Abstracts
p. 315-324
Texte intégral
1Jean-Claude Seguin
Cinema in the formation of a national consciousness
Cinema, art and the media are all necessary elements in the construction of a national spirit. As in the case of European identities, Hispanic identities are developed from a complex of cultural and political issues. The documentary — «document» would be a more apt description— adheres to reality and produces offshoots which nationalist thought has managed to make its own for the purpose of constructing an ideology, with a change of goals as might be expected —which is the fundamental role of the Basque documentary. In the sphere of fiction, the ideological bases remain the same— Andalusian or Aragonese folk culture, typical Catalan or Valencian comedies, etc. —all constitute avenues for the penetration of nationalist ideologies (as witness the manipulation of «folkism» under the Franco regime and under democracy). By building a discourse on reality or reconstructing it in the form of fiction, the seventh art contributes to the formation of a «national spirit».
2Nancy Berthier
Film criticism and nationality
Whereas on a theoretical level the approach to the question of nationality in the field of film art is extremely complex, especially in contemporary cinema, at the level of reception, especially by critics, the criterion of nationality is treated as something unquestionable which can be used not only as a tool for classifying films but also as a code for understanding and judging them. How does the criterion of nationality work in critical discourse on cinema? This paper attempts to answer that question on the basis of a sample limited to the critical reception of Spanish cinema in France in the last ten years. How and to what extent is contemporary Spanish cinema considered «Spanish cinema», and through the prism of what concept of nationality is it viewed?
3Joaquín Cánovas Belchí
Popular culture and national identity in the Spanish cinema of the twenties
The nineteen-twenties saw the first debate on the artistic identity of Spanish cinema, provoked by the emergence of thematic and stylistic tendencies linked to its concept of «Spanishness». The success of film adaptations of zarzuela, the dependence of the new popular culture on well-known works of literature and the debate on what came to be known as «españoladas» were the keynotes of the early years when the identitary roots of Spanish cinema were laid down. That decade culminated in an attempt —foiled in part by the various circumstances converging in the final years of silent film— to achieve some kind of administrative organisation of the world of Spanish cinema, with various proposals for the promotion and protection of the Spanish film industry.
4Anne-Marie Jolivet
Otherness and its portrayal on film. Towards new concepts of the nation
Historians and sociologists view certain films as «sites of memory». This study asks what aspects of «national traits» are portrayed in Spanish film. Looking first at seven milestone productions from the Franco era —Raza (Saénz de Heredia, 1942), Bienvenido Mister Marshall (Berlanga, 1952), Marcelino Pan y Vino (L. Vajda, 1954), La Caza and Ana y los lobos (C. Saura, 1965 and 1972), Canciones para después de una guerra (B. M. Patino, 1971) and El espíritu de la colmena (V. Erice, 1973), we see that the problematics of «otherness» was operative in the representation or subversion of national memory. Later, under democracy and especially from the 1990s on, new national views emerged and generic, ethnic or racial otherness found a place for itself in Spanish cinema. This paper concentrates on some recent proposals —En construcción (J. L. Guerín, 2001), El cielo gira (Mercedes Álvarez, 2004) and an Aragonese short Sabáh (Fernando Vera, 2005)— to try and understand how the stylistic approach to and the cinematographic treatment of the subject of «national traits» are being renovated in an altered context of nationality.
5Rafael R. Tranche
The concept of tradition and unity in nationalist cinema during the Spanish Civil War
The creation of the Delegación Nacional de Prensa y Propaganda (National Press and Propaganda Office) in February 1938 by Franco’s first government marked a decisive change of direction in the makeup of nationalist propaganda, based on a specifically Falangist model. Firmly resolved to regenerate Spain, the group assembled by Dionisio Ridruejo sought to indoctrinate the population in all spheres of life. Within this organisation, the Departamento Nacional de Cinematografía played a prominent role, taking up the production of newsreels and documentaries. And in these it is possible to discern an elaborate presentation of the central themes of the Falangist creed. Among all these themes there is one idea that is obsessively raised, namely the loss of Spain’s grandeur and unity caused by the «red» enemy. As an alternative they postulated a new Spain based on the recovery of the nation’s traditional essences. War was thus justified in terms of Crusade and Reconquest. The ideal surroundings in which to realise this conceptual complex was in the occupied cities. Falangist mentality dictated that the strictly military aspect of occupation must go hand in hand with ideological purification of the population. Consequently, in the Department’s productions the «liberation» of the cities is linked to the «rehispanification» of the territory —a regeneration at once physical and moral— and places like the Ciudad Universitaria were utilised as messianic pulpits from which to lecture a captive Madrid.
6Valeria Camporesi
Contribution to a history of the non-national in Spanish cinema. Ladislao Vajda and the case of refugees in Spain fleeing anti-Semitic persecution
This article explores the circumstances in which Ladislao Vajda arrived in Spain in September 1942 following the application of anti-Semitic laws to showbusiness in Italy. This case serves to point up the importance of the Jewish presence in Spanish cinema starting in 1933, and more generally to demonstrate the importance of transnational experiences throughout the development of the film industry. It is argued that this example belongs to what might be described as a parallel history of the cinema based on the recognition of functional mechanisms and structures of meaning, a history which contradicts the kind of view that only acknowledges national industries and politico-cultural systems.
7Vicente Sánchez-Biosca
The nation as a historical mirage in the cinema of the early Franco years
The nationalist discourse in the Spanish civil war was not confined to propaganda but was rather conceived as a veritable myth-making machine. Taking their inspiration from the intellectual traditions of the Spanish right, and hinging on the key figure of Menéndez Pelayo along with some notions borrowed from the Generation of ‘98, Falangist ideologues —and especially those who took charge of the press and propaganda in 1938— built up a compact discourse on the Spanish nation, addressing the national essence, the origins of the Spanish spirit, the battles against foreign tendencies and the ultimate triumph of Franco. In the field of film production, the specific subject of this article, Franco’s victory was viewed through a mist of echoes, reminiscences, prophecies and auguries from long-past times when like heroic deeds were performed by representatives of the authentic Spain. Rites, symbols and ceremonies were invoked to reaffirm a view of the nation like a mirage, in which time ceased to function and a history turned full circle as the heroes of mediaeval times joined hands with the new builders of the fatherland. This is clearly reflected in El análisis de España heroica (1938) and Ya viene el cortejo (1939), as well as in various newsreels from the Noticiario Español (1938-1941).
8José Enrique Monterde
A model of national reappropriation. Historical cinema under Franco
Firstly, there is nothing new in the penchant of totalitarian film industries for historical cinema; and secondly, it is a readily verifiable fact that the cinema of the autarchy years under Franco was for long unjustifiably and simplistically associated with historical cinema. These two observations point to the desirability of reviewing the importance and the real functions of the historical films that studded the cinema of the forties and early fifties. The article first analyses the most significant features of these films, looking to identify a certain «national» model of historical film intrinsically linked to the value attaching to historical references in terms of legitimisation of the regime and upholding of its interests and political goals. It then goes on to suggest that historical cinema in the early Franco years was a practical tool for the design of a unilaterally nationalist policy, closely linked to the manipulation of History in the field of education, to the promotion of national-catholicism or to the forcing of linguistic and cultural conformity. Moreover, the article does not omit the extent to which, even within this genre, we can find heterodox ideas slipped in by some film makers, or even departures from the norm hardly to be expected given the place of that historical cinema in the context of the Spanish film industry, its genres, its aesthetics and its audiences in those times.
9Marie-Soledad Rodriguez
In search of a hypothetical Castilian or Castilian-Leonese cinema
It is not unusual to come across books and articles affirming the existence of regional cinema, for example Basque or Catalan; and indeed it is precisely Catalonia and the Basque Country which have promoted —and to some extent championed— the creation of a cinema of their own. However, in many of Spain’s seventeen autonomous regions, no regional cinema has grown up, or at least none that has been identified as such. This is true for instance of Castile and Leon, a region which has played an important part in the history of Spain. This study therefore questions the criteria used to determine the characteristics of regional production: for example, are the same criteria used to define Basque cinema and Catalan cinema? Do films have to satisfy one or more conditions to be considered Basque or Catalan? And what is the role of the regional State? In the case of Catalonia and the Basque Country the strong national sentiment felt by the population may be a decisive element in the creation of a regional cinema. Can such a sentiment also be found in Castile and Leon? And finally, although Castile and Leon has not developed a militant discourse in connection with its cinema, if we apply the criteria which serve to define Basque or Catalan cinema, would it not be possible to affirm that there is also a Castilian or Castilian-Leonese cinema?
10Rafael Utrera Macías
The cinema of Andalusian nationality. The search for a complex identity
Taking as its starting point the conceptualisations put forward in recent years by researchers on «national cinemas» and theirvariants in the ambit of «cinema of nationalities», this study reviews the various historical, social, industrial, aesthetic and other factors which might go to make up a hypothetical History of the Cinema of Andalusian nationality. The first ventures in the making of feature films, documentaries and shorts by a nascent industry in the final years of silent movies were followed by activity from various autochthonous producers in the forties and fifties under the production guidelines laid down by the centre of the industry. In opposition to this, where can we fit in so singular and personal a case as that of José Val del Omar and his film Agua-espejo granadino, which contains the essentials of a specifically Andalusian aesthetics more obviously than any other work appears to have done? In a later historical period, the advent of democracy brought with it the championing of autochthonous values and the birth of a short-lived Andalusian cinema, which in many cases proved to be a one-day wonder. Then again, from its very outset Canal Sur Televisión engaged in production and assisted in financing other products. After more than twenty-five years of autonomy, an Andalusian market has emerged, seeking its own way forward and ready to build up an audiovisual complex that breaks away from previous thematic trends, to judge by the appearance of films from new producers, screenplay-writers and directors who are hailed as representatives of «Andalusian cinema».
11Àngel Quintana
Madrid - Barcelona. Two opposing aesthetic models
The idea underlying this study, which is devoted to contemporary Spanish cinema, is that the latter reflects a crisis between two opposing aesthetic models, one based in Madrid and the other in Barcelona: the dichotomy is between a model of cinema persuaded of the efficacy of the formulae developed in response to commercial needs, and another model, free of the constraints of industry, which is resolved to experiment in manifold fields in order the more comfortably to follow the postulates of that mutating cinema which does the rounds of international festivals. The films made in Barcelona today give the impression of aspiring to adjust to the course of a mutating cinema remote from official discourses or the Europe that still believes in Europudding or large superproductions. Whereas for many years the notion of Spanish cinema seemed to orbit around a city —Madrid— in which much of the industry was centralised, in recent years Barcelona has begun to emerge as an alternative to the traditional models. The current debate is not prompted by the search for a nationalistic alternative to the centralist model; the new film-makers working in Barcelona believe that the debate about identity has been swallowed up by television, and its model of cinema seeks new avenues of development which sheer away from a typically Catalan cinema in which the local element is over-prominent.
12Marvin D’Lugo
Gardel, Hispanic films and the construction of an auditory identity
Despite the fact that their production was clearly rooted in «national» ambits, during the 1930s the various Spanish-language producers devised a number of strategies to defend themselves against the accursed «Hispanic films», that is films made in Spanish but produced by the Hollywood «Majors». In the history of these attempts at self-defence by Spanish-speaking film-makers there is much emphasis on musicals, a formula inspired in part by the great international success of the tango films of Carlos Gardel. These were produced by Paramount, first in Paris and then in New York. Despite originating within national industries, the effect of many such «national musical» productions was to promote auditory identification in transnational Hispanic audiences beyond the borders of their country of origin. The musicals of that period constitute a genuine example of transnational Hispanic cinema. This article focuses on the triangular pattern in the development of the musical in Spain, Latin America and the United States during the early decades of the talkies, and the series of influences artistic (stars, directors) and industrial (the multinationals which controlled the sound technologies) which helped reinforce the transnational character of the musical genre.
13Julia Tuñón
Cinema and Hispanism. A two-way debate between Spain and Mexico in 1948
In the 1940s, in the early days of the Franco regime, the hegemonic ideology in Spain in all matters concerning the former colonies was Hispanism. This ideology sought to found the identity of the Iberian Peninsula and the nations of Latin America upon tradition and upon respect for birth and for the social, political and religious hierarchies which held that the Mother Country came first and her docile children second. Cinema was seen as a suitable instrument for the transmission of these ideas. Relations between the film communities of Spain and Mexico were fluid in those years despite the severance of diplomatic relations, and there were a number of developments which permit us to analyse Hispanism as conceived by either side —i.e. how it was presented from Spain and how it was reinterpreted from Mexico. These events were: publication of the book Amor a Méjico (a través de su cine) by Falangist Ernestro Giménez Caballero; the celebration of the First Hispano-American Film Festival in Madrid; the classification of the film Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, 1946) as «of national interest»; and the co-production of Jalisco canta en Sevilla (Fernando de Fuentes, 1948) starring Jorge Negrete, which remained on screen in Spain for several months that year and whose presence provoked a considerable rumpus. These events afforded a space in which to express the ideas of Hispanism and the utility of cinema to propagate them; at the same time they constituted a focus of tension which highlighted the various meanings that this ideology could acquire in each country.
14Kathleen M. Vernon
Empire, identity and nostalgia: Cuba revisited in recent Spanish cinema
Of all Spain’s former colonies, Cuba has always held pride of place in the Spanish imagination, conceived of on the one hand as an extension of the mother country, and on the other hand as the latter’s tropical alter ego. This article looks at a series of recent Spanish-Cuban co-productions (Maite [Eneko Olasagasti and Carlos Zabal, 1994], Mambí [Teodoro Ríos and Santiago Ríos, 1998], Cuarteto de la Habana [Fernando Colomo, 1998], Cosas que dejé en la Habana [Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 1997] and Habana Blues [Benito Zambrano, 2005]) which offer a superb laboratory in which to observe and analyse the production, rejection and renegotiation of identities and how the typically national and variants thereof are structured in relation to other nationalities in what is conceived of as a dynamic, creative process. The economic asymmetry in present-day relations between the two countries is reflected at several different levels in the films analysed and merges with other aspects of Spain’s interest in Cuba —affective, erotic, nostalgic and political. In this process cinema has been fully involved, albeit with some ambivalence and at times some self-criticism, in the «rediscovery» or recovery of the former colony by the Spanish tourist industry.
15Daniel Kowalsky
An unwelcome domestic cinema. Spanish pornography in the transition (1975-1982)
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the transition was the lack of any consensus on the direction that post-Franco Spain was to take. For many, the death of the dictator spelt the possibility of finally burying the traditionalist tendencies that had characterised the regime which emerged from the civil war. At the same time, the conservative forces were unwilling to renounce the values of the Franco regime. A significant part of this battle also spread to the film industry. With the prospect of the abolition of censorship in 1977, the Spanish developed a new system of film classification in which pornographic material was admitted. Those films which could «be offensive to viewers» received an «S» classification; the Ministry of Culture applied that category to 130 Spanish productions, almost all of them pornographic. With their portrayal of sexual acts and nudity, and with their obscene titles and posters, «S» films very quickly found a place in the universe of the post-Franco mass media. This article analyses the history of the «S» genre, a form of low-budget domestic cinema which vanished with the accession of the PSOE to power in February 1982, also examining the extent to which Spanish pornographic films represented progressive or reactionary tendencies and looking into the consequences of its abolition.
16Burkhard Pohl
«We have changed so much». The later Franco years in Spanish cinema
The subject of historical memory seems an ideal context in which to affirm the identity of a domestic film production. While the debate about historical memory in Spain is reflected in a vast stock of film and literature dealing with the Civil War and Franco’s repression, some television and film productions have also begun to dust off the latter years of the Franco regime. Using comedy or camp, films like Torremolinos 73 (Pablo Berger, 2003), Carreteras secundarias (E. Martínez Lázaro, 1998) or Muertos de risa (Alex de la Iglesia, 1997), not to mention the successful television series Cuéntame cómo pasó…, all portray the past through the prism of consumer culture and sexual customs, thus constructing a recognisable national self-vision. At the same time, the popular cultural memory of Spain in the latter Franco years prompts the imposition of a self-reflexive and metacinematographic approach, in some cases with a noticeably nostalgic note, as in 800 balas (Alex de la Iglesia, 2002). Focusing on notions of memory, imagery and (trans) nationality, this article proposes a contextualisation of that seventies conception in a fin-de-siècle Spanish cinema characterised by certain strategies of national and/or transnational self-affirmation. Can one speak of a Spanish style of film- and television-based memory? Or are we seeing rather a memorialistic discourse organised in response to transnational codes? What are the narrative and cinematographic constants in the portrayal of history current in Spanish cinema today?
17Pascale Thibaudeau
Towards a new social realism in Spanish cinema?
The difficulties that Spanish cinema has encountered throughout its history in portraying the reality and offering a critical vision of Spanish society are well known. Since the 1990s, there has been an observable increase in the number of Spanish fiction productions which address social problems. They touch on various aspects of contemporary reality such as unemployment (Los lunes al sol), emigration (Cartas de Alou, Flores de otro mundo), ill-treatment (El Bola) and gender violence (Te doy mis ojos), juvenile delinquency (Barrio) and so on. Is this a deep-running trend in contemporary Spanish cinema? Can these films be classified «on the basis of how authentic is the reality that they portray» (Bazin)? To what «realist» tradition do they belong? Is this a specifically Hispanic trend or is it international? These are some of the questions for which this article attempts to provide the basis for an answer. At the same time it outlines a classification of films as a means of highlighting the characteristics they have in common and determining whether they share a similar aesthetic outlook or alternatively they are largely linked by the subject-matter.
18Bénédicte Brémard
Children from nowhere. The cinema of Spanish exile
There is a gap of forty years between the first film about exile (En el balcón vacío, Jomi García Ascot, 1961) —made in exile and not publicly screened— and one of the most widely viewed to date (Jaime Camino, 2001). There is a gap of forty years, but the same subject is shared by Ascot’s autobiographic fiction (based on a story by his wife, María Luisa Elío) and Camino’s documentary: the loss of nationality suffered by children —the star figures in the panorama of Spanish cinema. Each of these films attempts in its own way to render that pain intelligible. The feeling of alienation produced by the language, the food or the climate, the omnipresence of the young girl in the first film and the physical absence of the children in the title of the other constitute a universal statement of the irreversibility of their disappearance from a family environment defined on a national scale.
19Javier Herrera
Buñuel and Spanish nationalism during the Franco regime. The reception of Los olvidados as a symptom
The figure of Buñuel, like that of Picasso in the field of plastic art, stands at the centre of the ideological battles waged under the Franco regime between representatives in the cultural sphere of fascist-inspired nationalism and those of liberal-Catholic nationalism (Ridruejo and Ruiz-Giménez) whose accession to power coincided with the international success of Los olvidados. Its reception in Spain is examined through press reviews, preserved by Buñuel himself, which appeared in various mainstream and specialist media, and the odd unpublished document.
20Claude Murcia
Cinema and national identity. The case of Almodóvar
This article attempts to examine the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar in the light of the concept of national cinema. Classic examples of a kind of cinematographic art considered representative of a kind of Spanishness (but a definite Spanishness), his films mix identifying traits which carry on a tradition (that of sarcasm or popular culture) with new traits rooted in a (post) modern world, which is characterised in particular by the borrowing and recycling of what are frequently exogenous elements and the deconstruction of identifying stereotypes (e.g. the Spanish macho). This article analyses the way in which a national identity, never before defined but recognisable as such, is constructed, paradoxically made up at once of identifiable signs of a relatively stable Spanish identity and of signs of a new identity which Almodóvar helps to impose at the same time as he is constructing it.
21Jacques Terrasa
The Civil War in Mallorca: a case of national amnesia? Considerations on the opening of the film El Mar (1999) by Agustí Villaronga
The memory of the Civil War in the Balearic Islands seems to have melted away in the sun over the last two decades of right-wing regional governments. Nineteen ninety-nine, the year in which socialist Francesc Antich became President of the Balearic Government, was also the year in which the Catalan version of a film by Agustí Villaronga, adapted from the novel El Mar (1958) by Blai Bonet, first reached the movie screens of Palma. But will the memory of the summary executions of 1936 which made so awed the film’s two young protagonists always remain in the islanders’ consciousness? The documentary by Antoni Ma Thomàs and Pere Salom, Nosaltres els vençuts (2003), which presents testimony on the civil war and post-war period in Mallorca, adds the reality of memory to the fiction of the director of El Mar. Will this be enough to recover a historical memory that is indispensable for the construction of a national identity for the islands, an identity long falsified by the amnesia of the victors (or their descendants), the chief beneficiaries of the tourist boom of the late Franco years?
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