The Representation of the Family in the Spanish Cinema from 1950 to the Present Day
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THE REPRESENTATION OF THE FAMILY IN THE SPANISH CINEMA FROM 1950 TO THE PRESENT DAY. by Marl..a del Carmen Mèndez Fiddian NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 089 05085 4 Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. May 1989 CONTENTS Acknow 1 edginents Summary Introduction: The Family, Patriarchy and the Case of Spain 1 Chapter One: Neorealism versus Spanish Traditions I - A Historical Overview 33 II Spanish Cinema in the Fifties 40 III Neorealism and the Representation of the Family 59 IV The Case of Fernando Fernân Gômez 67 Chapter Two "El Nuevo Cirie Espao1' and "Las Comedias Celtibéricas" I The Sixties: Political Liberalization and Changes in the Film Industry 94 II "Nuevo Cine Espafol" 108 III The mise-en-scène of the Family in the 'Nuevo Cine Espaol 118 IV The Genre of Comedy 130 V The Comedias Celtibèrioas": Male Rites of Passage into Marriage and Parenthood 144 Chapter Three: Carlos Saura and the "Children of Francd' I The Conjuncture of the Seventies 177 II Carlos Saura 184 III "The Children of Franco" 212 Chapter Four: Post-Franco Cinema and the Rejection of Stereotypes I The Political Transition and Spanish Cinema 243 II A Re-evaluation of Francoism 247 III Pilar Mirô and the Exploration of Love Relationships 256 IV Eloy de la Iglesia and the Rejection of Patriarchal Norms 269 V The "tercera via" and Asinat.ura pendiente 301 VI The New Comedy: Marriage, Remarriage and beyond 310 Conclusion 325 Footnotes 329 Bibliography 373 ACKNOWLEDGENTS I gratefully acknowledge assistance from the Filmoteca Nacional and the FundaciOn Ortega y Gasset in Madrid; the British Film Institute and the Instituto de Espa?a in London; the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle Upon Tyne. My thanks in particular to John Hopewell, for generously sharing with me information and material about Spanish cinema; to the Spanish film directors Luis G. Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Jose Luis Borau, Francisco Regueiro, Pilar Mirô and Caries Saura for discussing with me matters relating to their cinema; to Emilio Carlos Garcia Fernàndes, of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Agustin S&nches Vidal, of the University of Zaragoza and Virginia Higginbotham, of the University of Austin, Texas, for kindly supplying me with copies of books and references; to Bruce Babington, Phil Powrie, Lizzie Thinne and Deborah Thomas, whose film courses provided me with innumerable insights into cinema; to the staff, Secretary and students of the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies of the Universit y of Newcastle Upon Tyne; and to Chris Perriam, of the Department of Spanish and Italian in the University of Durham. I am specially grateful to my supervisor Peter Evans, for his guidance, encouragepent and support and to Robin Fiddian, without whose help I would possibly never have finished this thesis. SUMMARY The principal aim of this thesis is to study the ways the family has been represented in Spanish cinema both during the dictatorship of General Franco and in the early years of democracy after his death. The family, both as a social institution and as the privileged domain of individuals, provides unrivalled scope for conducting an examination of a whole range of issues peculiar to Spanish society in the second half of the twentieth century, since the relationships of power, domination and submission in the context of the family under patriarchy may represent the experiences of a whole society smothered by a repressive and authoritarian regime. It is indeed through the depiction of the family, and the exaltation or degradation of family values as presented in key films, that we may most clearly understand the political, social and moral ideas which have prevailed in Spain over the last forty years. The family, a medium as powerful as any other institution of the State - the Police, the Army, the Church, the School - in shaping and preserving the rigid structures of a male-dominated society, offers a yardstick for measuring the real extent of the changes which are supposed to have taken place in Spain since the mid-point of the century, during which time the nation has become transformed from a backward, deeply conservative and poverty-stricken country of the post-war era into a developed and complex society consolidated under Socialist governments since 1982. Espousing Molly Haskell's view that 'Movies are one of the clearest and most accesible of looking glasses into the past, being both cultural artifacts and mirrors', I intend to explore selected aspects of this varied subject matter as depicted in a range of Spanish films made during the last four decades.' Without ignoring the problems and peculiarities of the Spanish Film Industry, I shall progress from a study of the general preoccupations introduced in films of different periods to a discussion of the specific treatment of the theme of the family in them. Exploiting recent developments in ideological, psychoanalytical and feminist theories, and drawing on earlier works of major film theorists, I shall investigate the topics of patriarchy, marriage, monogamy, the nuclear family, notions of masculinity and femininity, the role of women in society and other matters included under the general term of Sexual Politics. 1.- Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape. The Treatment of Women in the Movies, New York, Halt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973, p.xii INTRODUCTION THE FAMILY, PATRIARCHY AND THE CASE OF SPAIN The changing configuration of the family and the radical re-evaluation of its functions and purposes are crucial features of our culture in the mid arid late 1900s. Central to the organisation of society and an influential force in determining the social status of the individual, the family performs a double service which has been interpreted differently according to the needs of specific groups at various moments in history. Until recently, however, the contrasting views held by sociologists, anthropologists, ideologists, theologians, etc., were never so disparate as to cast doubts on the intrinsic nature of the family, because The family itself appears, to some extent, to be an inevitable, necessary institution, and it appears thus because individuals are born into it and because the natural, inevitable and necessary nature of the family is part of a familistic ideology. 1 The impact in our century of Freudian ideas, stressing the significance of early childhood events in promoting or thwarting personal development, and revealing that family relationships particularly those of parents with children of the opposite sex could cause traumas and neurosis in later years, has widened the area of 1 investigation into the family, which in recent decades has increasingly involved a psychoanalytical perspective, at the same time as it has incorporated the many strands of contemporary feminist theory. In addition to these different levels of interpretation of the family, on which I shall expand at a later stage in this introduction, the relevance of the family in our time is manifested too by its pervasive presence as a theme in the artistic expression of Western culture where, particularly in literary and cinematic form, the family has been placed at the centre of many films - for instance, Hollywood family melodramas of the fifties and sixties, Ingmar Bergman's career as a whole. A - of figures who have explored the almost infinite ramifications of family life in Spanish culture reflect this overall concern, since Spain has been subjected in the last fifty years to the same influences as other Western countries, even if the distinctiveness of Spain's historical experience sets it apart from general Western trends in certain respects. From the early post-war period when Camilo José Cela and Carmen Laforet emerged on the literary scene, a long list of names testifies to an abiding interest in investigating the reasons for individual behaviour and its roots in the peculiar social structures of the family: Juan Goytisolo, Luis Martin Santos, Ana Mar1a Matute, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Miguel Mihura and Rosa Montero, are just a few representatives of this tendency.2 2 It has often been noticed that families are the focus of attention in many contemporary Spanish films, particularly those which dissect Francoist society from a critical vantage point. Essays by Marsha Kinder on 'The Children of Franco in the New Spanish Cinema' and Peter W. Evans on El es p Irjtu de la colmena and Crp cuervos have been seminal in highlighting the predicament of children within the asph xiating prison of the family where, contrary to the traditional view that the home is an idyllic enclave of peace, unity and happiness, we encounter a world of hatred, resentment, and perverted desires which cause destruction and death all around. 3 The images which those films project of both adults and children who are at one and the same time innocent victims and monstrous aggressors, have been seen by film directors and critics alike as the consequence of an abnormal and disproportionate emphasis on relationships of power and submission in Spanish society during the repressive Franco era. The distorted visions that they offer of family lives characterized by fear, oppression, desolation and violence, and the presentation of fathers as, variously, emasculated or despotic figures, and of mothers as either s•ange1s and victims or castrating monsters, is highly ironic, if we consider that as a matter of policy Francoism exalted the family for being a safe refuge against the evils of the world; idealized women in the roles of virtous wives and saintly mothers; and rewarded the paterfamilias for his 3 tireless contribution to the aggrandisement of the nation. Even though the films mentioned in Kinder and Evans' studies all form part of a series of works produced around the time of the disappearance of the dictatorship (the earliest, El es p ritu was made in 1973 and the last, El nido in 1980), many others since the beginning of the fifties had centred on families and the complex relationships involved in family life.