Confessional Cinema: Religion, Film, and Modernity in Spain's Development Years, 1960–1975 by Jorge Pérez (review)

With the surge of scholars and students interested in cinema, there is no doubt that Jorge Pérez' new book, Confessional Cinema: Religion, Film, and Modernity in Spain's Development Years, 1960–1975, will become a must-read. In the introduction of the book, "Film, Religion, and the Desarrollismo Period," the author makes clear the originality of his book. Critics have usually considered that the end of Franco's dictatorship (the "desarrollismo" period) was marked by a secularization movement that applied as well to cinema. However, Pérez affirms that religion was a strong socio-political and cultural force of this period. The unexplored corpus of over fifty films he works with proves not only how popular religious films were but also how religion was a driving force in the modernization process in Spain at that time. As Pérez states "my concern is with the links of film texts… to their contexts of production, distribution, and reception within the broader historical matrix of the modernization process in the last phase of the Franco regime and the crucial role that religion played in that period" (14). Both in the introduction and throughout the book, Pérez clearly distances his approach to cinema (that is, underscoring the significance, vitality and popularity of religious films in late Francoism) to what he calls "blanket statements regarding cultural production during the period of desarrollismo" (38) that for him simplify the role of the Church in Spanish society. And he convinces his readers.

Chapter one is titled "Lighting Sainthood in the Time of Technocracy" and concentrates on the importance of the lives of the saints and religious heroes in Spanish cinema. Hagiographic films, the author argues, were a response to the modernization of the regime. The goal, according to him, was to provide reassurance to spectators and to reinforce traditional values. Pérez criticizes that "Spanish film scholars cannot accept that the hagiographic film, a genre associated with comforting platitudes rather than with promoting social change, could gain so much currency at a time when Spain was promoting its affinities with the more modernized European countries" (39). The author focuses on the use of the technology of lighting in order to demonstrate that these films were "a genre in between two epistemic moments" (40). They could endorse the sacred representation of Spanish national identity or embrace modern values. The lighting treatment reveals an ideology in these films: "both projected and embodied the tensions generated by the changing role of religion and the Church in the Spanish public sphere as well as by the transition from political theology to the paradigm of economic theology in the regime's political imagination" (43). The technical analysis of El señor de La Salle is particularly pertinent in that it underscores how cinematic techniques were used to create social models, in this case the model of a modern sainthood through framing devices "such as medium shots and medium close-ups in heroic angles that magnify his already imposing figure" (71).

The second chapter of the book, "Praying for Development in Post-Vatican II Comedies," introduces the reader to confessional comedies and explain how characters in these films were depicted in the process of adapting to the dynamics of capitalism. Pérez shows how confessional comedies engaged in political issues to underscore how Spain could become modern without renouncing to its religious values. The author suggests that "the massively consumed post-Vatican II comedies had a ritualized dimension performing the function of glory in the new paradigm of economic theology supporting the regime" (79–80). Technical analysis of the films (among the well-known film Sor Citroën) is superb. Pérez pays attention to the composition and editing of each film, that is to the use of zoom lenses, framing devices, synergical crosscuttings and iconography. The analysis of these key technical aspects reveals how filmmakers approached the tensions...