Popular Spanish Film under Franco

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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52053-4 ISBN 978-0-230-51187-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230511873 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 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 et al., 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 Acknowledgements viii 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 accompanied me throughout the time that followed my impromptu arrival in Madrid where I lived between 1989 and 2003; genuine organic intellectuals 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