a Cinema of Contradiction Spanish Film in the 1960s Sally Faulkner A Cinema of Contradiction For Nicholas McDowell A Cinema of Contradiction Spanish Film in the 1960s Sally Faulkner Edinburgh University Press © Sally Faulkner, 2006 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11/13pt Ehrhardt MT by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 2160 1 (hardback) The right of Sally Faulkner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements vi List of Illustrations and Figures viii Textual Note ix Introduction: Contexts 1 Part I: Spanish Popular Cinema 1. Franco’s Great Family: La gran familia (The Great Family, Palacios 1962) 27 2. Civilising the City in La ciudad no es para mí (The City’s Not For Me, Lazaga 1965) 49 Part II: The Nuevo Cine Español (New Spanish Cinema) 3. Reality and Pretence in Los farsantes (Frauds, Camus 1963) 73 4. Repression and Excess in La tía Tula (Aunt Tula, Picazo 1964) 101 5. Identity and Nationality in Nueve cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Berta,Patino 1965) 125 6. Ageing and Coming of Age in La caza (The Hunt, Saura 1965) 145 Conclusion: Overlaps 175 Filmography 179 Bibliography 182 Index 194 Acknowledgements This book could not have been written without grants from the British Academy and the School of Modern Languages, University of Exeter, which enabled me to carry out research in Spain, and sabbatical leave, jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Exeter, which gave me time to complete the project. A grant from the University of Exeter’s Keith Whinnom Memorial Fund enabled me to attend the 41st International Festival of Cinema, Gijón, Spain. Much of this work was presented as seminar and conference papers at the School of Modern Languages and Centre for Research in Film Studies Research Seminar, University of Exeter; the 50th Anniversary Programme Research Seminars, Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin- American Studies, University of Bristol; the Annual Conference of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, University of Cambridge; the ‘Hispanic Cinemas: The Local and the Global’ Conference, University of London, and the Hispanic Research Seminar, University of Leeds. I would like to thank the organisers and those who attended for their views. Earlier versions of Chapters 4, 5 and 6 appeared in Modern Language Review (‘A Cinema of Contradiction: La tía Tula [Picazo 1964] and the Nuevo Cine Español’, 99, 3 [2004]); Bulletin of Spanish Studies (‘Identity and Nationality in Basilio Martín Patino’s Nueve cartas a Berta [1965]’, 83, 3 [2006]); and Modern Language Notes (‘Ageing and Coming of Age in Carlos Saura’s La caza [The Hunt 1965]’, 120, 2 [2005]). This book is in part a record of discussion and debate with many col- leagues and friends over a number of years. Peter Evans, Susan Hayward, Chris Perriam, Tim Rees, Alison Sinclair and Paul Julian Smith read parts of the manuscript at different stages, and I would like to thank them for their comments. John Hopewell, Duncan Petrie, Núria Triana- Toribio, Kathleen Vernon and Gareth Walters also provided encourage- ment at different moments as the project developed. Elizabeth Matthews and Andrew Ginger offered advice on questions of art, as did Anthony Faulkner on music, Derek Gagen and Mike Thompson on theatre and Tom Caldin on translations. Helena López and Rob Stone kindly sent me copies of their work. Marga Lobo, Trinidad del Río (Screenings), Javier Herrera vii (Library) and their colleagues of the Filmoteca Española, Madrid have always provided me with great support and encouragement. Thanks also to Maruja Rincón Tapias for her generosity and advice. I am grateful to the directors Mario Camus, Julio Diamante, Antxón Eceiza, Basilio Martín Patino and the poet Guillermo Carnero for answering my questions about their work. Thanks, as always, to my parents, Anthony and Helen Faulkner, who took me to Spain in 1975, and brother, David Faulkner, with whom I began to learn Spanish. Without doubt my greatest debt is to Nicholas McDowell; I dedicate the book to him. List of Illustrations and Figures 1.1 Adapted excerpt of musical score from La gran familia.Pedro Masó P. C. 1.2 Excerpt of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ of Georg Friedrich Handel’s Messiah. 1.3 Adapted excerpt of musical score from La gran familia.Pedro Masó P. C. 1.4 Amparo Soler Leal and Alberto Closas in La gran familia. Photograph courtesy of Pedro Masó P.C. 1.5 José Isbert and Amparo Soler Leal in La gran familia. Photograph courtesy of Pedro Masó P.C. 2.1 Paco Martínez Soria and Gracita Morales in La ciudad no es para mí. Photograph courtesy of Video Mercury Films. 2.2 Doris Coll, María Luisa Ponte, Paco Martínez Soria and Margot Cottens in La ciudad no es para mí. Photograph courtesy of Video Mercury Films. 3.1 Margarita Lozano in Los farsantes. Photograph courtesy of Video Mercury Films. 3.2 José Montez in Los farsantes. Photograph courtesy of Video Mercury Films. 4.1 Aurora Bautista in La tía Tula. Photograph courtesy of Video Mercury Films. 4.2 Aurora Bautista and Carlos Estrada in La tía Tula. Photograph courtesy of Video Mercury Films. 5.1 Nueve cartas a Berta. Photograph courtesy of La linterna mágica, P.C. 5.2 Nueve cartas a Berta. Photograph courtesy of La linterna mágica, P.C. 6.1 La caza. Photograph courtesy of Elías Querejeta, P.C. 6.2 Alfredo Mayo in La caza. Photograph courtesy of Elías Querejeta, P.C. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace those holding rights to the images reproduced and to acquire the relevant permissions. Textual Note I have used the original Spanish titles of films in the text, but have given English translations in brackets on first mention and in the index. I have given the International English Title according to the International Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com; for those films that do not have one, Ihave consulted D’Lugo (1997) and Triana-Toribio (2003), or offered my own translations. I have translated quotations into English, unless they are very short, in which case English only is given. These translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. For information on the filmographies of directors, actors and technical teams I have consulted the International Movie Database. I have used two abbreviations in the text: NCE, to refer to the ‘Nuevo Cine Español’ (New Spanish Cinema); and VCE, ‘Viejo Cine Español’ (Old, or Popular, Spanish Cinema). Introduction: Contexts A key decade in world cinema, the 1960s was also a crucial era of change in Spain. This book analyses six films that reflect and interpret some of the political, social, economic and cultural transformations of this period. The coexistence of traditional and modern values following rapid industrialisa- tion and urbanisation, and the timid acceptance of limited change by Franco’s authoritarian regime, are symptoms of the uneven modernity that scholars argue characterises Spain of the modern era.1 Contradiction – the unavoidable effect of that unevenness – is the conceptual terrain explored by the six filmmakers discussed here, whose work ranges across experiences of family and gender roles, rural and urban life, provincial and cosmopol- itan mentalities, religious belief and ceremony, and youth and ageing. The 1960s is also an important decade in the history of Spanish cinema because, as in other Western film industries, this was a period of transition. While television ownership eroded cinema audiences towards the end of the decade onwards, commercial domestic films could still attract massive attendance in the 1960s, with audiences occasionally exceeding four million. Promoters and producers of art film appealed to a more select demographic, in particular the growing number of university students and graduates, in anticipation of this future competition from television.2 In response to these twin phenomena of a still robust commercial industry and a developing art alternative, I devote Part I of this study to the Viejo Cine Español (VCE) (the old, commercial, or popular, Spanish cinema), which was so called to highlight its differences from the Nuevo Cine Español (NCE) (the new, art, or auteurist, Spanish cinema), which is the subject of Part II.3 The examples of the VCE I analyse in Part I represent the two key ten- dencies of the commercial industry in the period. Pedro Lazaga’s La ciudad no es para mí (The City’s Not For Me 1965) (Chapter 2) was a blockbuster, attracting almost 4,300,000 spectators, and, according to a recent calcula- tion,4 taking the equivalent of 440,348 euros at the box office, which made it one of the most widely seen and commercially successful films of the decade. Conversely, Fernando Palacios’s La gran familia (The Great Family 1962) (Chapter 1) had the lowest figures for audience attendance of all the films 2 studied in this book, with just over 20,000 spectators.5 It made a profit (25,000 euros), however, not through success at the box office, but rather through the government subsidies it was awarded when it was given the classification ‘National Interest’. In Part II, I analyse four different examples of Spain’s contemporary art cinema, the NCE. Mario Camus’s Los farsantes (Frauds 1963) (Chapter 3) is typical of the movement as a whole in its failure to attract audiences (it had 62,000 spectators and made just 5,000 euros), though it is interesting to note that this was three times the attendance figure for La gran familia.