Popular Spanish Film under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State (review)

Steven Marsh offers a thoughtful analysis of Spanish comedy during Francoism that makes us better understand the role of resistance played by popular culture. His task is not easy as he must overcome two constraints linked to the analysis of Spanish cinema during this period. Firstly, it is a commonplace to see Spanish film from early Francoism as the vehicle of the regime's propaganda. And secondly, Spanish comedy has traditionally been excluded from the ideological debate. Marsh makes clear in his book that comedy served as the space of resistance during Francoism.

The broad argument of the book is ambitious and thought-provoking. Through comedy, subalterns jeopardized the hegemonic nation building process of Francoism. Marsh maintains that subalterns made their voices heard by mimicking the dominant group discourse through non-discursive or embodied practices such as eating, drinking or dressing. Thus, his reading of the films focuses on the performative rather than on the discursive as this is the space where subversion can be found.

From this standpoint Marsh discredits the traditional classification of comedy as an escapist and conservative genre. He thinks this classification is driven by a discursive analysis of the genre rather than a non-discursive one. For this reason, in his interpretation of the films he chooses de Certeau's theories of non-discursiveness. The concepts of tactic and strategy help him to relate the films analyzed in this book to everyday life. Moreover, this connection allows him to identify spaces of resistance in these films, as understood by Gramscian thinking, keeping in mind at all times the proximity between consent and contestation.

Films studied in Popular Spanish Film under Franco cover the period from 1942 to 1964. The seven chapters of this book analyze the works of five representative filmmakers from these years: Jerónimo Mihura, Edgar Neville, Luis García Berlanga, Marco Ferreri, and Fernando Fernán Gómez. All the chapters follow the same structure: A theoretical introduction to concepts that the author later uses in his reading of a film. The first chapter, which gives its name to the subtitle of the book, is a theoretical reflection on Gramsci's theory that is brought up to examine consent and the role of subaltern groups in the construction of unity. Jeronimo Mihura's Castillo de naipes (1943) and Mi adorado Juan (1949) exemplify how subaltern discourse can emerge within the hegemonic culture.

The films of Edgar Neville and Luis García Berlanga, which Marsh considers the most canonical ones, are studied in chapters 2 through 5. Space plays an important role in the reading of these films. Neville's La vida en un hilo (1945) and Berlanga's ¡Bienvenido Mr. Marshall! (1952) present an idea of village that can be extrapolated to the configuration of Spain as a nation. Madrid is the scenario of Neville's trilogy formed by La torre de los siete jorobados (1944), El crimen de la calle Bordadores (1946), and Domingo de carnaval (1945). The city falls into de Certeau's idea of palimpsestic cities, where ancient scars can be found in present cities.

The interpretation of Berlanga's films as subversive has always been problematic. Marsh makes a brilliant interpretation of the ideological aspects found in his films. In the most elaborated analysis of the book he offers through the exploration of the non-discursiveness a reading of subversion in ¡Bienvenido Mr. Marshall!. Likewise, using Bakhtinian theories of the popular, he finds a carnavalization of the hegemonic power in Plácido (1961) and in El verdugo (1963).

The last two chapters of Popular Spanish Film under Franco are linked by its attention to consumption. Chapter six explores ersatz economy—understood as the one based on leftovers, substitution or the counterfeit—in Marco Ferreri's El pisito (1958) and El cochecito (1960). Subalterns's cravings can only be satisfied by the leftovers of the dominant discourse. On the other hand, dress is analyzed in Fernando Fernán G...