Directory of World Cinema: Spain ed. by Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano (review)

This recent addition to the Directory of World Cinema series is an intellectually engaging attempt to delineate and thereby more firmly install Spanish film within the global oeuvre. Though seriously marred in many passages by poor translations and typographical errors, it nevertheless collects and describes in some detail the major genres, directors, and themes, often adding to and expanding on those categories to produce a useful and interesting overview of Spanish film. Often insular and self-reflective, the Spanish film movement has frequently been overlooked in discussions of world cinema. Genres such as esperpento, or grotesque comedy, and the folkloric españolada musicals that have defied common generic labels come into their own in this volume through cogent and succinctly written essays. Employing a variety of critical perspectives, the unifying theme of this collection is the will to illustrate and celebrate that which is unique to Spanish cinema in order to validate its inclusion alongside French, American, Japanese, and other well-established national cinemas.

While editor Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano sets out to “propose a kind of canon that gives new generations of viewers a guide to this diverse cinematography” (6), that canon is a labyrinthine construction that leaves many doors and windows open. The reader wanders down paths like an interview early in the book with the relatively unknown (outside Spain) director Jaime Rosales, who rejects the idea of a national cinema, and an essay on “Experimental Documentary” that reclaims socially and politically subversive titles like Queridísimos verdugos (Dearest Executioners), El desencanto (The Disenchantment), and Ocaña, retrat intermittent (Ocaña, an Intermittent Portrait). The big names are amply represented here—Almodóvar, Saura, and Erice (extensive coverage of Buñuel is left “to the second volume”)—but so are somewhat lesser-known Spanish auteurs such as Isabel Coixet and Julio Medem. As a reference volume, this book’s seventeen major sections cover more than one hundred films at a level that is both highly readable yet of scholarly interest as well. Not limited to a generic or chronological order, Directory of World Cinema: Spain is subdivided organically and includes interviews, a discussion of film festivals, and an homage to Madrid as a popular film location. A relevant bibliography of monographs in the “Recommended Reading” section and especially the five pages dedicated to useful websites in “Spanish Cinema Online” provide useful references for further investigation.

Though mapping out important territory by placing Spanish film within both the artistic tradition of Velázquez, Goya, and Picasso, and the European and American cinematic traditions, Torres Hortelano’s introduction and overall organization focuses on the unique contribution of Spain’s cinema despite a supposed “inferiority complex.” Such factors as a production largely targeted for domestic consumption, dictatorship censorship and the blocking of certain directors and films, and a unique lived experience in this geographically and sometimes politically isolated nation led to the creation of a highly idiosyncratic yet valuable cinema.

The editorial feat in itself is noteworthy in that there is a huge coordination and selection effort of approximately two hundred essays. The main chapters are divided into an introductory essay along with four to five individual film reviews, each written by an individual contributor. As is typical in any volume of this sort, the quality of the contributions varies—sometimes widely. Noteworthy among them for their insight are María Camí Vela’s critique of Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words, in which she notes the representation of the woman’s body as losing its national identity in order to be transformed into a prized “war territory,” and Vanessa Brasil Campo’s piece on El clavo (The Nail), in which she describes a parallel with John Ford’s Stagecoach while lauding the director’s ability to represent uniquely Spanish characters with “delicate irony.” The introductory essays themselves are generally well written and informative, indicating those films that...