Cinema of Spain
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Spanish cinema is not held in as high esteem worldwide as French or American cinema. In the long history of Spanish cinema, only the great filmmaker Luis Buñuel has achieved universal recognition, but Spanish cinema has seen some sporadic international success over the years with films by directors like Segundo de Chomón, Florián Rey, Luis García Berlanga, Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar, Julio Medem and Alejandro Amenábar.
Non-directors have obtained even less international notability. Only the cinematographer Néstor Almendros, the actress Penelope Cruz and the actors Fernando Rey, Antonio Banderas and Fernando Fernán Gómez have obtained some recognition, generally for their work outside Spain.
Today, only 10 to 20% of box office receipts in Spain are generated by domestic films, which could lead to a crisis in the Spanish film industry if the trend continues.
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[edit] Origins
The first Spanish film exhibition took place on May 5, 1895 in Barcelona. Exhibitions of Lumière films were screened in Madrid and Barcelona in May and December of 1896, respectively.
The matter of which Spanish film came first is in doubt. The first was either Salida de la misa de doce de la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragoza (Exit of the Twelve O'Clock Mass from the Church of El Pilar of Zaragoza) by Eduardo Jimeno Peromarta, Plaza del puerto en Barcelona (Plaza of the Port of Barcelona) by Alexandre Promio or the anonymous film Llegada de un tren de Teruel a Segorbe (Arrival of a Train from Teruel in Segorbe). It is also possible that the first film was Riña en un café (Brawl in a Café) by the prolific filmmaker Fructuós Gelabert. These films were all released in 1897.
The first Spanish film director to achieve great success internationally was Segundo de Chomón, who worked in France and Italy.
[edit] The height of silent cinema
In 1914, Barcelona was the center of the nation's film industry. The españoladas (historical epics of Spain) predominated until the 1960s. Prominent among these were the films of Florián Rey, starring Imperio Argentina, and the first version of Nobleza Baturra (1925). Historical dramas such as Vida de Cristóbal Colón y su Descubrimiento de América (The Life of Christopher Columbus and His Discovery of America) (1917), by the French director Gerald Bourgeois, adaptations of newspaper serials such as Los misterios de Barcelona (The Mysteries of Barcelona) starring Joan Maria Codina (1916), and of stage plays such as Don Juan Tenorio, by Ricardo Baños, and zarzuelas (comedic operettas), were also produced. Even the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Jacinto Benavente, who said that "in film they pay me the scraps," would shoot film versions of his theatrical works.
In 1928, Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Luis Buñuel founded the first cine-club (film society), in Madrid. By that point, Madrid was already the primary center of the industry; 44 of the 58 films released up until that point had been produced there.
The rural drama La aldea maldita (The Damned Hamlet) (Florian Rey, 1929) was a hit in Paris, where, at the same time, Buñuel and Dalí premiered Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog). Un chien andalou has become one of the most well-known avant-garde films of that era.
[edit] The crisis of sound
By 1931, the introduction of audiophonic foreign productions had hurt the Spanish film industry to the point where only a single title was released that year.
In 1935, Manuel Casanova founded the Compañía Industrial Film Española S.A. (Spanish Industrial Film Company Inc, CIFESA) and introduced sound to Spanish film-making. CIFESA would grow to become the biggest production company to ever exist in Spain. Sometimes criticized as an instrument of the right wing, it nevertheless supported young filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and his pseudo-documentary Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (Breadless Land). In 1933 it was responsible for filming 17 movies and in 1934, 21. The most notable success was Benito Perojo´s La verbena de la paloma (The Dove's Verbena). By 1935 production had risen to 37 films.
[edit] The Civil War and its aftermath
Around 1936, both parties of the Civil War began to use cinema as a means of propaganda and censorship. The pro-Franco side founded the National Department of Cinematography, causing many actors to go into exile.
The new regime then began to impose obligatory dubbing to highlight directors such as Ignacio F. Iquino, Rafael Gil (Huella de Luz (Footstep of Light) (1941)), Juan de Orduña (Locura de amor (Craziness of Love) (1948)), Arturo Román, José Luis Sáenz de Heredial (Raza) (Race) (1942)) with scripts of Franco's and Edgar Neville's. They also began to highlight Fedra (1956), by Manuel Mur Oti.
For its part, Marcelino pan y vino (Marcelino Bread and Wine) (1955) from Ladislao Vajda would trigger a trend of child actors, such as those who would become the protagonists of "Joselito," "Marisol," "Rocío Durcal" or "Pili y Mili."
Finally, in the 1950s, the influence of Neorealism became evident in the works of new directors such as Antonio del Amo, Arturo Nieves Conde, Juan Antonio Bardem, and Luis García Berlanga. In the conversations of Salamanca, Juan Antonio Bardem summed up cinema of postwar Spain in a manifesto that has become famous for its harshness: "Real Spanish cinema is politically inefficient, socially false, intellectually infirm, aesthetically void and industrially weak."
Juan de Orduña would later have an enormous commercial hit with El Último Cuplé (The Final Variety Song) (1957), with leading actress Sara Montiel.
Buñuel sporadically returned to Spain to film the shocking Viridiana (1961) and Tristana (1970), two of his biggest movies.
[edit] The new Spanish cinema
In 1962, José María García Escudero became the Director General of Cinema, propelling forward state efforts and the Escuela Oficial de Cine (Official Cinema School), from which emerged the majority of new directors, generally from the political left and those opposed to the Franco dictatorship. Among these were Mario Camus, Miguel Picazo, Francisco Regueiro, Manuel Summers, and, above all, Carlos Saura. Apart from this line of directors, Fernando Fernán Gómez made the classic El extraño viaje (The Strange Trip) (1964). From television came Jaime de Armiñan, author of Mi querida señorita (My Dear Lady) (1971).
From the so-called Escuela de Barcelona, originally more experimentalist and cosmopolitan, come Vicente Aranda, Jaime Camino, and Gonzalo Suárez, who made their master works in the 1980s.
The Festival de Cine de Sitges, now known as the Festival Internacional de Cinema de Cataluña (International Film Festival of Catalonia), was started in 1967. It is considered one of the best cinematographic contests in Europe, and is the best in the specialty of science fiction film.
[edit] The cinema of the democratic era
With the end of dictatorship, censorship was greatly loosened and cultural works were permitted in other languages spoken in Spain besides Spanish, resulting in the founding of the Catalan Institute of Cinema, among others.
At the beginning, the popular phenomena of striptease and landismo (from Alfredo Landa) triumph. During the democracy, a whole new series of directors base their films either on controversial topics or on revising the country's history. Jaime Chávarri, Víctor Erice, José Luis Garci, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Eloy de la Iglesia, Pilar Miró and Pedro Olea were some of these who directed great films. Montxo Armendáriz or Juanma Bajo Ulloa's "new Basque cinema" has also been outstanding; another prominent Basque director is Julio Medem.
The Spanish cinema, however, depends on the great hits of the so-called Madrileño comedy by Fernando Colomo or Fernando Trueba, the sophisticated melodramas by Pedro Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia and Santiago Segura's black humour or Alejandro Amenábar's works, in such a manner that, according to producer José Antonio Félez, "50% of total box office revenues comes from five titles, and between 8 and 10 films give 80% of the total" during the year 2004.
On the other hand, Spanish pornographic cinema has flourished in the city of Barcelona; one of its stars is Nacho Vidal.
| Year | Total number of spectators (millions) | Spectators of Spanish cinema (millions) | Percentage | Movie title | Spectators (millions) | Percentage over the total of Spanish cinema |
| 1996 | 96.2 | 10.4 | 10.8% | Two Much (Fernando Trueba) | 2.1 | 20.2% |
| 1997 | 107.1 | 13.9 | 14.9% | Airbag (Juanma Bajo Ulloa) | 2.1 | 14.1% |
| 1998 | 119.8 | 14.1 | 13.3% | Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley Torrente, The Stupid Arm of the Law (Santiago Segura) | 3 | 21.3% |
| 1999 | 131.3 | 18.1 | 16% | Todo sobre mi madre All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar) | 2.5 | 13.8% |
| 2000 | 135.3 | 13.4 | 11% | La comunidad Commonwealth (Álex de la Iglesia) | 1.6 | 11.9% |
| 2001 | 146.8 | 26.2 | 17.9% | Los Otros The Others (Alejandro Amenábar) | 6.2 | 23.8% |
| 2002 | 140.7 | 19.0 | 13.5% | El otro lado de la cama The Other Side of the Bed (Emilio Martínez Lázaro) | 2.7 | 14.3% |
| 2003 | 137.5 | 21.7 | 15.8% | La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón Mortadelo & Filemón: The Big Adventure (Javier Fesser) | 5.0 | 22.9% |
| 2004 | 143.9 | 19.3 | 13.4% | Mar adentro The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar) | 4.0 | 20.7% |
| 2005 | 126.0 | 21.0 | 16.7% | Torrente 3: El protector Torrente 3: The Protector (Santiago Segura) | 3.6 | 16.9% |
| 2006 (provisional) | 67,8 | 6,3 | 9,3% | Volver (Pedro Almodóvar) | 1,8 | 28,6% |
In 1987, the Goya Awards were created as an emulation of the Oscar Awards for the Spanish cinema.
[edit] Spanish films
[edit] References
- This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of 3 July 2005. It was translated by the Spanish Translation of the Week collaboration.
