quién eres/I Know Who You Are (Patricia Ferreira 2000), El faro/The Lighthouse (Manuel Balaguer 1998) or Retorno a Hansala/Return to Hansala (Chus Gutiérrez 2008), leaving Latin-American production aside, not included in the present article but addressed elsewhere by Alberto Elena (2005). 12 In his excellent comprehensive study of the matter in recent Australian cinema, Klocker and Stanes (2012, 2050) also admitted having obtained “mixed findings,” in as far as the “stubbornly, persistent discomfort with inter-­ethnic intimacy” was tempered in some recent productions by certain “promising signs of normalization.” 13 Outstanding examples are: Black Mic-Mac (Thomas Gilou 1986), Les histoires d’amour finissent mal en général/Love Affairs Usually End Badly (Anne Fontaine 1992), or Métisse/Café au lait (Mathieu Kassowitz 1993) (Predal 2001). 14 For instance, there is no trace left of the joint-­smoking habit of Mari, the social worker from the immigrant welcome association; and above all, probably because the film is a co-­production, the debate over the Spanish or Moroccan condition of the Northern African cities of Ceuta and Melilla is suppressed, which was originally included in the sequence where Yasmina is introduced to the family of her first boyfriend, Javi, the local policeman adverse to marriage. 15 Bibliographical references to romantic comedy are plentiful and of course this is not the place for a critical overview. It will be enough for our purposes to quote a recent tentative definition of the genre and thereby to provide an adequate framework for the approach essayed by Cardona in Un novio para Yasmina: “So what are the elements that compose the genre? A romcom certainly has a very distinctive narrative structure: boy meets girl, various obstacles prevent them from being together, coincidences and complications ensue, ultimately leading to the couple’s realization that they were meant to be together. In keeping with the comedy genre, the narrative concludes with a happy ending, with the final union of the couple” (Mortimer 2010, 4). 16 There is no room here to address the highly interesting question of “ethnic castings,” which, however, has been examined by Leonardo De Franceschi (2012) in relation to Italian cinema, offering clear-­headed and thought-­provoking reflections. But it is worth pointing out that, in Spanish cinema, the use of local actors to perform immigrant and foreigner roles continues to be quite common.

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For example, the role of the Moroccan woman in Sé quién eres is interpreted by Candela Peña, a Catalan actress; the Algerian woman in La educación de las hadas/ The Education of Fairies (José Luis Cuerda 2006) is played by Bebe Rebolledo, an Extremaduran (by adoption); and the charismatic Khaled in El penalty más largo del mundo by Luis Callejo, from Segovia.

References Argote, R., “La mujer inmigrante en el cine español del inaugurado siglo XXI,” Feminismo/s: revista del Centro de Estudios sobre la Mujer de la Universidad de Alicante, 2, 2003, pp. 121–38. Belinchón, G., “El truco del manco refleja la dura verdad de los barrios,” El País, September 22, 2008. Available from: [September 30, 2014]. Berghahn, D., “Coming of Age in the Hood: The Diasporic Youth Film and Questions of Genre,” in European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe, eds D. Berghahn and C. Sternberg. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Cardona, I., “Un novio para Yasmina. Notas de la directora,” n.d. Available from: [September 30, 2014]. Cardona, I. and N. Villazán, Un novio para Yasmina. El guión. Badajoz: Festival Ibérico de Cine, 2009. Cincinelli, S., Senza frontiere. L’immigrazione nel cinema italiano. Roma: Kappa, 2011. Costa, J., “El realismo y sus postizos,” El País, January 16, 2009, Available from: [September 30, 2014]. De Franceschi, L., “L’ ‘attorialià’ come luogo di lotta. Splendori e miserie del casting étnico,” Quaderni del CSCI. Rivista annuale del cinema italiano, 8, 2012, pp. 100–7. Elena, A., “Latinoamericanos en el cine español: Los nuevos flujos migratorios, 1975– 2005,” Secuencias. Revista de Historia del Cine, 22, 2005, pp. 107–33. Elola, J., “Una historia de superación. El ‘cumplesueños,’ ” El País, February 8, 2009. Available from: [September 30, 2014]. Fernández-Santos, E., “Una nueva vida para Zannou y Langui,” El País, February 3, 2009. Available from: [September 30, 2014]. Flesler, D., “New racism, intercultural romance, and the immigration question in contemporary Spanish cinema,” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, vol. 1, no. 2, 2004, pp. 103–18. Higbee, W., “Re-Presenting the Urban Periphery: Maghrebi-French Filmmaking and the Banlieue Film,” Cineaste, vol. 33, no. 1, 2007, pp. 38–43.

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Klocker, N. and E. Stanes, “ ‘Reel love’ across ethnic boundaries? The extent and significance of inter-­ethnic intimacy in Australian cinema,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 36, no. 12, 2013, pp. 2035–54. Konstantarakos, M., “Which Mapping of the City? La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) and the Cinéma de Banlieue,” in French Cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and Difference, ed. P. Powrie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Loshitzky, Y., Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema (New Directions in National Cinemas). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Mortimer, C., Romantic Comedy. London and NY: Routledge, 2010. Oliver, A.D., “Romancing the immigrant in Spanish Cinema: imagining love, lust & prostitution,” Metakinema. Revista de Cine e Historia, 8, 2011, [September 30, 2014]. Pratt, M.L., Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Prédal, R., “Problemes d’identite, droit a la difference et couples mixtes,” Confluences Méditerranée, 39, 2001, pp. 171–86, www.cairn.info/revue-­confluencesmediterranee-2001-4-page-171.htm [September 30, 2014]. Santaolalla, I., Los “Otros”. Etnicidad y “raza” en el cine español contemporáneo. Madrid: Prensas Universitarias, Zaragoza/Ocho y Medio, 2005. Smaill, B., “Intercultural Romance and Australian Cinema: Asia and Australia in The Home Song Stories and Mao’s Last Dancer,” Screening the Past, 28, 2010, http://tlweb. latrobe.edu.au/humanities/screeningthepast/28/home-­song-stories-­maos-last-­ dancer-asia-­australia.html [September 30, 2014]. Smelik, A., “ ‘For Venus smiles not in a house of tears’: Interethnic relations in European Cinema,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6, 2003, pp. 55–74. Tarr, C., Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. Vall, P., “Un novio para Yasmina,” Fotogramas, 2008 (1977), p. 22. Zecchi, B., “Veinte años de inmigración en el imaginario fílmico español: hacia un espacio liminal,” in Imágenes de Otro. Identidad e Inmigración en la literatura y el cine, ed. Montserrat Iglesia. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2010.

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Transnational Identities in Galician Documentary Film: Alberte Pagán’s Bs. As. and Xurxo Chirro’s Vikingland Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Galician cinema is an ambiguous and slippery concept. According to some critics, the only films that should be labeled as Galician are those filmed in Galicia and in Galician, directed by local filmmakers and funded by production companies based there. Other critics, on the contrary, perceive any film shot in Galicia as Galician regardless of the filmmaker’s origins, or, conversely, they consider any film made anywhere in the world by a Galician filmmaker as Galician, regardless of its language, location or official nationality. The first option tries to be precise at the expense of excluding many titles that do not fulfil all the requirements. The second option, in turn, seeks to include the largest possible number of works, causing a dangerous lack of definition. Consequently, any attempt to refine this concept has historically been caught between these two positions. This is the reason why most scholars working on this subject have resorted to production criteria, even though this choice has led them to admit that Galician cinema can hardly exist as an independent film industry within the Spanish context (Pérez Perucha 1996, 131; Folgar de la Calle 2002, 211; Fernández Iglesias 2008, 39–40). In the 1980s, critics and historians agreed to replace the term “Galician cinema” with “Cinema in Galicia,” because this label allowed them to avoid the previous ontological controversy (Hueso Montón 1996, 274). The new term placed on the same footing productions such as El bosque animado/The Enchanted Forest (José Luis Cuerda 1987) or Sempre Xonxa/Always Xonxa (Chano Piñeiro 1989), which represent the widest and the most specific options respectively. By the end of the twentieth century, the label “Cinema in Galicia” referred to both a small television industry and a set of maverick filmmakers who worked on their own. The impact of the recent economic crisis has

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significantly limited the growth potential of this industry, but these economic circumstances has also enabled the rise of a new generation of maverick filmmakers who take advantage of the funding and distribution opportunities provided by digital filmmaking. The core members of what is currently known as Novo Cinema Galego would be Alberte Pagán, Óliver Laxe, Ángel Santos, Peque Varela, Xurxo Chirro, Marcos Nine, Eloy Enciso, Pela del Álamo, Lois Patiño, Diana Toucedo, Pablo Cayuela, Xan Gómez Viñas, Otto Roca, Xacio Baño, Alberto Gracia, Ramiro Ledo, and Eloy Domínguez Serén, among others. They all share a common interest in non-­fiction film understood as their main creative territory, digital filmmaking as their usual working tool, and self-­ production as the only economic system affordable for them. A hypothetical canon—still under construction—for the Novo Cinema Galego should include non-­fiction and experimental works such as Bs. As. (Alberte Pagán 2006), 1977 (Peque Varela 2007), París #1 (Óliver Laxe 2008), Eclipse (Alberte Pagán 2010), Todos vós sodes capitáns/You Are All Captains (Óliver Laxe 2010), Vikingland (Xurxo Chirro 2011), La Brecha/The Gap (Marcos Nine 2011), Arraianos (Eloy Enciso 2012), Montaña en sombra/Mountain in Shadow (Lois Patiño 2012), Fóra/Out (Pablo Cayuela and Xan Gómez Viñas 2012), N-VI /N-VI, Vanishing Roadsides (Pela Del Álamo 2012), Piedad (Otto Roca 2012), O quinto evanxeo de Gaspar Hauser/The Fifth Gospel of Kaspar Hauser (Alberto Gracia 2013), Costa da Morte/Coast of Death (Lois Patiño 2013), and VidaExtra/ExtraLife (Ramiro Ledo 2013). These films, however, do not present a clear aesthetic or thematic unity that allows us to identify the main features of this film movement beyond the filmmakers’ will to belong to this group. In fact, the first attempts to summarize such features do not precisely stand out for their clarity: These new documentaries are heterogeneous and polymorphous, as their idiosyncrasy demands: creative documentaries, unreconciled cinema, non-­ fiction cinema, mutations . . . Perhaps the only connection shared by these artists is their personal and singular perspective on the issues they examine, some of which were also the focus of twentieth century Galician writers: the landscape, the rural world, emigration, memory, and the passage of time. These are eternal themes but here they are dealt with from a significantly personal and subjective perspective, and the films have emerged from the periphery of the conventional audio-­visual industry and established culture. They are thus a breath of fresh air, different, daring—in short, contemporary—and they also mark a generational renewal which has not yet been sufficiently recognized. All of these filmmakers have been free to undertake their own explorations, set aside all commercial

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interests, and place the film at the heart of everything, with no dogmas, standards, production models or norms to follow. The tales they tell are hybrid, with an interplay between fiction and documentary and a questioning of the traditional objective point of view of the genre. González Álvarez 2013 These films do not follow an established pattern, they offer instead a wide variety of proposals. There is a great interest in experimentation and a remarkable willingness to take creative risks. Filmmakers deal with contemporary and universal topics that transcend the local perspective: memory, identity, pantheism, otherness, environmentalism . . . For the first time in Galicia, creators are supported by both critics and programmers. There is a paradigm shift in film production characterized by the rise of low-­cost and the disappearance of traditional producers, a turning point that has led to the predominance of non-­ fiction film due to its creative freedom and easy availability. González 2013a

Without a common aesthetic program, the Novo Cinema Galego is basically an open community in which filmmakers share similar practices and interests. They no longer work in a standardized film industry located in a particular territory, but within a decentralized digital network, as Gonzalo de Pedro and Elena Oroz have explained regarding the Catalan non-­fiction film: Plenty of filmmakers (or, more exactly, video makers) . . . are shaping a new mediascape in which the concept of documentary itself is being completely redefined, while the traditional power centres, beginning with the dichotomy between Madrid (as the main industrial centre) and Barcelona (as the capital of auteur cinema), are being relegated to the background in order to make way to a kind of not hierarchical, decentralized and (dis)organized network that is a real equivalent to the P2P networks in which people exchange files online without central servers, and where any author is simultaneously an author-­producerand-­server. Accordingly, we cannot strictly speak about a dispersion of production centres, or a displacement of the Barcelona-Madrid axis in favour of other places, but about the overcoming of the traditional system, which has been replaced by a dispersed movement disconnected from industry, even though some filmmakers do work between both systems. 2010, 741

The Novo Cinema Galego would then be the outcome of the same process of decentralization, that is, the Galician avatar of the so-­called Otro Cine Español (Losilla 2013, 6–8), as well as the umpteenth attempt to develop a national

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cinema in Galicia, a project supported, for the first time, by programmers and critics, as Xurxo González said above (2013a). On the one hand, these films are regularly programmed in institutions like the CGAI (Centro Galego de Artes da Imaxe), film societies such as the Cineclube de Compostela or the Cineclube Padre Feijoo de Ourense, and several film festivals, beginning with Play-Doc, in Tui, and following with Curtocircuito and Cineuropa, both in Santiago de Compostela. On the other hand, a few film magazines, blogs and TV programs— namely, A Cuarta Parede, Acto de Primavera and Zig Zag—devote several pages and minutes to promote and analyse these films, thereby helping them to find their potential audience. Regarding the previous attempts to create a national cinema in Galicia, the main novelty of the Novo Cinema Galego has to do with its transnational approach in aesthetic, thematic, and distribution terms. It must be taken into account that these films do not necessary talk about Galicia, but from Galicia: according to Alberte Pagán, the idea is to express “a view from here, regardless of whether it deals with a Galician topic or not” (in Sande 2009, 16). Their audience, in fact, may be both within and outside the country, inasmuch as these works are firstly addressed to the international film festival circuit (Martin Pawley in Sande 2009, 17).2 In this context, the titles currently succeeding in that circuit are the main source of inspiration for the Novo Cinema Galego: films halfway between fiction and documentary, storytelling and experimentation, the subjective and the collective, the seen and the imagined. Such an interest in transnational aesthetic models, which do not belong to a single national cinema, is precisely what allows Galician cinema to be currently known as such abroad for the first time in its brief history.

Galician diaspora in film Emigration is a cross-­cutting issue in Galician culture: it pervades different times, genres, styles, and discourses. From the 1850s to the 1970s, successive generations of Galician people moved to different countries in America—mainly Argentina, Cuba, and Venezuela—and Europe—especially Switzerland, France, and Germany. One of the first films to depict this phenomenon was Canto de emigración/A Hymn to Migration (Antonio Román 1934), a short documentary made during the Spanish Second Republic in which the causes of emigration were addressed from an endogenous perspective, that is, from within Galicia itself. This approach, however, was soon replaced with an exogenous gaze:

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from the 1940s to the 1970s, Galician emigrants were almost exclusively represented from the point of view of the host society, in both Spanish films about indianos—returned migrants—and Latin American films about gayegos.3 In the 1980s, after the Spanish transition to democracy, the migration dynamics slowed down to the point of almost disappearing at the end of the century, when the number of returnees became higher than the number of emigrants (Bouzada Fernández and Lage Picos 2004, 26–35). In this period, the two perspectives discussed above co-­existed in fiction film: on the one hand, titles such as Gallego/Galician (Manuel Octavio Gómez 1988), Frontera Sur/South Border (Gerardo Herrero 1998) or Un franco, 14 pesetas/Crossing Borders (Carlos Iglesias 2006) preserved the previous exogenous approach; while O pai de Migueliño/Migueliño’s Father (Miguel Castelo 1977), Mamasunción (Chano Piñeiro 1984) or Sempre Xonxa recovered the endogenous perception of the Galician diaspora. Obviously, both approaches were conditioned by the kind of stories filmmakers wanted to tell: on the one hand, the adventures of emigrants away from their country; on the other hand, the effects of their absence on their homeland, and especially among their loved ones. The emergence of the Novo Cinema Galego chronologically coincides with the first years of the recent economic crisis and the subsequent restart of migration flows. It should not be surprising that many of these filmmakers have taken up the issue again, especially those that somewhat belong to the diaspora: Óliver Laxe was born in Paris, where his parents had emigrated, and shot his first feature film in Tangiers (Todos vós sodes capitáns); Peque Varela emigrated to London, where she made 1977; and Ramiro Ledo filmed VidaExtra in Barcelona, where he lived for almost a decade. Their personal itineraries and creative decisions correspond to a new migratory cycle in which the previous dichotomy between exogenous and endogenous gaze is no longer operating. For example, París #1 could be interpreted as a travelog in which Óliver Laxe meets his Galician roots and gradually becomes more and more fascinated by a series of group dynamics that are as strange as familiar to him. By showing both landscape and humanscape through a primitivist visual style, he establishes a permanent tension between recognition and estrangement that ultimately leads to an idiosyncratic film in which the everyday and the exotic goes hand in hand. The filmmakers of the Novo Cinema Galego voluntarily place themselves in a limbo between tradition and modernity: being aware of the limitations of localism, their films explore easily recognizable situations in order to depict Galicia in relation to the rest of the world, that is, from a transnational, instead

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of a postnational, position. Consequently, the way they depict Galician identity moves beyond costumbrismo to approach the postmodern paradigm described by Gérard Imbert: Identity is perceived as something cracked that no longer brands for life, something that can be challenged and negotiated in accordance with the Other, because identity currently relies on relational issues. From this perspective, the relational contract is stronger than the social contract, while immanent values—those constructed by the subject itself while interacting with the Other—prevail over transcendent values—those imposed by value systems. 2010, 160

Galician films directly dealing with the emigrant’s experience, such as Bs. As., Vikingland or Pettring (Eloy Domínguez Serén 2013), no longer confront emigrants with the world, but rather show their encounter with host societies through the recycling of all types of private material filmed by emigrants themselves. The clearest case is Vikingland, a found-­footage documentary made from a sailor’s video blog that depicts his everyday life as a migrant worker away from his homeland. Bs. As. and Pettring, in turn, are made from images belonging to the filmmakers’personal recordings—in particular, a travelog and a film correspondence. As we shall see below, these films are, first and foremost, reflections on the emigrant’s identity, an identity that first needs to go abroad to encounter the Other in order to be later perceived and assumed by the individual him- or herself.

The two sides of the same ocean: Bs. As. Alberte Pagán was the first Galician filmmaker who embraced digital filmmaking. His first feature film, Bs. As., echoes Stan Brakhage’s, Michael Snow’s or Andy Warhol’s works, probably because Pagán is a recognized specialist in the American avant-­garde film (Pagán 1999, 2004, 2007, 2014). More specifically, this movie strongly resembles News from Home (Chantal Akerman 1977), given that both films combine elements from non-­fiction genres such as the family portrait and the travelog to address the historical relationship between Europe and America, which are respectively represented by Brussels and New York in News from Home and by Galicia and Argentina in Bs. As. The most significant similarity between both films is their narrative structure, which is based on the filmmakers’ family correspondence. They also share several stylistic features, inasmuch as both are composed of subjective impressions of foreign cityscapes.

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Indeed, Pagán even borrows some shots and leitmotivs previously used by Akerman, such as her long static takes filmed from moving vehicles or in subway cars and stations. It could be said, therefore, that Pagán rewrites Akerman’s film in a different time and country, although Bs. As. differs from News from Home in terms of approach and meaning. Pagán aimed to reflect on how Galician identity is perceived on both sides of the Atlantic by people from different generations: in the first half of Bs. As., the filmmaker’s mother tells the story of how her brother went to Argentina in the 1950s, from where he never came back again; while in the second half, a strange voice, which belongs to a British woman of Indian origin called Jesvir Mahil, reads aloud a series of emails sent to the filmmaker by his Argentinean cousin, Celia, the daughter of the aforementioned lost relative. In her messages, Celia roughly describes her everyday life after the 1998–2002 Argentine Great Depression, but she also makes some comments on her inherited identity as a second-­generation Galician. Jesvir Mahil’s accent is a key element to convey the immigrant’s experience, because her uncanny diction in Spanish—a language she did not speak—causes a deep sense of estrangement that attempts to aurally reproduce the immigrant’s shock upon arrival. The transnational vocation of Bs. As. comes precisely from this kind of formal choices, through which Pagán seeks to locate his film halfway between different continents, cultures and film traditions, in a liminal state in which the local and the global are closely intertwined. The film’s division into two parts emphasizes a change of direction in the transatlantic dialogue that coincides with the reversal of the migration flows at the turn of the century: first, the story goes from Galicia to Argentina by means of the mother’s voice; and then, it returns from Argentina to Galicia through the cousin’s words. This change of narrator is also associated with a change in the camera position regarding the cityscape: Pagán initially places the camera in an elevated point of view, thereby adopting what Michel de Certeau named the voyeur’s perspective; but he later films at street level, using the walker’s perspective in order to get closer to his cousin’s experience (De Certeau 1984, 91–8) [Figures 1 and 2]. Such choice suggests the filmmaker’s gradual involvement with the city, Buenos Aires, or at least with the historical account associated with it. Consequently, the images filmed from outside the urban fabric refer to the geographical and emotional distance that separated the filmmaker’s mother’s generation; while the shots filmed at street level aim to show the place from where the cousin’s words come as an antidote capable of bridging the distance.

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Figures 1 and 2  Bs. As. (Alberte Pagán 2006). Voyeur’s perspective (left) and Walker’s perspective (right)

Pagán’s and Celia’s correspondence began at the beginning of 2002. Its original purpose was to discuss inheritance issues, but it soon became a dialogue about Celia’s personal situation in the wake of the economic crisis: throughout ten emails written over two years, she explains her family situation, gives her opinion on the new social movements, describes her precarious employment status and finally reflects on her inherited identity as a second-­generation Galician. Interest in family roots is a common reaction among Latin Americans of European descent in times of crisis, especially in those cases in which these roots may provide them with a new passport to retrace the steps of their ancestors. Some of these people may become returned emigrants, who reverse the previous family relationship between the country of origin and destination. Under these circumstances, their sense of belonging to one nation or another relies on practical reasons or elective affinities, because they are transnational subjects. Accordingly, Bs. As. advocates the need to adopt an open identity always under construction, which in cinematic terms entails the need to enrich any film tradition by means of foreign influences. In this context, a transnational identity does not lead to the dissolution of the original one, but to its strengthening through the contact with the Other.

Self-­portrait of the filmmaker as a migrant worker: Vikingland and Pettring Autumn, 1993. Luis Lomba “O Haia” signed onto the crew of the ferry that links Rømo, in Denmark, with the German island of Sylt. At the time, his baggage

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included a camcorder with which he documented his everyday life and working activities between October 1993 and March 1994. A few years later, Galician film critic Xurxo Gonzalez found a copy of these recordings in his family home, where they had arrived as a gift for his father, who was once one of Lomba’s workmates at the ferry. Being aware of the memorial value and artistic possibilities of this material, Xurxo González became Xurxo Chirro, his avatar as a filmmaker, and re-­edited the footage, paying particular attention to those sequences in which Lomba and his workmates, among which there were other Galician sailors, depict themselves as migrant workers. Such recordings are a good example of what Jean-Louis Comolli has termed “auto mise en scène,” an individual’s conscious and deliberate representation filmed by him- or herself (2003, 153–4). The resulting film, Vikingland, preserves the original purpose of the recordings, but also emphasizes its nature as a document of the Galician diaspora to the point of becoming a synecdoche of the emigrant’s experience. Chirro restructured Lomba’s video blog in nine chapters, whose titles are quite explicit regarding its content: “Crew,” “Luis,” “Cold,” “Christmas,” “Work,” “Journeys,” “Deck,” “Ice,” and “Whiteness,” The film evolves from a tangible beginning focused on the filmed subjects, who are introduced in “Crew” and “Luis,” to an abstract end in which the action is replaced by a series of non-­ figurative images in “Ice” and “Whiteness.” Between both ends, the plot combines scenes of everyday life—“Cold,” “Christmas”—and working time—“Work,” “Journeys”—in which the initial playful and laid back attitude of the filmed subjects is gradually overshadowed by their alienation caused by both the job and the environment. Aboard the ferry, the camera serves to fight alienation, inasmuch as it gives a new meaning to the work, which becomes a performative act: this is the reason why the length of the shots in the chapter “Work” is exactly the same as the length of the tasks undertaken by Lomba. “The camera,” therefore, “is not simply a recording device that captures the experiences of the displacement,” Alisa Lebow explains, “it can be a symptom of that very displacement” (2012, 230–1). The long section of the Christmas dinner includes a direct statement about the ultimate sense of the recordings: in that sequence, the sailors directly address the camera, integrating it into their celebration “to show to the people what a sailor’s life is like,” as one of them says; because the camera embodies the absent loved ones with whom they would like to share so many things lived away from home. Regarding this situation, Roger Odin has drawn attention to the documentary—almost historiographical—value of this kind of footage: “home

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movies are usually the only means of documenting those racial, ethnic, cultural, sexual or social communities that have been marginalized by the official version of history since long time ago” (2008, 206). Lomba and his workmates thus express a conscious desire to create a document, which Chirro later strengthens in Vikingland. The film fulfils and transcends the five basic functions identified by James M. Moran in the domestic mode: first, it represents the everyday, the daily life aboard the ferry; second, it explores and negotiates both individual and collective identity, as Lomba does directly and Chirro indirectly; third, it offers a material tool to establish generational continuity, which refers here to the transition from Lomba to Chirro as the subject who produces the images, as well as from Chirro’s father to his filmmaker son; fourth, it constructs an image of home, which this time is an absent, offscreen home—Galicia—and fifth, it provides people with a narrative format capable of telling personal and family stories, something that becomes more evident in Lupita (Xurxo Chirro 2012), a short film made after Vikingland in which Chirro reveals the original purpose and receiver of Lomba’s recordings (Moran 2002). The domestic mode, according to Elspeth kydd, also serves to articulate social groupings and establish their relationship regarding the imagined community of the nation (2012, 190–1). In this sense, Lomba attempts to document the sailors’ way of life, while Chirro links this group with the nation by conceiving Vikingland as the flip side of all those stories about absent emigrants that are so usual in Galician culture and society. Arguably, the national feeling of these sailors increases during their experience in the triple border between Germany, Denmark, and the North Sea: again, what identified them as Galicians is the contact with the Other, which is here represented by the rest of the crew. Chirro extracts this video blog from its original context and places it into a new one, in which the images, as Laura Rascaroli has pointed out, “retain their original meanings but also obtain new ones” (2009, 51). Vikingland can then be interpreted in personal terms, given that the filmmaker once worked as a sailor; but also in family terms, since Chirro’s father appears briefly in the footage; and even in professional terms, because this kind of video blogs are an important part of the footage collected and preserved by the Proxecto Socheo, a research project aimed at recovering the film heritage of the Baixo Miño region that is directed by Chirro himself under his real name, Xurxo González (2013b). Thanks to this polisemy, Vikingland can be understood as both a public record from a community archive and a private document through which the filmmaker shares

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Figures 3 and 4  Luis Lomba in Vikingland (Xurxo Chirro 2011) on the left and Eloy Domínguez Serén in Pettring (Domínguez Serén 2011) on the right

part of his emotional memory with the audience. The outcome has even inspired other filmmakers who are currently living similar experiences, like Eloy Domínguez Serén, who has also depicted himself as a migrant worker in Pettring [Figures 3 and 4]. This short film arises from Cartas/Letters (Eloy Domínguez Serén/Marcos Nine 2012–13), a film correspondence in which Eloy Domínguez Serén tells his life as an emigrant in Stockholm to Marcos Nine, who chronicles in exchange the effects of the economic crisis in Galicia. These filmmakers have unknowingly updated a long-­forgotten genre, the correspondence film avant la lettre, which consists of travelogues and documentaries commissioned to professional filmmakers by both emigrants in America and their relatives in Europe in order to maintain a mutual film exchange during the first half of the twentieth century.4 Contrary to these works, which were conceived by and for a collectivity, Dominguez Serén’s and Nine’s letters are addressed to a particular individual, but their images can also represent the entire collectivity understood as the sum of those who emigrate and those who stay. The generation gap between Vikingland and Pettring corresponds to different migration cycles. Both Luis Lomba “O Haia” and Eloy Domínguez Serén share the same will to leave a testimony of their experience, but their feelings are not exactly the same: in Vikingland, Lomba expresses a slight homesickness and a clear class pride that have completely disappeared in Pettring, because Domínguez Serén belongs to a generation unable to find a job at home despite being much better educated and trained than the previous one. At a particular point of the film, Domínguez Serén even states that “after a five-­year Degree and one-­year Master’s program, I’m the least qualified worker here,” referring to his temporary

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job as a construction worker in Sweden. Pettring basically conveys the frustration and disorientation among new emigrants, who have neither a future nor a way back. This post-­punk attitude is fortunately balanced by Domínguez Serén’s fascination for Swedish society, to the point that Pettring is rather a self-­portrait of an immigrant instead of an emigrant. This time, the transnational experience not only highlights the original identity, but also foresees its evolution in the medium term, offering a glimpse into the future that causes both anxiety and pleasure.

Conclusion: representing the periphery from the periphery These three films show how Galician identity works as an ontological anchor that allows emigrants to orient themselves after the loss of their geographical, cultural, and economic referents. In these documentaries, the filmed subjects express and defend their national identity as a consequence of their transnational experience. If we apply this logic to the Novo Cinema Galego, we can conclude that this group of filmmakers addresses identity issues from a peripheral position, which is transnational in itself: they consciously avoid the centre to settle down in the margins, borrowing ideas from global non-­fiction genres such as the travelogue, the found-­footage documentary or the correspondence film in order to enrich their film tradition without giving up its particular idiosyncrasy. This dynamic explains why so many Galician films have been shot outside Galicia—Bs. As., Todos vós sodes capitáns, Vikingland, Montaña en sombra, Pettring, etc—as well as their systematic tendency to explore geographical and cultural borders, whether between Galicia and Portugal (Arraianos), Galicia and Castile (N-VI), rural and urban areas (Piedad) or real places and their respective myths (Fóra, Costa da Morte). Such an interest in borders is not only thematic but also formal, given that several films play with formats halfway between fiction and non-­fiction, such as Todos vós sodes capitáns and Arraianos, or between home movies and professional recordings, as happens in Bs. As., París #1 and Vikingland. Accordingly, just as Galician migrants have reinforced their individual and collective identity through the encounter with the Other, the Novo Cinema Galego has widened the Galician cinematic imaginary by embracing transnational influences from global genres and filmmakers. These foreign influences have been primarily used to update the local film scene, but

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also—and this is perhaps the most important achievement of the Novo Cinema Galego—to create representations in which, for once, Galician people can recognize themselves on the screen.5

Notes 1 All translations are the author’s except otherwise noted. 2 Between 2010 and 2014, the films of the Novo Cinema Galego have been selected, and sometimes even awarded, by international film festivals such as Cannes (Todos vós sodes capitáns), Locarno (Arraianos, Costa da Morte), Rotterdam (O quinto evanxeo de Gaspar Hauser), Marseilles (Vikingland), Buenos Aires (La Brecha, Arraianos, VidaExtra), Roma (Montaña en sombra) or Copenhagen (Fóra). 3 Galician emigrants were pejoratively depicted in Latin American film through the popular character of the gayego. A prime example of this character is Cándida Loureiro Raballada, an antiquated maid played by Argentinean actress Niní Marshall in films such as Cándida (Luis Bayón Herrera 1939), Cándida millonaria/Candida, Millionairess (Luis Bayón Herrera 1941), Santa Cándida (Luis César Amadori 1945), Una gallega en Mexico/A Galician in Mexico (Julián Soler 1949), Los enredos de una gallega/Galician Trouble (Fernando Soler 1951), etc. 4 Manuel González Álvarez and Giuliana Bruno have respectively documented the existence of correspondence films among Galician immigrants in Buenos Aires and Italian immigrants in New York (González Álvarez 1996, 216–24; and Bruno 1997, 54). 5 I would like to thank Alberte Pagán, Xurxo Chirro and Eloy Domínguez Serén for their kind permission to reproduce images of their films. Research toward the writing of this article has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, project no. FFI2013–40769–P.

References Bouzada Fernández, X. and X.A. Lage Picos, “O retorno como culminación do ciclo da emigración galega,” Grial, 162, 2004, pp. 26–35. Bruno, G., “City Views: The Voyage of Film Images,” in The Cinematic City, ed. D.B. Clarke. London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 46–58. Comolli, J.L., Voit et pouvoir. Paris: Verdier, 2004. De Certeau, M., The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

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De Pedro, G. and E. Oroz, “Centralización y dispersión. Dos movimientos para cartografiar la ‘especificidad’ del documental producido en Cataluña en la última década,” in Realidad y creación en el cine de no-­ficción, ed. C. Torreiro. Madrid: Editorial Cátedra, 2010, pp. 6–82. Fernández Iglesias, M.J., “Cinema galego e cinema en Galicia. Apuntes cara a unha análise subxectiva,” in Culturas posíbeis e imposíbeis. Cultura e Vangarda na Galiza do século XXI, ed. X. Buxán Bran. Vigo: Vicerreitoría de Extensión Cultural e Estudantes da Universidade de Vigo, 2008, pp. 39–43. Folgar de la Calle, J.M., “Do cinema en Galicia ó cinema galego,” Grial, 154, 2002, pp. 199–212. González Álvarez, M., “Cine e emigración,” in Historia do Cine en Galicia, ed. J.L. Castro de Paz. Oleiros: Via Láctea Editorial, 1996, pp. 215–47. González Álvarez, M., “Beyond the ‘comfort zone,’ ” Play-Doc, 2013. Available from: [August 23, 2014]. González, X., “Videobitácoras: Mariñeiros na procura de visibilidad,” Proxecto Socheo, February 15, 2013. Available from: [August 23, 2014]. González, X. “(Re)visión do Novo Cinema Galego,” Acto de Primavera, May 19, 2013. Available from: [August 23, 2014]. Hueso Montón, A.L., “Galicia,” in Cine Español. Una historia por autonomías, vol I, ed. J.M. Caparrós Lera. Barcelona: PPU, 1996, pp. 265–88. Imbert, G., Cine e imaginarios sociales. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2010. Kydd, E., “Looking for Home in Home Movies: The Home Mode in Caribbean Diaspora First Person Film and Video Practice,” in The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary, ed. A. Lebow. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, pp. 183–200. Lebow, A., “The Camera as Peripatetic Migration Machine,” in The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary, ed. A. Lebow. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, pp. 219–232. Losilla, C., “Un impulso colectivo. Emerge ‘otro’ cine español,” Caimán. Cuadernos de Cine, 19, 2013, pp. 6–8. Moran, J.M., There’s No Place Like Home Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Odin, R., “El film familiar como documento. Enfoque semiopragmático,” Archivos de la Filmoteca. Revista de Estudios Históricos sobre la Imagen, 57–58 (Vol. 2), 2008, pp. 197–217. Pagán, A., Introducción aos clásicos do cinema experimental. 1945–1990. A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela: Centro Galego de Artes da Imaxe, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo and Xunta de Galicia, 1999. Pagán, A., “Vanguardismos clandestinos: el cine underground,” in Dentro y fuera de

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Hollywood. La tradición independiente en el cine americano, eds R. Cueto and A. Weinrichter. Valencia: Institut Valencià de Cinematografía Ricardo Muñoz Suay, Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón, Centro Galego de Artes da Imaxe, Filmoteca de Andalucía and Filmoteca Española, 2004, pp. 241–77. Pagán, A., A mirada impasíbel. As películas de Andy Warhol. A Coruña: Edicións Positivas, 2007. Pagán, A., Andy Warhol. Madrid: Editorial Cátedra, 2014. Pérez Perucha, J., “A inexistencia do cine galego baixo o franquismo ou non hai máis cera da que arde,” in Historia do Cine en Galicia, ed. J.L. Castro de Paz. Oleiros: Via Láctea Editorial, 1996, pp. 131–6. Rascaroli, L., The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and Essay Film. London: Wallflower Press, 2009. Sande, J.M., “Novas miradas, novos creadores,” AG: Revista do Audiovisual Galego, 9, 2009, pp. 14–18.

17

(In)Visible Co-Productions, Spanish Cinema, the Market and the Media Vicente Rodríguez Ortega

A Alberto Elena, del que aprendí tanto. When El tío Boonme recuerda sus vidas pasadas/Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall his Past Lives1 (Apitchatpong Weerasethakul 2010) won the Palme d’Or in the Cannes film festival, some critics celebrated this accomplishment as a tremendous success for Spanish cinema despite the fact that the film displays no trace of Spanishness in its cultural or aesthetic fabric.2 Thai, British, French, German, and Dutch media could have similarly celebrated the film’s feat since it is an international co-­production funded by companies from all the above-­mentioned countries. A few years before, El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro 2006), a US/Spanish/Mexican co-­production set in Spain, unmistakably based on Spanish history and using native artistic talent but directed by a Mexican, was identified with a diversity of national labels depending on the media outlets (and agendas) that discussed it. Moreover, while Spanish media celebrated Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) as an example of a successful US/Spanish co-­production and the kind of industrial enterprise Spanish companies should favor to secure their survival and strengthen their market position, Catalan institutions and critics identified the film as an example of the transnationality of new Catalan cinema. This essay takes as a point of departure the concept of  “invisible co-­ productions”—films that do not bare any kind of aesthetic and cultural markers framing them within a particular national film tradition, movement or practice and yet are the result of the joint effort between companies based on such nation and other foreign enterprises—to scrutinize the transnational character of contemporary Spanish cinema and its relationship with the malleability of genres. Rather than accepting or rejecting the categorization of “Spanish” for

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these “invisible co-­productions,” this chapter will analyse how different agents attach one or several national stamps to these films depending on a variety of ideological, political, and cultural values. I will examine two internationally recognized and awarded invisible co-­productions, EL tío Boonmee and El secreto de sus ojos/The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan José Campanella 2009) to trace their shifting nationality/transnationality through the global festival and award circuits, and the regional, national, and international press. My goal is to study how Spanishness becomes both a strategic and ideological marker in the diverse media trajectories of these films in order to define the concept of national cinema as a changing cultural and political label whose meanings depend on the social agents that use and appropriate it. In addition, I will also discuss two “visible co-­productions” set in Spain and using extensive Spanish artistic talent— Vicky Cristina Barcelona and El laberinto del fauno—to establish a more thorough cartography of the functioning of Spanish co-­productions in the international markets. The cases of El tío Boonmee and Vicky Cristina Barcelona will also serve as an entry point into the Catalan/Spanish national identity issue and a discussion of the role of the cultural agents at work within this scenario. Therefore, rather than establishing a series of industrial criteria to determine the adequacy of the term “co-­production,” listing a series of aesthetic and cultural attributes to determine the value of specific films as co-­productions, or, alternatively, reworking pre-­existing taxonomies of Spanish co-­productions, this chapter attempts to analyse the multifarious uses and meanings of the term co-­production within the transnational media and cinematic environment, explaining the variety of factors at play in their identification and circulation. Within this context, it pays attention to the ways in which genres are mobilized within these national and transnational mediascapes to frame the very functioning of contemporary Spanish co-­productions.

Spanish cinema and co-­productions In the last decades, co-­production agreements amongst European partners within the EU have enabled a variety of opportunities to create a global, “continental” cinema. Potentially, films stemming from these practices serve as tools to establish the EU as a cultural supranational entity while championing the redefinition of a transnational European identity that is not bound by geopolitical borders. Therefore, some scholars affirm that the great amount

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of European co-­productions and the EU’s championing of this kind of audiovisual policies through the Euroimages and Media programs reframe the conceptualization of the national beyond the territorial, “by bringing into question patterns of duality and antagonism and refashioning them into more nuanced and ambivalent composites” (Rivi 2007, 8).3 Similarly, Tim Bergfelder argues that to conceptualize contemporary European film, commentators need to emphasize “the fluidity of identities” at work in defining European productions (2005). Thus, it seems less valuable to define what a national cinema is or may be in terms of an absolute category than to examine how this multidimensional concept works within a diversity of contexts (Higson 2002), as a process of interaction between cultural producers, audiences, industry players, and social institutions (from government agencies to film critics), and how it evolves in a diversity of historical junctures. Following Choi, I understand national cinema as “an interlocking sequence of events, knowledge, practices, rituals, and discourses. Merged with private and public life routines in a national society, it develops into a synesthetic rapport with the national in which intellectual, empirical, perceptual, sensual, and ritual experiences are knitted together. And it is an experience not simply of the textual and representational but also of the social and institutional” (2011, 87). Within this framework, co-­productions play a pivotal role in as much as they contribute to reshape the dynamic relationship between the national and transnational forces at work in the production, distribution, and consumption of films. Discussing the Spanish/European and Spanish/Latin-American axes, several commentators have emphasized the key role of co-­productions for Spanish cinema in attempting to create a robust national industry that fruitfully competes in the international markets. They highlight, on the one hand, the decisive role of the EU in strengthening the national industries of its members through a series of collaborative programs. On the other, they explore the attempt to establish a Spanish-Latin American exchange, which benefits from functioning within a large market, in order to minimize the prevailing status of Hollywood across these territories (López Villanueva 2009; Izquierdo Castillo 2010; Falicov 2012; Ciller 2013). At the core of some of the scholarly discussions on the issue of co-­productions, there is an attempt to define what a co-­production is and what it should be. Above all, a co-­production appears to be a slippery concept, a shifting target that is difficult to grasp, since “in some cases the degree of multinational collaboration is barely discernible in the final product; in others the fusion of perspectives and practices is very noticeable” (Santaolalla 2007,

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70). Some authors go to great lengths in establishing a taxonomy of Spanish co-­productions, taking as a conceptual framework the relationship between economics and culture. They acknowledge how co-­productions may “destabilize” dominant ideas of national identity by creating a series of interactive routes of exchange across national borders (Pardo 2007).4 Other authors praise the heterogeneous impulse of “counternarrative” and culturally hybrid co-­productions, since these films question homogenization and help to create an ambivalent space between the I and the Other, between one nation’s cinematic output and another’s (Palacio 1999, 232). This type of co-­productions may create a potentially alternative discourse in relation to the dominant values at work within the public sphere. In the same vein, Hoefert de Turégano establishes that “the transnational character of co-­productions is an ideal site to explore the intersection of local and global identities” (2004, 15), signaling how this type of film plays out the dynamic between localized representations and universalizing appeal to function productively in a diversity of markets. As a consequence, the formulaic often plays a key role for films to achieve worldwide legibility. In discussing the collaboration between EU countries and non-European countries, Halle echoes this thought, stating that “the coproductions that increasingly structure the contemporary European film industry are not just financial transactions but excursions across cultures that are fueled by scripts and scenarios . . . The coproduced films must tell stories that offer to European and North American audiences the tales they already want to hear” (2010, 317). From this point of view, rather than creating more diverse mediascapes, most contemporary co-­productions flatten out cultural diversity and exchange, appealing to the most understandable traits across borders in encapsulating the defining characteristics of the particular cultures they represent. First, let’s set the record straight: most contemporary Spanish co-­productions are a purely economic enterprise. One author goes as far as labeling this kind of films as “false” or “formal” co-­productions since there is not any creative and cultural exchange. Consequently, financial partnership is the key factor in explaining the prominent role of co-­productions within the contemporary Spanish landscape (Pardo 2007, 152). But are these “false” co-­productions, or are we perhaps forgetting, for example, that in the heyday of Spanish co-­productions, during the 1960s, most of these films were genre works, such as spaghetti westerns and horror films, that structurally hid or downplayed the Spanishness of their setting, actors, and plots for the sake of creating a viable international

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product that could appeal to audiences across the globe? Shouldn’t we state then that co-­producing has historically been, for the most part, an economic practice and so it remains nowadays? How can we then conceptualize contemporary Spanish co-­productions taking into consideration the various factors that play a role in their realization?

From Thailand to Barcelona, from Buenos Aires to the Spanish Civil War: (in)visible co-­productions, genre and Spanish cinema El tío Boonme won the Palme d’Or in 2010, along with a long list of awards and nominations in the festival circuit. Its director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, was already a well-­established figure in the West. Several of his previous efforts, most notably Blissfully Yours (2002) and Tropical Malady (2005), had already made a huge splash in the art-­house niche both in Europe and the United States. In addition, both films were screened in numerous international festivals in North and South America, Europe and Asia.5 Predictably, after the 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or, El tío Boonme went on an extensive festival route around the world, bringing to the fore the functional logic of the festival circuit. First, A-class film festivals act as “multipliers” in the sense that B category festivals showcase the “greatest hits” of the most notable events, such as Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, and Venice (Elsaesser 2005, 98). Second, they position films within specific markets, such as the art-­ house niche, adding a certain value to films that may prove decisive in their critical acknowledgment and economic viability (de Valck 2007, 130).6 In this sense, the film festival circuit turns into a key player in establishing the “power grid in the film business, with wide-­reaching consequences for the respective functioning of the other elements (authorship, production, exhibition, cultural prestige and recognition) pertaining to the cinema and to film culture”(Elsaesser 2005, 83).7 Despite the acquisition of value through the festival circuit and the almost unanimous critical praise, the box-­office results of El tío Boonme were modest at best with a worldwide gross of a million dollars and an unremarkable performance in one of the biggest art-­house markets, the United States.8 In Spain, the film did not fare particularly well either, grossing a total of 82,000 euros and reaching 12,000 spectators.9 According to Spanish producer Luis Miñarro (head of the Eddie Saeta production house with a stake of 10 percent in the film’s total budget), his involvement in the film stemmed from “wanting to

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introduce Weerasethakul to Spain, where he is practically unknown” (Mayorga 2010). Despite Miñarro’s commitment, he seems to have only preached to the choir. El tío Boonme failed to transcend the art-­house niche where this kind of products typically maneuver, unable to cross over from a specialized audience into more commercial circuits.10 In fact, Miñarro himself acknowledges that most of the national and international films he (co)-produces are highly dependent on funders such as Ibermedia, World Cinema Fund or Euroimages. Furthermore, several of them—like José Luis Guerín’s En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the city of Sylvia (2007)—have more spectators in the dozens of film festivals where they are showcased than in commercial theaters (Melemenidis 2011). Although in official institutions, such as the Ministry of Culture, El tío Boonme is identified as a Spanish film given the economic involvement of a national company in its funding, other players in the international film circuit, such as “Catalan Films & TV (CF&TV)”—an institution devoted to the promotion of Catalan media, its co-­production and distribution—identify the film as Catalan.11 In this context, the term “Catalan” does not simply function as an identifying label that describes the country of origin of one of El tío Boonme’s production companies. Instead, CF&TV attaches a cultural value to an economic transaction, activating it as an ideological asset to account for the idiosyncrasies of the audiovisual production of a region that aims to establish its cultural output as a marker of distinction, as a tool that brings to the fore what characterizes its own national identity.12 In this respect, the national and international success of Vicky Cristina Barcelona is particularly significant, since the film became a battleground in which prescriptors defined its national identity depending on a variety of ideological agendas. The film is a US (Weinstein Company & Gravier Productions) and Spanish (Mediapro, Antena 3 Films) co-­production that also received extensive public funding from both Spanish (ICAA) and Catalan (Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals, Catalan Films & TV, Turisme de Catalunya, and TV3) institutions. It grossed over 73 million dollars worldwide,13 reaching also the top of the Spanish box-­office upon its release.14 In this respect, it is worth mentioning that, apart from having two of the most recognizable Spanish stars, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, and a well-­known US actress, Scarlett Johansson, Allen’s work was also distributed in the dubbed multiplex movie theater circuit, which is by far the largest in Spain, minimizing the linguistic Otherness of the film, since it was mostly shot in English. Rather than engaging with the cultural clash between the US and Spanish protagonists or, alternatively, scrutinizing the building blocks of a global capital

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like Barcelona, Allen’s film is structured around a series of salient landmarks and well-­known cultural assets (such as Gaudí) to deliver a clichéd depiction of the Catalan capital and, ultimately, of Spain.15 Vicky Cristina Barcelona is thus “a touristy view of Barcelonian and Spanish cultural idiosyncrasies as well as another node in Woody Allen’s uneven tour of European cities” (Fernández Labayen and Rodríguez Ortega 2013, 179). It is the ultimate example of “city branding,” through the use of two complementary brands (Fecé 2012), namely, Woody Allen, the uncompromised US auteur with an unmistakable imprint, and the city of Barcelona, represented as “an idealized art-­filled urban space” (Amago 2013, 148). Like in the case of El tío Boonme, the Spanish vs. Catalan “dispute” became a key component of the film’s media coverage in the different critical, industrial, and consumption outlets. For the Spanish Academy, the film was a de facto national film, and Penélope Cruz won, for example, the best supporting actress Goya Award. In Catalonia though, Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a contestant in the Gaudí Awards (given by the Catalan Film Academy), getting the best non-Catalan language film prize. Both the Spanish and Catalan press gave extensive coverage to the film from its pre-­production to its release. Whereas the Catalan press emphasized Vicky Cristina Barcelona’s depiction of Barcelona, Woody Allen’s whereabouts and the potential impact of the film on future tourism-­related revenue, Spanish media remarked the economic success of the film, followed its path through the festival and awards circuit, highlighted its Spanish character and reflected on the positive publicity for the country the film had generated abroad.16 Whereas El tío Boonme is easily identifiable as a transnational auteur film that built upon its wide exposure in the festival circuit to gain a market share (even if quite limited) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona bears the distinctive flavor of one of the most recognizable filmmakers of the last forty years and an international cast appealing to different audience groups, both El secreto de sus ojos and El laberinto del fauno capitalized on their generic fabric—crime thriller and fantasy drama, respectively—to become successful products. In other words, they banked on the widespread internationalization of these forms of cinematic address to gather an in-­built global audience in front of the theatrical screens.17 However, there is a significant difference between them. Campanella’s film is set in Argentina in a period of over thirty years—from 1974 to the present time—and has mostly on-screen native talent, Del Toro’s is set in post-­civil war Spain and relies, for the most part, on recognizable Spanish actors.18 El secreto de sus ojos is an Argentine-Spanish co-­production that grossed nearly 34 million dollars worldwide;19 in Spain it had over a million spectators,

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making 6.3 million euros.20 Its dual Spanish-Argentine origin led to seemingly paradoxical nominations. In the Goya Awards, it was nominated for both best (Spanish) film and best Iberoamerican film, winning the latter. It also won the best foreign film Academy Award, competing for Argentina. Finally, it was also nominated for best European film in the European film awards and won several prizes in Argentina competing as a local product.21 Del Toro’s film was also financially successful, making 83 million dollars worldwide,22 and nearly 9 million euros in Spain, with over 1.6 million spectators.23 El laberinto del fauno was nominated for the Academy Awards and Golden Globes for best foreign film as a Mexican entry; it won best film and best director in the Ariel Awards (given by the Mexican Film Academy) and was nominated for best director and best film in the Goya Awards as a Spanish film. Although both Campanella and Del Toro are long-­established filmmakers who have a widespread following in their native countries and, more extensively, in the Spanish-­speaking world, they were hardly household names in the global film market at the time of the release of the discussed films.24 Likewise, while Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil or Sergi López and Maribel Verdú are well-­ known Argentine and Spanish actors, they are barely known outside their countries of origin, except for limited market niches.25 In addition, despite the transnational character of the financial arrangement that facilitated the making of both films and, to a greater or lesser extent, the culturally mixed talent involved in their production, there is hardly any visible trace of cultural hybridity. A film viewer with no further knowledge of these films would undoubtedly identify El secreto de sus ojos as Argentine and El laberinto del fauno as Spanish. In other words, their co-­production status is rather invisible for a film spectator unless he/ she digs deeper into the exact coordinates of their making, just like an apparently “more foreign” film such as El tío Boonme. Their box-­office accomplishments are arguably related to the fact that both are in Spanish language and this fact catapults their commercial appeal in both Spain and Latin America, even if accounting for Hollywood’s utter hegemony. It is also undeniable that the “readability” of the genres through which they operate increases their appeal for a large number of spectators beyond their specific linguistic background or the explicit historical and ideological positions from which they may stem in relation to Argentine and Spanish history. Both films are the ultimate example of how the co-­production of films may contribute to create healthy national film industries by designing cinematic products that are able to compete both nationally and internationally. It also points to the fact that domestic revenue is just a minor piece of the financial

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cake. For Spanish film to survive and occasionally compete with stronger film industries, the international market must be the main source of revenue. In 2013, another Spanish-Argentine thriller starring Ricardo Darín, Séptimo/Seventh Floor (Patxi Amezcua) tried to replicate the international box-­office and critical success of El secreto de sus ojos. Whereas for the most part, critics disliked the film, spectators in both Argentina and Spain rushed to movie theaters to watch it.26 In fact, cultural hybridity is far more visible in Séptimo than in El secreto de sus ojos. It is directed by a Basque filmmaker and, apart from Darín, it stars Belén Rueda—one of the best-­established Spanish actors today. It is thus easy to determine that apart from the fact that Campanella’s work paved the way for Séptimo’s success, the box-­office appeal of both film stars in their respective countries had a role in the significant financial accomplishments of the film. Its lack of critical recognition does not seem to have been an obstacle for its long legs in the domestic box-­office of both Spain and Argentina. And yet, its impact beyond its native countries has been, up to this point, unremarkable. Séptimo was released in other Latin American countries such as Chile and Brazil but failed to open theatrically in any of the main European markets and the United States.27

Conclusion: co-­productions and genre For the last decade, co-­productions have been amongst the most financially successful Spanish films in both the national and international markets along with English-­language films such as Los otros/The Others (Alejandro Amenábar 2001), Lo imposible/The Impossible (J.A. Bayona 2012) or Filmax-­produced genre works, franchise films like Torrente and unexpected word-­of-mouth hits such as Ocho apellidos vascos/Spanish affair (Emilio Martín Lázaro 2014) that recycle a well-­proven comedic formula according to the idiosyncrasies of Spain. Nonetheless, financially successful co-­productions rarely function as insightful accounts of cultural hybridity or engage with the ideological and political conflicts at work within the social fabric(s) they explore. Often, they are strategic financial alliances for small producers to enter the global circulation of cinematic goods via the festival circuit, such as in the case of El tío Boonme and Eddie Saeta. Other times, they serve as one-­time deals with a reputed global cinematic household, such as in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. These films have both a cinematic and extra-­cinematic impact for the institutions that contribute to fund them or the locations where they take place.

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For the most part, Spanish producers resort to recurrent alliances with other marginal film industries in the international markets—such as those of Argentina and Mexico with El secreto de sus ojos and El laberinto del fauno—to create successful products that bank on the combination of a variety of factors (the prestige of the director, the recognizability of the cast, the film’s genre, the access to funds from multiple countries, and transnational institutions such as the EU, etc.) to become successful. In this context, it seems rather obvious to state that from an industry, reception, distribution, exhibition, and aesthetic viewpoint filmmaking has turned into a transnational practice in which the national is strategically mobilized for a variety of purposes: to get money from institutional funds, to compete in film festivals and prestigious awards such as the Golden Globes and the Oscars, to highlight the remarkable cultural production of a nation, or a region that aspires to become an independent state such as Catalonia. As Halle argues “in the era of transnational and transcultural film production, we must question our very presumptions about inside and outside, national and non-­national” (2010, 317). Films attempt to deliver stories designed to function globally, to be “readable” here and there. Often the cinematic market is highly unstable, going through cycles that bring to global prominence a particular set of previously peripheral works.28 Ultimately, after a certain period, these films tend to move back into the margins, or, they may, otherwise, become part of a new canon of both commercially and critically acclaimed cinematic categories. Undoubtedly, genre films partake in a series of strongly sedimented forms of address that spectators know how to decode. Consequently, the potentially negative impact of linguistic and cultural Otherness when approaching foreign films is minimized. Without necessarily renouncing to engage with the thorough exploration of the social field in which they act, filmmakers that aspire to create enduring alternatives to Hollywood’s hegemony must recognize the decisive role of cinematic genres in this process. International alliances such as co-­productions facilitate the access to the economic funds needed to carve out a small space in the national and global markets. Genre-­structured stories maximize the effects of these institutional and economic agreements.

Notes 1 From now on I will refer to this film as El tío Boonme. 2 “Un Cannes con un sabor muy español,” El Cultural, May 23, 2010.

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3 Despite its institutional insistence on the importance of the cultural component of the audiovisual endeavors it backs financially, the EU has progressively favored those cinematic products that sell an “exportable” European identity. It has changed its audiovisual policies in order to favor works that are economically profitable within the European and transnational markets, as opposed to granting subsidies based on cultural criteria, as it initially did. 4 As Ciller rightfully remarks, to a great extent, the definition of co-­productions often depends on the particular interests or foci of each researcher, or the specific elements he/she analyses such as exchange programs between nations, the characteristics of a specific national film industry, competitive strategies when confronting US cinema, diversity and multiculturalism, etc (2013, 236). 5 In addition, both films won a variety of prestigious prizes. Blissfully Yours won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes, the Best Director prize at the Buenos Aires Film Festival, and the KNF Award at Rotterdam, among others. Tropical Malady won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. For a thorough analysis of the festival routes of Weerasethakul’s films and the critical reception of El tío Boonme see Morgen, 2012. 6 Farahmand argues that the film festival, as a global platform, has a decisive impact in the ways in which critics, audiences, investors, and scholars conceptualize and acknowledge a film. For him “festivals exert a direct or indirect influence on film production because of the role they play in helping a film transition from local economies to the global market” (2010, 267). Although this is a valid point, I would argue that in the case of directors such as Weerasethakul, or Tsai Ming-Liang, to give another example, this transition from the local to the global does not actually take place since they make films for the North-American and European festival and art-­niche circuits and often have more success abroad than in their own countries. Weerasethakul and Tsai are, in this sense, world auteurs from both a financial and an aesthetic viewpoint, operating within the international networks of filmmaking. 7 International festivals, curators, and critics shape an alternative circuit for the critical acknowledgement, distribution and exhibition of films (Sedeño Valdellós 2013, 302). 8 For a detailed account of box-­office data, go to: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/ ?page=intl&country=IT&id=uncleboonmee.htm 9 Data of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, available here: http://www.mecd.gob.es/ cultura-­mecd/areas-­cultura/cine/datos-­de-peliculas-­calificadas.html 10 In Spain, subtitled films are only showcased in smaller theaters, most of the movie houses show dubbed films. 11 See here: http://www.catalanfilms.cat/es/newsletter/september-BFI-es.jsp 12 The definition of Catalonia as a nation and its current attempt to hold a referendum to claim its independence from Spain is a very complex issue that is beyond the scope of this essay.

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13 See data here: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=vickycristinabarcelona.htm 14 “Vicky Cristina Barcelona se apodera de la taquilla española,” Fotogramas, September 22, 2009. See data about number of spectators and total Spanish box-­office here: http://www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-­mecd/areas-­cultura/cine/ datos-­de-peliculas-­calificadas.html 15 Even when the film’s narrative leaves Barcelona, it conflates two easily recognizable clichés, the quaintness of Oviedo’s downtown and flamenco music, an obvious trait of Spanishness. 16 See for example “Vicky Cristina y mejor, Barcelona” , “Woody Allen ‘cautiva’ Cannes con Vicky Cristina Barcelona” or “La película española de Woody Allen se titulará Vicky Cristina Barcelona” http://www.elconfidencial. com/archivo/2007/10/18/23_pelicula_espanola_woody_allen_titulara.html 17 One could argue that Woody Allen’s films are a genre in themselves, with a set of recurrent motifs, plot twists, and aesthetic characteristics that binds them together. 18 The exception is Argentine Federico Luppi, a habitual actor in Iberoamerican co-­productions. 19 Data available here: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=secretintheireyes.htm 20 Data available here: http://www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-­mecd/areas-­cultura/cine/ datos-­de-peliculas-­calificadas.html 21 Among others, the Sur Prize, awarded by the Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas of Argentina and the Clarín Award for best film. 22 See data here: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=panslabyrinth.htm 23 See data here: http://www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-­mecd/areas-­cultura/cine/datos-­depeliculas-­calificadas.html 24 Obviously, in the case of Del Toro, this has changed since the making of El laberinto del fauno. A few years later he directed the first installment of The Hobbit (2012) and Pacific Rim (2013), two high-­profile Hollywood blockbusters. 25 Sergi López is quite well-­known in France after the success of Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien/With a Friend like Harry . . . (Dominik Moll 2000); the same happens with Maribel Verdú in Mexico and the art-­house circuit, after her role in Y tu mamá también/And Your Mother Too (Alfonso Cuarón 2001). 26 In Argentina, the film topped the box-­office upon its release, getting 4.3 million dollars in the first three weeks of exhibition. See: In Spain, it gathered almost 500,000 spectators in the movie theaters, and made 2.9 million euros. Data available here: 27 I have not been able to locate Séptimo’s box-­office and audience data in Chile and Brazil.

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28 For example, Hong Kong action film in the 1980s, Japanese horror in the early 2000s or Chinese martial art films in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

References Amago, S., Spanish Cinema in the Global Context. New York: Routledge, 2013. Ayuso, R., “Vicky Cristina y mejor, Barcelona,” El País, August 18, 2008. Available from:

[July 3, 2014]. Bergfelder, T., “National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema: Rethinking European Film Studies,” Media, Culture & Society, 27, 2005, pp. 315–31. Choi, J.B., “National Cinema: An Anachronistic Delirium?” The Journal of Korean Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 2011, pp. 173–92. Ciller, C., “Coproducciones cinematográficas en España: análisis y catalogación,” Eptic online, vol. 15, n. 2, 2013, pp. 234–46. De Valck, M., Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. El Confidencial, “La película española de Woody Allen se titulará Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” El Confidencial, 2007. Available from: [July 12, 2014]. El Cultural, “Un Cannes con un sabor muy español,” 2010. Available from: [July 3, 2014]. El País, “Woody Allen cautiva Cannes con Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” May 18, 2008. Available from: [July 12, 2014]. Elsaesser, T., European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. Farahmand A., “Disentangling the International Festival Circuit: Genre and Iranian Cinema,” in Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, eds R. Galt and K. Schoonover. Oxford: Oxford Univerty Press, 2010, pp. 263–81. Falicov, T., “Programa Ibermedia: Co-Production and the Cultural Politics of Constructing an Ibero-American Audiovisual Space,” Revista Reflexiones, vol. 91, no. 1, 2012, pp. 299–312. Fecé, J.L., “Comunidades imaginadas y fragmentación cultural: los estudios cinematográficos en la era de la industria global,” in Reflexiones fragmentadas: pensar los Estudios Culturales desde España, eds P. Arroyo et al. Madrid: Verbum, 2012, pp. 167–84. Fernández Labayen, M. and V. Rodríguez Ortega, “(Almost) Everybody Loves Javier Bardem . . . ‘For He Is a Good Actor’: Critical Reception in the Spanish and US Media,” in Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture, eds R. Meeuf and R. Raphael. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 165–86.

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Fotogramas, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona se apodera de la taquilla española,” 2008. Available from: [July 12, 2014]. Halle, R., “Offering Tales They Want to Hear: Transnational European Film Funding as Neo-­orientalism,” in Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, eds R. Galt and K. Schoonover. Oxford: Oxford Univerty Press, 2010, pp. 303–19. Higson, A., “The Concept of National Cinema,” in Film and Nationalism, ed. A. Williams. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 52–67. Hoefert de Turégano, T., “The International Politics of Cinematic Coproduction: Spanish Policy in Latin America,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, 2004, pp. 15–24. Izquierdo Castillo, J., “Las políticas de fomento y el cine español: hacia la consolidación del mercado iberoamericano a través de los programas internacionales,” Razón y palabra, vol. 15, no.71, 2010. Available from: [September 10, 2014]. López Villanueva, J., “Vender vino sin botellas: la producción cinematográfica ante su mutación digital,” in El productor y la producción en la industria cinematográfica, eds J.J. Marzal and F.J. Gómez Tarín. Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 2009, pp.120–40. Mayorga, E., “Eddie Saeta joins Uncle Boonmee,” Variety, 2010. Available from: [July 12, 2014]. Melemenidis, T., “Defending Cinema as Art—Luis Miñarro Interview,” CinemaArt.gr, 2011. Available from: [July 12, 2014]. Morgen, R., Instant Canons: Film Festivals, Film Criticism, and the Internet in the Early Twenty-First Century. Portland, OR: Portland State University, 2012. Palacio, M., “Elogio postmoderno de las coproducciones,’ Cuadernos de la Academia, 5, 1999, pp. 221–35. Pardo, A., “Coproducciones internacionales españolas: ¿estrategia financiera o expresión multicultural?” Comunicación y Sociedad, vol. 20, no. 2, 2007, pp.133–73. Rivi, L., European Cinema after 1989: Cultural Identity and Transnational Production. New York: MacMillan, 2007. Santaolalla, I., “A Case of Split Identity? Europe and Spanish America in Recent Spanish Cinema,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2007, pp. 67–78. Sedeño Valdellós, A., “Globalización y transnacionalidad en el cine: coproducciones internacionales y festivales para un cine de arte global emergente,” Fonseca: Journal of Communication, 2, 2013, pp. 296–315.

Index ¡Ay Carmela! 142 ¿Estás ahí? 177 ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz? 188 1492: Conquest of Paradise 127, 131 1977 232 2 lados de la cama, Los 177 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle 94 4 mosche di velluto grigio 108 40-Year-Old Virgin, The 175 55 Days at Peking 104 À bout de souffle 93, 94, 99 A los que aman 201 A+ (Amas) 153 Abismos de pasión 95 Academy Awards 154 n.5, 168 n.4, 254 (see also Oscars) action genre xxi, 145, 147, 193, 201 Adolfo Suárez: el presidente 188 adventure film 3 aging 201, 203, 205, Agustina de Aragón 32, 34, 39, 40, 63, 66, 69 Airbag 12, 143–7, 152, 153 Al final del camino 144, 154 n.3 Al margen de la ley 44 Alacrán enamorado 221, 225 Alaoui, Sanna 225 Alas de mariposa 143 Alaska 147 Alba de América 34, 39, 53, 63, 127 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore 148 Alice in the Cities 149 All About Eve 74 Allen, Woody 247, 253, 255, 258 n.17 Almodóvar, Pedro 28, 158, 226 n.5 Amador 144 Amaya 32, 34 Amenábar, Alejandro 6, 116, 188, 255 American Pie 144 americanization 146 amor brujo, El 168 n.4 Andalusia 3, 23, 25, 61, 67, 151, 152, 154

Anémic cinéma 48 años bárbaros, Los 143, 144, 153, 154 n.11 Another Me 211 n.2 Antártida 142 Antonioni, Michaelangelo 71, 142 Apartado de correos 1001 44, 55 Apatow, Judd 175, 178 Argentina, Imperio 25, 28 n.16 Argento, Dario 106, 108, 109 Armendáriz, Montxo 143, 144, 168 n.6, 221 Arraianos 232, 242, 243 n.2 art-house film 115, 116, 251, 252, 258 n.25 (see also cinéma de qualité, film d’art) Atlantic City USA 207 Aured, Carlos 103 Aurora de esperanza 51 autarky 43, 67 auteur xxi, 5, 6, 10, 71, 180, 188, 200, 210 n.2, 226 n.5, 233, 253, 257 n.6 avant-garde 46, 51, 58 n.10, 236 aventuras de Juan Lucas, Las 34 Ayer no termina nunca 201, 211 n.5 Azuloscurocasinegro 217 Bagdad Café 148, 151 bailarín y el trabajador, El 26, 28 n.10 Bajo Ulloa, Juan Manuel 143, 145–7, 154 n.8, n.9 Balarrasa 56 Ballet mécanique 48 Baño, Xacio 232 Barcelona 4, 25, 54, 105, 157, 164, 200, 209, 217–19, 233, 235, 251, 253, 258 n.15 Bardem, Javier 147, 252 Bardem, Juan Antonio 10, 71–84 barrio 216–20, 226 n.5, n.7 Barrio (1947) 44, 53–4 Barrio (1998) 143, 217, 220 Bautista, Aurora 32, 69 Bava, Mario 104, 106–9 Bayona, Juan Antonio xxi, 116, 255

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Index

Belle de Jour 94 Belle Epoque 168 n.4 Benavente, Jacinto 26, 33 Berenguer, Manuel 43, 54 Besson, Luc 208 Bianco e nero 223 Big House, The 191 Blissfully Yours 251, 257 n.5 Bodas de sangre 168 n.4 bola, El 217 Boliche 25, 26, 28 n.10, n.18 Bollaín, Iciar 12, 133, 143, 152, 157–69, 196 Bon appétit 177 Bonneville 148 Bonnie and Clyde 91 Borat 141 border xviii–xx, 2, 10, 11, 38, 68, 125, 130, 187, 240, 242, 248, 250 Bosch, Juan 109 bosque animado, El 231 bourgeoisie 4, 43, 47, 48, 49, 52–4, 56, 72, 75, 76, 80–2, 89, 92, 94, 98, 146 Boys on the Side 148, 151 Brakhage, Stan 236 brecha, La 232, 243 n.2 Bridge, The 189 Brigada criminal 44, 55 bromance 12, 175–84 Bron/Broen 189 Bs. As. 231, 232, 236–8, 242 Buñuel, Luis 11, 90, 95, 96, 99 n.1, n.6, n.7, 148, 207 Buscón Don Pablos, El 142 Bwana 168 n.6, 227 n.11 Bypass 177 Cabeza de Vaca 131 Cagney, James 49 Calle Mayor 71, 73–7, 82 calle sin sol, La 44, 53, 54 Calparsoro, Daniel xx, xxi, 217 Camino cortado 44, 55 campana del infierno, La 105 Campanella, Juan José 254 Cándida 243 n.3 Cándida millonaria 243 n.3 Cannes film festival 80, 93, 243 n.2, 247, 251, 257 n.5

Canto de emigración 234 capitalism 26, 43, 48, 51, 79, 81, 82, 157, 166 Cardona, Irene 13, 215, 221, 224, 227 n.15 Cargo 187 Carmen 168 n.4, 205 Carné, Marcel 49 Carretera y manta 143, 144, 154 Carreteras secundarias 142 Cartas 241 cartas de Alou, Las 143, 168 n.6, 221 Catalan 13, 199, 200, 202, 207, 209, 210, 228, 233, 247, 248, 252, 253 (see also Catalonia, identity) Catalina de Inglaterra 32, 36, 38 Catalonia 209, 253, 256, 257 n.12 (see also Catalan) catholicism 3, 44, 50, 53, 55, 58 n.3, 77, 80, 84 n.9, 95, 111, 115, 130, 134, 147, 158 Cayuela, Pablo 232 caza, La 90, 93, 98 Celda 211 187, 190–6 censorship 35, 38, 43, 57 n.2, 58 n.3, 62, 63, 64, 72, 73, 81, 84 n.9, 94, 104, 108, 109, 113 Central do Brasil 150 cerco, El 44 Cet obscur objet du désir 96 Chaplin, Geraldine 89–91, 96–100 charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Le 94 Che 187 Chelovek s kino-apparatom 47 Chirro, Xurxo 231, 232, 239, 243 n.5 (see also González, Xurxo) Christopher Columbus: The Discovery 127, 131–3 Chuck & Buck 176 Cid, El 104 CIFESA see Compañía Industrial de Cine Español SA Compañía Industrial de Cine Español SA 10, 24, 28 n.10, 31, 51, 52, 61–6, 69 cine quinqui 216, 226 n.3 cinéma de banlieue 13, 215, 216, 218, 219, 225 cinéma de qualité 6, 32, 35 (see also art-house film, film d’art) Civil War 4, 6, 20, 25, 46, 51–7, 62, 64, 80, 117, 118, 127, 168 n.4, 175, 195, 251, 253

Index Clair, René 51 Cléo de 5 à 7 99 n.4 Cleopatra 148 Coixet, Isabel 5, 199, 200, 202, 209, 210 n.2, 211 n.6 colonization 12, 128, 130–7 Columbus on Trial 132 Combustión xx comedy 12, 52, 132, 144, 147, 173, 175, 180, 183, 184 n.2, 203 romantic 13, 176–9, 215, 221–7, 227 n.15 sentimental 26 TV series 226 n.4 Cómicos 71, 73, 74–6, 82 conde Drácula, El 105 Cooper, Merian C. 47 copla 40, 67, 69 co-production xxiii, 5, 13, 52, 104, 105, 108–10, 113, 128, 131, 132, 136, 137, 141, 148, 150, 187, 200, 221, 227 n.14, 247–58 Correo de Indias 52–4 correspondence film 13, 236, 238, 241–3 Cosas que hacen que la vida valga la pena 223 Cosas que nunca te dije 201, 202, 204 Così dolce . . . così perversa 109 cosmopolitanism 5, 21, 23, 24, 26, 164, 204–6, 208, 210, 211 n. 6 Costa da Morte 232, 242, 243 n.2 costumbrismo 33, 236 costume film 35, 62, 65, 129 Cox, Alex 142 Crazy in Alabama 148 Crazy Mama 148 Crazy, Stupid Love 176 Crematorio 187–96 Cría cuervos 98 crime film 3, 10, 12, 13, 43–57, 66, 107, 108, 113, 187–96, 253 (see also detective film, film noir, thriller) Criss Cross 58 n.2 Cronaca di un amore 71 Cruz, Penélope 202–4, 252, 253 d’Abbadie d’Arrast, Harry 22 Darín, Ricardo 254, 255

263

Das Leben der Anderen 189 Davis, Bette 49, 203 de la Iglesia, Álex 6, 143, 196 de la Iglesia, Eloy 103 del Álamo, Pela 232 del Toro, Guillermo 253, 254, 258 n.24 desarrollismo 7, 45, 95 detective film 12, 108, 187 (see also crime film, film noir) día de la bestia, El 143 Días de Agosto 154 n.12 Días de fútbol 177 diaspora/diasporic xvii, 13, 216, 220, 234, 235, 239 dictatorship 3, 6, 10, 31, 45, 53, 56, 61, 81, 104, 112, 116, 117, 122, 157, 182, 195 (see also Franco, Francisco; Francoism) digital filmmaking 232, 236 Dilemma, The 176 Dinner for Schmucks 176, 184 n.2 Distrito quinto 44, 55 Doctor Zhivago 89 documentary film 13, 47, 51, 134, 192, 225, 226 n.6, n.7, 231–43 Dolores, La 52, 54 Dolorosa, La 23, 28 n.10 Domínguez Serén, Eloy 232, 241–3 Don Quijote de la Mancha 142 Doña Francisquita 22–4, 28 n.10, n.15 Doña María la Brava 32, 33, 35–7, 39 Doom Generation, The 141 Dorado, El 131 Double Indemnity 58 n.2 Dracula 105, 119 Dreyer, Carl Theodor 51 Due Date 154 n.6, 176, 181, 184 n.2 Dumb and Dumber 144 duquesa de Benamejí, La 32, 33, 40, 62 Duvivier, Julien 49 Easy Rider 91 Echevarría, Nicolás 131 Eclipse 232 economic crisis 49, 142, 194, 211 n.5, 231, 235, 238, 241 Él 95 Elegy 201, 202, 204, 205, 208, 210, 211 n.6

264

Index

Elisa, vida mía 98 emigration 168 n.5, 232–43 En la ciudad de Sylvia 252 Enciso, Eloy 232 enredos de una gallega, Los 243 n.3 Ensayo de un crimen 95 eroticism 6, 37, 38, 75, 111, 205 escapism 63, 65, 72 Escrivá, Vicente 56 españolada 3, 19, 22, 25, 27 n.1, 66, 180 esperpento 115 espíritu de la colmena, El 116, 117 ETA 194 EU xx, 248–50, 256, 257 n.3 Everything is Illuminated 154 n.1 exoticism 3, 23–4, 68, 120, 167, 165, 209–10, 235 expressionism 50, 54, 57, 58 n.6, 118 Falange 44, 50, 53, 68, 121 fantôme de la liberté, Le 99 n.7 FAPAE xxi–xxii Félix, María 54 Fellini, Federico 71 female audience 10, 32, 36–7, 40 bonding 151, 153 figure 90, 96, 208 protagonist 25, 31–2, 69, 96, 149, 163, 182 femininity 95–6, 99, 100 n.11, 208 feminism 72, 177 femme fatale 145, 208 femme Nikita, La 208 film d’art 32 (see also art-house film, cinéma de qualité) film festival xxii, 79, 187, 226 n.6, 234, 243, 247–8, 251–3, 255–6, 257 n.5, 257 n.6, 257 n.7 film noir 45–6, 208 (see also crime film, detective film) Filmófono 51 Fire Over England 2, 35 First World War 50 Flaherty, Robert J. 47 Flamenco 168 flamenco 67–9, 149, 151–2, 220, 258 n.15 Flamenco, Flamenco 168

Flirting with Disaster 144 Flores de otro mundo 12, 143, 152, 157, 159, 161–3, 167, 168 n.7 folklore 3, 6, 9, 19–20, 23–4, 27, 27 n.1, 51–2, 66, 146 Fóra 232, 242, 243 n.2 Forbrydelsen 189 franco, 14 pesetas, Un 235 Franco, Francisco 6, 10, 44–5, 53, 188 era 63, 117, 130, 199 post-Franco era 157, 180, 182, 190, 194 regime 6, 10, 31–2, 44, 57, 57 n.2, 58 n.3, 62–4, 74, 79, 92, 104, 116–17, 124, 127–8, 130 (see also dictatorship, Francoism) Franco, Jess 105 Francoism 6, 31–2, 43–5, 53–7, 57 n.2, 58 n.3, 61–5, 71, 74, 77, 79–80, 83, 92, 104, 111–12, 116–17, 122, 124, 127–30 (see also dictatorship; Franco, Francisco) and cinema 10, 43, 44, 53, 54, 63–4, 69 and history 65, 128 Frankenstein 118–20 Freaks 49 Fresno, Maruchi 32 From Dusk till Dawn 144, 146 Frontera Sur 235 Fuera de carta 177 Fuga de cerebros 177 Fugitivas 12, 143–4, 148–53 Funny People 176 Fury 49 Galicia 13, 105, 146, 158, 231–43, 243 n.3, 243 n.4 gallega en Mexico, Una 243 n.3 Gallego 235 gangster film 12, 43, 49, 187–8, 191–2, 196 Garci, José Luis 168 n.4 García Berlanga, Luis 146 García Lorca, Federico 46, 48 gato montés, El 23–4, 28 n.10 Gaudí Awards 253 gender 49, 51, 54, 74–5, 80, 91, 141, 160, 163–4, 167, 179, 183, 184 n.1, 215 Get Him to the Greek 176, 181, 184 n.2

Index giallo film 11, 103–13 Gil, Rafael 34, 54 globalization xvii, xix, 4–5, 11–12, 20, 26, 104, 162, 174, 180, 183, 199 glocal 145, 154, 177 Godard, Jean-Luc 11, 93–5, 98 Godfather, The 191 Golden Globes 254, 256 golfos, Los 89, 93 Gómez Viñas, Xan 232 Gone Baby Gone 189 Gone with the Wind 36–7 González, Xurxo 234, 239, 240 (see also Chirro, Xurxo) González-Sinde, Ángeles 152 Good Shepherd, The 189 Gothic 11, 35–6, 54, 115–25 Goya Awards 146, 149, 154 n.5, 168 n.7, 187, 200, 215–16, 225 n.1, 226 n.6, 253–4 Goya, Francisco de 34, 115, 119, 204 Goyescas 34 Gracia, Alberto 232 gran familia española, La 177, 179, 181, 184 n.3 grande illusion, La 49 Grapes of Wrath, The 91 Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life 47 Green Hornet, The 176 Grèmillon, Jean 23 gross-out comedy 144–5 Grupo 7 217 Guerín, José Luis 252 guerrero del antifaz, El 36 Guerreros xx hacha para la luna de miel, Un 104–5, 108 Haine, La 220, 225 n.2 Hall Pass 176 Hangover, The 176 happy ending 79, 82, 182, 206, 223–4, 227 n.15 Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien 258 n.25 Hawks, Howard 24 Hay un camino a la derecha 44 HBO see Home Box Office heist films 55

265

heritage film 11, 127–9, 138, 138 n.1, 138 n.2 Hermoso, Miguel 143–4, 149, 151–3 Heroína 144 Hierro 116 Highway Patrolman 141 hispanismo 130, 132, 158 historical epic 6–7, 9–11, 53, 61–9, 127–30, 132–3, 136–7 (see also historical film) historical film 10, 31–4, 37–8, 40, 64–5 (see also historical epic) Hitchcock, Alfred 106, 108, 122 Hobbit, The 258 n.24 hombre de Río Malo, El 109 Home Box Office 187–93, 196 Hoover, Herbert 51 hora más en Canarias, Una 177 horror film 3, 6–7, 103, 105, 107–8, 116–18, 250, 259 n.28 House on 92nd Street, The 58 n.2 Huídas 148–9 humor 94–5, 145–7, 152, 154, 178, 180, 226 n.3, 226 n.8 Humpday 176 Huston, John 50, 148 hybridity cultural 8, 14, 154 n.9, 180, 220, 222, 250, 254, 255 genre 2, 7–11, 19, 21, 45, 55, 61–3, 65, 138 n.1, 144–5, 147, 173–4, 220, 233 I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry 176 I Love You, Man 176 Ibáñez Serrador, Narciso 122 Ibermedia 252 ICAA see Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales iconography 48, 110–11, 120–1, 154, 189, 219 identity xviii, 19–21, 106, 191, 193, 199–200, 224, 233 Catalan 200, 209, 210, 248 European 248, 257 n.3 Galician 236, 237–42 gender 179, 183 local 19, 177, 209

266

Index

national xix, 2, 4–5, 8, 12–13, 40, 129–30, 137, 148, 175, 181–3, 201, 242, 250, 252 Spanish 4, 130, 168 n.4, 181–2 248 see also Spanishness racial see race transnational 157, 238 IFI see Ignacio F. Iquino production company Ignacio F. Iquino production company 55 Il gatto a nove code 108 immigration 12–13, 93, 144, 158, 161, 167, 168 n.5, 215–16, 221–5, 227 n.10 (see also emigration, migration) imperialism 11–12, 127–30, 132, 136–7 imposible, Lo xxi, 255 In Praise of Shadows 209 In the Valley of Elah 189 industrialization 157 Inés de Castro 32, 37–9 inocentes, Los 71, 80–2 Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales xxii, 252 interculturalism 159, 174, 218, 222 interethnic 218–19, 221–3 Internship, The 176 Invasor xx Iquino, Ignacio F. 44, 55 isla mínima, La xxi It Happened One Night

L’affaire Farewell 189 landscape 12, 68, 98, 116–17, 119, 121, 143, 149, 151, 159, 232, 235 Langui, El (Juan Manuel Montilla) 218, 220, 225 n.1, 226 n.8 Latin America 6, 24, 90, 128, 130–2, 137, 168 n.6, 218, 227 n.11, 235, 238, 243 n.3, 249, 254–5 Laxe, Óliver 232, 235 Lazarillo de Tormes, El 142 Leaving Normal 148, 151 Ledo, Ramiro 232, 235 Leningrad Cowboys Go America 141 León de Aranoa, Fernando 143–4, 152, 196 leona de Castilla, La 32–3, 36–9, 63 libélula para cada muerto, Una 11, 103, 109–12 L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco 109 Lisboa 143, 148, 152 Living End, The 153 Locura de amor 32–9, 63–4 Lola la piconera 10, 32, 34, 39, 61–3, 65–9 López Vázquez, José Luis 109 López, Sergi 202, 207, 209, 254, 258 n.25 Lorentz, Pare 48 Lost Highway 141 Lubitsch, Ernst 49 L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo 106, 108 lunes al sol, Los 144 Lynch, David 142

Jack el destripador de Londres 110 Jalla! Jalla! 223 Japan 206–10, 211 n.7, 259 n.28 Jarmusch, Jim 142 Jeepers Creepers 141 Johansson, Scarlett 252

Made in USA 94 madriguera, La 98 Malle, Louis 207 Mamá cumple cien años 98, 168 Mamasunción 235 managers, Los 145, 154 n.7 Mankiewicz, Joseph L. 74 Manny and Lo 148, 149, 151 Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio 201–2, 206 María de la O 22 Marías, Miguel 73 Mariona Rebull 34 Mariscal, Ana 32, 64 Martín, Eugenio 103, 109 Mary of Scotland 35 masculinity 176–7, 179, 184 n.1, 184 n.3, 202 McCarthy, Joseph 58 n.3

Kerouac, Jack 91 Killers, The 58 n.2 Killing, The 189 King of Kings 104 Klimovsky, León 11, 103, 109–11 Konchalovski, Andrei 142 Krimi 107 laberinto del fauno, El 247–8, 253–4, 256, 258 n.24

Index Medem, Julio 143, 147 Melford, George 24 melodrama 10, 13, 32–3, 36–9, 47, 51, 54–5, 65–6, 71–80, 82–3, 118, 168 n.4, 179, 191, 199, 201–5, 207, 211 n.6 Mendicidad y caridad 58 n.12 mépris, Le 99 n.4 Meyer, Nicholas 202 Mi vida sin mí 201–2, 204 Mighty Heart, A 189 migration xix, 13, 52, 142, 158, 162, 165–6, 168 n.3, 215, 235, 237, 241 (see also immigration, emigration) mil ojos del asesino, Los 109 military epic 52 Miñarro, Luis 251–2 Miró, Pilar xxii mobility 202, 204–6, 219 social 52–4, 136, 192 modernism 47, 49, 57 modernity 3, 10–11, 24, 26, 32, 40, 92, 134, 160–1, 195, 201, 235 modernization 10, 26, 51, 159–60, 167, 192, 195 Montaña en sombra 232, 242, 243 n.2 Montiel, Sara 32 Morena Clara 24–5, 28 Mortadelo y Filemón contra Jimmy el Cachondo xxi morte ha fatto l’uovo, La 109 Motorcycle Diaries, The 154 n.2 Muerte de un ciclista 44, 71, 80 muerte llama a las 10, La 109 Muertos de amor 177 mujer cualquiera, Una 44, 54 multiculturalism 5, 158, 162, 174, 257 n.4 mundo alrededor, El 144, 153, 154 n.7 Murakami, Haruki 208 musical 3, 6, 9–10, 19–22, 24–7, 27 n.1, 50–2, 61–2, 64–8, 141, 168 n.4 Nada 44, 53–4 Nadie oyó gritar 103 Naked City 58 n.2 Nanook of the North 47 Naschy, Paul 110–11 National Hunger March 51 National Lampoon’s Animal House 144

267

nationalism xx, 2, 21, 31, 34, 52, 61, 127–8, 130, 146, 199, 201 Neorealism 10, 71–2 New Spanish cinema/Nuevo Cine Español 11, 45, 89, 98 News from Home 236–7 Nieves Conde, José Antonio 56 Nine, Marcos 232, 241 Niño, El xxi, niños del hospicio, Los 58 n.12 No controles 177–82, 184, 184 n.2 No tengas miedo 144 noche de los girasoles, La 188 NO-DO (film) 116 non-place 181, 209, 219 nostalgia 11, 127–9, 130, 178, 180, 183, 209, 226 n3 Nouvelle Vague xxi, 11, 89, 90, 93, 98, 99 n.4 novio para Yasmina, Un 215, 221–4, 225, 227 n.14, n.15 Novo Cinema Galego 13, 232–5, 242–3, 243 n.2 Nóz W Wodzie 93 Nunca pasa nada 71, 73, 77, 78–82 N-VI 232, 242 O Brother, Where Art Thou 144 occidentalism 205, 210 Ocho apellidos vascos xxi, 177, 255 ojo de cristal, El 44 ojos azules de la muñeca rota, Los 103, 110 ojos de Julia, Los 116 ojos dejan huella, Los 43, 44, 56–7 ojos vendados, Los 98 On the Road 91 Orfanato, El 116 orientalism 205, 209, 210 Oscars 154, 168, 200, 256 (see also Academy Awards) Others, The 6, 116, 255 Otro Cine Español 233 otro lado de la cama, El 177 Oz 191 Pabst, Georg Wilhelm 49, 51 Pacific Rim 258 n.24 Pagafantas 177

268

Index

Pagán, Alberte 232, 234, 236–8, 243 n.5 pai de Migueliño, O 235 Pájaros de papel 154 n.4 palabra tuya, Una 144, 152 Paper Moon 149 Parillaud, Anne 208 París #1 232, 235, 242 Partido Popular xx, xxii, xxiii Partido Socialista Obrero Español xx, xxiii, 157 Pathos 13, 201–2, 204 Patiño, Lois, 232 patriarchy 73, 116, 117, 121, 122, 124, 146, 148, 151, 163 patriotism 10, 21, 37, 61, 67, 69 peces rojos, Los 44 penalti más largo del mundo, El 223 Pépé le Moko 49 Peppermint frappe 90, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98 Pequeñeces 34 Perdita Durango 141, 143 Pérez, Pedro 21 Perfect World, A 149 period drama 9 periphery 13, 199, 217–19, 225, 225 n.2, 226 n.4. 232, 242, 256 Perojo, Benito 23, 28 n.10, 34 Pettring 236, 238, 241–2 Phillips, Todd 144, 154 n.6, 176 Pi, Rosario 23, 24, 28 n.10 pictorialism 47, 52, 53 Pídele cuentas al rey 143 Piedad 232, 242 Pineapple Express 176 Planes, Trains and Automobiles 184 n.2 Play It to the Bone 144 Plow That Broke the Plains, The 48 Porky’s 144 Portillo, Lourdes 131–2 postmodernism 12, 144, 147, 154, 173, 180, 196, 236 cinema 22, 143 Potamkin, Harry Alan 47 PP see Partido Popular precio de un hombre, El 109 Primo de Rivera dictatorship 3 Primos 177, 179, 181, 184 n.3 princesa de los Ursinos, La 32

Princesas 144, 152, 217 Prison Break 191 prison film 187, 191 Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The 35 propaganda 31, 38, 63, 134 próximo Oriente, El 223 PSOE see Partido Socialista Obrero Español Psycho 122 puente, El 153 puerta de no retorno, La 225 quality film xx, xxii, 26, 154, 187, 190, 196 Que se mueran los feos 177 Quincentenary 11, 128–32, 133, 137, 157 quinto evanxeo de Gaspar Hauser, O 232, 243 n.2 race 136, 146, 167, 188, 191, 208 n.1 racism 158, 166, 169 n.9 ragazza che sapeva troppo, La 106, 108 realism 43, 46–57, 58 n.6, 67, 151, 152, 158, 188–90, 192–3, 220 kitchen sink 139 n.2, social 46, 173, 175, 180, 195–6, 221 timid 143–4, 148–9 Reina Santa 32, 38, 39 Reina, Juanita 40, 62, 67 religious drama 53 Renoir, Jean 49, 51 Réquiem para el gringo 109 residencia, La 116, 117, 120–5 Retorno a Hansala 144, 148, 227 n.11 Revenge of the Nerds 144 Rey, Fernando 75 Rey, Florián 24, 28 n.10, 52 Ribera, Xavier 153 Rivelles, Amparo 32, 38 River, The 48 road movie 11, 12, 89, 90–3, 94, 98–9, 141–54, 154 n.11, 181 Road Trip 144 Robinson, Edward G. 49 Roca, Otto 232 Rodowick, David N. 76 Rodríguez, Robert 144, 146 Role Models 176

Index romance 38, 54, 122, 168 n.6, 176 (see also bromance) intercultural 222 interracial 159 novel 37, 38 Romuald et Juliette 223 Rueda, Belén 255 Sáenz de Heredia, José Luis 34, 43, 44 Saeta, Eddie 251, 255 Saïd 168 n.6, 221–2 sainete 3, 33 Salamanca Conversations 82 Salles, Walter 150. 154 n.2 Salto al vacío xx, 217 Sánchez Bella, Alfredo 79 Sancho, José 159, 190, 194, 195 Santa Cándida 243 n.3 Santos, Ángel 232 Sarafian, Richard 142 Saura, Carlos 5, 11, 89–99, 99 n.1, n.2, n.6, n.7, 100 n.8, n.11, n.12, n.13, 131, 142, 158, 168 n.4 Scott, Ridley 127, 131, 142, 148 Scott, Tony 142, 144, 146 screwball comedy 55 Sea Hawk, The 35 Second Spanish Republic 26, 50, 51, 234 Second World War 31, 35, 49, 53, 61, 62, 106, 107 secreto de sus ojos, El 2248, 253, 254, 255, 256 Segura, Santiago xxi, 6, 147, 196 Sei donne per l’assassino 106, 108 Sempre Xonxa 231, 235 Séptima página 44, 55, 56 Séptimo 255, 258 n.27 sex 77, 79, 110, 122, 136, 145, 146, 175, 205, 207 comedy 144 interethnic 219, 222 and repression 73, 77, 78, 80, 111, 123 and sexual liberation 37, 38, 100 n.11, 112, 159, and violence 104–7, 111, 123, 165 (see also giallo film) sexism 55, 166, 169 n.9 sexuality 72, 77, 79, 123–4

269

Siete vírgenes 217 silent cinema 28 n.11 (see also silent era) silent era 9, 23 (see also silent cinema) Sin dejar huella 148 Siodmak, Robert 49, 50 Sirk, Douglas 72 Slam 144 Smultronstället/Wild Strawberries 93 Snow, Michael 236 Sobre el cieno 58 n.12 social drama 53, 143, 148 Solas 143, 152 Sopranos, The 189 sound cinema 19–22, 48, 50 Soviet cinema 51 Spanishness 8, 9, 23, 26, 28 n.19, 66, 117, 146, 152, 158, 177–83, 247–50, 258 n.15 star persona 202, 204, 209 State of Play 189 Step Brothers 176 Stone, Oliver 146 strada, La 93 Stranger than Paradise 141 Stress es tres, tres 11, 89–99, 99 n.4, n.7, 100 n. 12 subjectivity 189, 193 suffering 13, 40, 78, 80, 122, 163, 199, 201–10 Superbad 176 Surcos 44, 53, 56 surrealist 96, 168 n.4 Susanna 168, n.6, 222 swashbuckler 33, 35, 131 Swingers 175 También la lluvia 12, 128, 132–7 Tanizaki, Junichiro 209 Tapas 217 Tarantino, Quentin 146 Te doy mis ojos 144, 152, 168 n.7 techo de cristal, El 103 Ted 176 teenpic 221, 220 television 13, 143, 147, 173, 202, 208 and crime fiction 107, 187, 190, 195 drama 189–90 and history 138 n.1

270

Index

industry xx, xxi, xxiii, 221, 231 quality television, 187, 188, 190 Tellado, Corín Thelma and Louise thriller xxi, 3, 7, 44, 103, 109, 113, 116, 188, 207–10, 253, 255 (see also crime film) Tierra 143 tío Boonme que recuerda sus vidas pasadas, El 248, 251–5, 256 n.1, 257 n.5 To Kill a Mockingbird 119 Todo sobre mi madre 168 n.4, Todos vós sodes capitáns 232, 235, 242, 243 n.2 Tomándote 168 n.6, 223 torre de Suso, La 177, 179, 181, 184 n.3 Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo 56 Torrente character 181, 183, 184 n.3 films xxi, 196, 255 Toucedo, Diana 232 Transition xix, 11, 129, 157, 194, 235 Tras el cristal 116–17, 120–5 trauma 118, 123–5, 201, 204–5 traviesa molinera, La 22 Trileros 144 Tropical Malady 251, 257 truco del manco, El 215–18, 220–1, 225 True Romance 144, 146 Trueba, Fernando 158, 168 n.4 Tumbleweeds 148 última señora Anderson, La 103, 109–10 Usos amorosos de la posguerra española 31 Vajda, Ladislao 44, 55 Valdés, Paloma 81 Varela, Peque 232, 235 venganza, La 84 n.8 verbena de la Paloma, La 23, 28 n.10 Verdú, Maribel 254, 258 n.25

Vertov, Dziga 47 Viaggio in Italia 93 Viaje a ninguna parte, El 142 Vicky Cristina Barcelona 247–8, 252–3, 255, 258 n.14, n.16 vida secreta de las palabras, La 200–2, 204 VidaExtra 232, 235, 243 n.2 Vientos de agua 188 Vikingland 231–2, 236, 238–42, 243 n.2 Vilar, Antonio 54 Villamil, Soledad 254 Viridiana 95, 207 vitelloni, I 71 Vivir es fácil con los ojos cerrados 143 voice-over 39, 203, 208 voie lactée, La 95–6 vulnerability 166, 201, 205–7, 210 Warhol, Andy 236 Way, The 154 n.1, n.3 Wedding Crashers 176 Week End 94–5, 98 Weerasethakul, Apitchatpong 247 Weitz, Paul 144 Wenders, Wim 142, 149 western 6, 84 n.8, 91, 103, 105, 107, 109, 250 Wilder, Billy 50 Wire, The 189 Woo, John 146 World Cinema 4, 8, 252, 253 Wyler, William 50 Y tu mamá también 153, 258 n.25 You, Me, and Dupree 176 Zambrano, Benito 143, 152 Zannou, Santiago 13, 215, 217–20, 225, 226 n.6 zarzuela 3, 22–3, 24, 28 n.11, 33 zona, La 187