Spanish Cinema

I

Introduction

Spanish Cinema, historical development of the cinema in Spain.

II

The Early Years

The history of the Spanish cinema begins with Eduardo Jimeno Correas’s short film Salida de la Misa de Doca en la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragoza (Coming Out of the 12 O’Clock Mass at the Church of the Pillar, Zaragoza) in 1896. A year later the first fiction film was made by Fructuós Gelabert (Riña en un Café, 1897; Quarrel in a Café). The industry developed at first principally in Barcelona and then in Madrid, Valencia, and Zaragoza. Soon, work by Benito Perojo, José Buchs, and others established Madrid in the 1920s as the centre of film production in Spain. An early success was the adaptation (with live musical accompaniment) by José Buchs of the popular zarzuela (Spanish operetta), La Verbena de la Paloma (1921; The Feast of the Dove). Meanwhile, activity in the regions continued, including the sainetes (a Spanish dramatic genre) and documentaries made in Valencia by Joan Andreu, or the first version of the Aragonese melodrama Nobleza Baturra (1925; Rustic Nobility), which grossed an unprecedented 1.5 million pesetas on its first release.

The 1920s saw the rise of major directors such as Segundo de Chomóm and Flórian Rey, as well as the screening of the first film by Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou (1928; An Andalusian Dog). One of the great auteurs of world cinema, Buñuel began by collaborating with Salvador Dalí, both men drawn to the dream-inspired poetry of Surrealism, with Buñuel additionally attracted to its radical political potential. As well as directing, Buñuel produced films at Filmófono until the studio’s closure during the Spanish Civil War. Buñuel left Spain, eventually resuming his career in Mexico. There he directed commercial genre films (for example, Gran Casino, 1947) as well as his trademark hard-hitting narratives (Los Olvidados, 1950; The Young and the Damned) ranging over the thematics of sexual desire, religion, and class.

III

Effects of the Spanish Civil War

In Spain itself, during the civil war, both sides continued to make films, including documentaries, to promote rival causes. The Nationalist side was given ideological support from Cifesa studios which, both during the civil war and later, produced films endorsing the right-wing values of Francisco Franco. The saving grace of the fiction films, especially in the 1940s and 1950s, lay in their use of stars who, against the grain, often exceeded the ideological limitations of their roles. After the war, too, censorship was a major factor in the restricted development of the Spanish cinema. The Church and army played key roles in an industry that was not actually run by the state, only prey to the arbitrary prejudices and ignorance of censors. During the 1940s and 1950s nationalist propaganda (Alba de America, 1951; Dawn of America), films on religious themes (Balarassa, 1950), musicals (with stars such as Sara Montiel, Juanita Reina, Lola Flores, and Paquita Rico), and torero, or child-obsessed narratives (with, for example, Carlos Larrañaga or Pablito Calvo), were especially popular.

In difficult circumstances intelligent films did manage to get made, especially comedies by Edgar Neville, Rafael Gil, Sáenz de Heredia, and melodramas by, for instance, Lorenzo Llobet Gracia, whose Vida en Sombras (1947; Life in Shadows) is an acclaimed exploration of the power of the image. The 1950s also saw the rise of Neo-Realism in Spain, with such films as Nieves Conde’s Surcos (1951; Furrows) engaging with contemporary realities rather than projecting ideological platitudes. Neo-Realism—with its roots in post-war Italian cinema—even invaded comedy, as in Bienvenido Mr Marshall (1952; Welcome, Mr Marshall) by Luis Garciá Berlanga. Melodramas such as Juan Antonio Bardem’s Muerte de un Ciclista (1955; Death of a Cyclist) and Calle Mayor (1956; Main Street), and film noir, as in Serrano de Osma’s La Sombra Iluminada (1948; The Shadow Illuminated), also reflected this trend.

IV

The New Spanish Cinema

With the appointment of José María García Escudero for a second term as Director of Cinematography (1962-1969), a degree of liberalization heralded a more relaxed attitude to controversial subjects. It was in this period that a new generation of film-makers came to prominence. Among these, Carlos Saura, above all, managed through a predominantly indirect, metaphorical style to refer to contemporary realities. His films (such as La Caza, 1965; The Hunt), together with those by José Luis Borau (Brandy, 1963), Vicente Aranda (Fata Morgana, 1966; Mirage), a member of the Barcelona School, and Victor Erice (whose most acclaimed film remains El Espíritu de la Colmena, 1973; The Spirit of the Beehive), and others, ensured that the banalities of the commercial cinema were offset by quality films rivalling the work of major world directors.

Buñuel had returned to Spain to make Viridiana (1961) and Tristana (1970), but the works of his late period, in which he made perhaps his greatest films (such as Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie, 1972; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) were international productions involving foreign financial backers and a French co-scriptwriter, Jean-Claude Carrière.

Two years after the death of Franco in 1975, censorship was abolished in Spain, and while some film-makers began to recuperate the past (for example, Mario Camús in Los Días del Pasado, 1977; Times Past), others were more eager now to concentrate on the free expression of other topics, such as sexuality, the repression of which had extended under Franco to the sanitized distortions in the dialogue (let alone visual display) of even foreign films. At one end of the spectrum, destape films contented themselves with the uninhibited parade of female nudity while, at the other, films by directors such as Borau, Jamie De Armiñán, Mañuel Gutiérrez Aragón, and Eloy de la Iglesia explored the darker areas of sexual desire.

These and wider issues are tackled by Pilar Miró, perhaps the most significant of a group of female directors (others include Josefina Molina, Iciar Bollaín, Gracia Querejet, and Rosa Vergès), who was also entrusted by the Socialist government with administering the funding of Spanish cinema. Under her reforms, internationally acclaimed films such as Gutiérrez Aragón’s Los Santos Inocentes (1984; The Holy Innocents) and Saura’s Carmen (1983) were awarded financial scholarship.

Thereafter, Spanish cinema saw the rise of film-makers whose films enjoyed spectacular success both at home and abroad, the most striking of these being Bigas Luna’s Jamón Jamón (1992), Fernando Trueba’s Belle Epoque (1992), Aranda’s Amantes (1991; Lovers), Imanol Uribe’s Días Contados (1994; Numbered Days), and, above all, the string of films made by Pedro Almodóvar, whose style blends popular and auteurist forms. These films—for example, Matador (1986), La Ley del Deseo (1986; The Law of Desire), and Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (1988; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)—ranging from their interest in youthful drug-culture-related dissent to the eternal torments of the laws of desire, succeeded more than most in familiarizing international film audiences with the major stars of the Spanish cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, some of whom, such as Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, and Antonio Banderas, acquired undisputed international status.