221- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Shots in anger: the cameras roll as Spain implodes
Both sides in the Civil War manipulated film.The
Nationalists called on the Cifesa studios for support
while the Republican government, clinging to power,
unveiled the Ministry of Propaganda in 1937. Luis
Buñuel, an enthusiastic left-winger, produced (but didn’t
actually film) the war’s best visual document.España 36
(1937), made as a plea for foreign intervention, included
footage of street battles and a speech by La Pasionaria.
Once Franco assumed control of Spain in 1939 he
introduced a system of government film subsidies.
Funds were distributed on the basis of loyalty to the
new regime: films that remained faithful to the ideology
of ‘National Catholicism’ had more chance of being
made and released. Directors or actors who didn’t fall in
line were exiled, either by choice or compulsion.Reins in Spain: censorship grips Spanish film
Film under Franco was coloured, indeed governed, by
censorship. He established a board of censors in the
late 1930s but didn’t actually draw up criteria for what
directors had to avoid; that would come two decades
later. Instead, censors sliced and diced scripts and film
according to personal bias while ensuring that the new
moralising ideology was impressed upon the nation.
By the 1950s the Catholic Church was adding its two
penn’orth, making suggestions via its own committee
of square-eyed hawks. Every film shown in Franco’s
Spain had to be in Castilian and so everything that
came from overseas was dubbed. Dubbing allowed
for the manipulation of storylines and language,
corresponding to the censors’ surly moral code. So,
were you lucky enough to catch a dubbed Grace Kelly
and Donald Sinden in John Ford’sMogambo(1953) the
protagonists would have been siblings, not lovers as in
the original. Attempting to re-script the adulterous¡Ay, Carmela!(1990)
Carlos Saura. A couple of
Republican troubadours
try and perform their way
out of facing a fascist
firing squad.Libertarias(1996)
Vicente Aranda. A group
of anarchist women head
to the horrors of the
front, hoping to fight for
the Republicans.Pan’s Labyrinth(2006)
Guillermo del Toro. Set
shortly after the Civil
War, the Oscar-winning
work expertly conveys
Spain’s sense of
dislocation.Luis the leftie
In 1936 Luis Buñuel was
sent to the Spanish
Embassy in Paris by
Spain’s Republican
government, dispatched
to make propaganda
films for the left. Buñuel
later worked in New
York’s Museum of
Modern Art, dubbing
anti-Nazi films for a Latin
American audience, but
was obliged to resign
after Salvador Dalí outed
him as a communist in
his autobiography.The Civil War
on screen:
three films5.1.3 Bending the rules: film under Franco