Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema (review)

Resina’s anthology is a rare book-length publication that offers an insightful and panoramic vision of Spanish film history. It is not a typical book of film history that traces the chronology of notable stylistic and thematic trends along with numerous film examples to illustrate these categories. Instead, an ensemble of a brief introduction and fifteen critical essays invites the reader to gain profound knowledge of the most representative references in Spanish cinema. The task of the reader is to create a sense of continuity by figuring out the dialogues and gaps existing between the analyzed films. Resina’s objective is modest: it is to satisfy the “interpretive needs of the English-speaking student of Spanish cinema, who is often at the mercy of reviews of scant exegetical value” (1). The book surpasses its objective since it proffers a clear awareness of the complex web of interactive forces operating in the interpretation of a film, including its political circumstances, the mechanisms of the film industry, key theoretical debates, as well as the analysis of technical aspects. Besides drawing on diverse interpretive tools, another noteworthy facet is Resina’s selective criteria that avoid expected categories of representation such as “autonomous” (as in autonomous communities) and women directors: “criticism must be critical rather than all-inclusive” (6). His decision to build qualitative arguments rather than quantitative ones makes sense, especially after reading all the essays. I have no disagreement with his selection of filmmakers. Nonetheless, his choice can initially provoke concern when one sees only one female director in the table of contents.

The introduction begins by juxtaposing the Madrid-based New Spanish Cinema during the 1950s, which insisted on a realist-style social criticism, with the Barcelona school that was keen on aesthetic and formal experimentations. Despite its elitism, Resina recognizes the Barcelona school’s long-lasting influences on later filmmakers. He blames the centralist governmental cultural policies practiced by the PSOE and the Generalitat’s provincial identity politics exclusively based on language for the failure, except for Pons and Bigas Luna, of a revitalization of Catalan cinema in the ’80s. Citing commercial appeal combined with technological competence and psychologically intriguing drama, Resina describes a contrasting success of Basque filmmakers. Another group of filmmakers he mentions, stressing their artistic quality rather than their representative values, are three women—Miró, Coixet, and Bollaín. He also adds a laudatory note to Patino and Erice as filmmakers who have evolved from New Spanish Cinema. Lastly, he brings attention to Amenábar’s short but impressive career, which led to the winning of an Oscar and refers to Almodóvar as the ur-filmmaker from Spain who needs no introduction.

In the first essay, Woods Peiró demonstrates how Berlanga, in his ¡Bienvenido Míster Marshall!, uses parody (parody of folklórica and of foreign travel writing on Andalusia) as his political tool to inscribe an ideological critique on the Francoist propaganda of modernization. She points out that Berlanga makes an ironic mistake, in an attempt to criticize commodity capitalism, representing America as merely products while deconstructing the falsity of the representation of Spanish culture.

Lema-Hincapié considers the existential dimension of Bardem’s Muerte de un ciclista. The critic contends that Bardem shares Sartre’s view on the social world as one that consists of conflict without rest and ultimate optimism. Such optimism is projected in blue collar spaces.

Conley offers a close-reading of several sequences of Viridiana to demonstrate the world of “incarceration and savage claustration” (58) of Spain during the 1960s when Buñuel was invited to film the work and later banned from showing it in the country because its anti-Catholicism. Conley analyzes how the transition of spaces is filmed in order to illustrate a spatial tension the film creates between the world of internment and that of...