Popular Spanish Film under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State

232 Pages·2006·1.741 MB·English

by  Steven Marsh (auth.)

Popular Spanish Film under Franco
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Popular Spanish Film under
Franco
Comedy and the Weakening of the State
Steven Marsh
© Steven Marsh 2006
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-4117-6
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First published 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-52053-4 ISBN 978-0-230-51187-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230511873
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marsh, Steven, 1963–
Popular Spanish film under Franco:comedy and the weakening of the
state/Steven Marsh.
p. cm.
Filmography: p.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-52053-4
1. Motion pictures—Spain—History. 2. Fascism and motion
pictures—Spain. 3. Comedy films—Spain—History and
criticism. I. Title.
PN1993.5.S7M2939 2005
791.43′658—dc22 2005049204
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
This book is dedicated to my daughter Jana
Almost everything in Spanish Cinema is incongruent.
Fernando Fernán Gómez in Cobos etal., 1997: 75
Spain is the country with the least sense of humour on the planet, although
paradoxically we are always game for a lark. Just about anybody loves to
laugh at somebody else but if you mess with him he is capable of killing you.
We have an exacerbated sense of the ridiculous. Spain is full of dickheads, the
problem is that we do not realize it.
José Miguel Monzón ‘El Gran Wyoming’ in Rigalt, 1997: 32
A list of ‘populist’ tendencies and an analysis of each of them would be interesting:
one might discover one of Vico’s ‘ruses of nature’ – how a social impulse,
tending towards one end, brings about its opposite.
Antonio Gramsci, 1985: 364
Contents
List of Figures viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Comedy and the Weakening of the State 13
2 Tactics and Thresholds in Edgar Neville’s
Life on a Thread (1945) 41
3 Metropolitan Masquerades: The Destabilization of
Madrid in the Neville Trilogy 63
4 Populism, the National-Popular and the Politics of Luis
García Berlanga: Welcome Mister Marshall! (1952) 97
5 Humor and Hegemony: Berlanga, the State and the
Family in Plácido (1961) and The Executioner (1963) 122
6 ‘Making Do’ or the Cultural Logic of the Ersatz
Economy in the Spanish Films of Marco Ferreri 145
7 The Pueblo Travestied in Fernando Fernán Gómez’s
The Strange Journey (1964) 167
Conclusion: Gila’s Telephone 189
Notes 199
Bibliography 208
Filmography 216
Index 218
vii
List of Figures
1 The Way of Babel (Courtesy of Video Mercury Films,
S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 28
2 Castle of Cards (Courtesy of Video Mercury Films,
S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 31
3 Adventure (Courtesy of Banco Pastor and
Filmoteca Española) 33
4 My Adored Juan (Courtesy of Video Mercury Films,
S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 37
5 Conchita Montes in Life on a Thread (Courtesy of
Video Mercury Films, S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 43
6 Carnival Sunday (Courtesy of Video Mercury Films,
S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 69
7 Manolo Morán in Welcome Mister Marshall! (Courtesy
of Video Mercury Films, S.A. and Filmoteca
Española) 99
8 Plácido (Courtesy of Video Mercury Films,
S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 125
9 The Executioner (Courtesy of Video Mercury Films,
S.A. and Filmoteca Española) 125
10 The Little Car (Courtesy of Pere Portabella Films 59 and
Filmoteca Española) 156
11 The Strange Journey (Courtesy of Impala S.A. and Filmoteca
Española) 168
viii
Acknowledgements
I would like to take advantage of the opportunity to thank first and
foremost Jo Labanyi without whose rigorous criteria, enthusiasm and
constant encouragement I would never have finished the research on
which this book is based. I am grateful to Paul Julian Smith and Peter
Evans who were among the first to see the publication potential of the
original research. I thank colleagues Anja Louis, Tatjana Pavlovic,
Parvati Nair, Celia Martín Pérez, Susan Larson and Michael Ugarte for
the ongoing dialogue and debate that we have maintained now for
several years on Spanish culture and politics. Kathleen Vernon, Susan
Martin Márquez and Tatjana Gajic very kindly read and commented on
extracts from the original text. My students at the University of
Missouri and at the University of South Carolina provided a fresh insight
into a number of aspects of Spanish film that familiarity had inured me
against. I would also like to acknowledge the cultural and sentimental
debt I owe Esther Alonso, Heinrich Dening, Mila Lasaosa, Jan Eidersson
Posada, Pepe Roldán, Amparo Perdomo Feo, Anna Gimein, Santiago
Aguilera and Analía Beltrán i Janés. These are people who have accom-
panied me throughout the time that followed my impromptu arrival in
Madrid where I lived between 1989 and 2003; genuine organic intellec-
tuals who taught me the humility from which dominant academic
discourse on Spain would do well to learn. Gratitude too is due to my
sister, Jenny Peachey. A final word must go to my parents, Walter
Marsh (1931–1995) and Jo Aplin, who met in a low-life language
academy on Madrid’s Gran Via circa 1959 and began it all.
Sections of this book, albeit in very different form, have been published
in the following journals and books: a section from Chapter 1 appeared
in The Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies (5.1, 1999: 65–75), an
earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared in La herida de las sombras: El cine
español de los años cuarenta (2001: 99–113). Part of Chapter 3 was
published in the journal Studies in Hispanic Cinemas (1.1, 2004: 27–41).
Chapter 4 first saw the light of day in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
(2004: 25–41). An abridged section of Chapter 5 was published in the
collective volume Spanish Popular Cinema (2004: 113–128) and part of
Chapter 7 appeared in the Journal of Hispanic Research (2003: 133–149).
ix