#20471 - L1 Introduction To The Module - Literature and Film under Franco - Lecture Notes

Literature and film under Franco – Introduction to the module

1940s

• José Luis Sáenz de Heredia (Raza, 1941)

• Focused on the Spanish war, the franco view of what it is and what it signifies

• Goes back to 1898 as well, which is the year Spain lost its final colony

• Seen by the military as a moment of shame, political anger started to boil over from 1898 onwards

• Military film – work of propaganda

• Melodrama – at its heart it tells a love story, a family that breaks apart and comes together again, ends with a victory parade

• Screenplay was written by Francisco Franco – his relationship was anything but as good as the family in the film

• Leopoldo Panero (1909 – 1962): Poet

• Republican at the beginning at the war

• Became a strong supporter of the Franco regime

• His stuff isn’t openly political, it’s subtly political

• Regime values were prized very highly

• His poems are much more subtle, a sound of doubt/pain/loss which gives the lie that these poems are propaganda

• Dámaso Alonso (1898 – 1990): Poet

• Stayed in Spain and seen as a traitor by some of his friends

• He is known for ‘hijos de la ira’

• A voice of unease

• ‘unrooted poetry’: poetry which isn’t at home, he doesn’t feel happy with it

• Leopoldo has ‘rooted’ poetry, Damaso has ‘unrooted’ poetry

1950s

• Juan Antonio Bardem (calle mayor)

• Uncle of Javier Bardem

• Tells the story of a ‘spinster’ and how she is perceived as a ‘failure’ because she doesn’t conform to the norms and politics of the regime for women

• Carmen Martín Gaite (Entre Visillo)

• Tells the story of young women in this era of Spain

• A lived experience of women in Franco Spain

• Reading it in the light of feminist ideas of the regime

1960s

• Luis Garcia Berlanga (1921 – 2010)

• He directed the film El Verdugo

• Close friends with Bardem, but moved away from him because he is more relaxed than him

• He chose humour as his film language

• What is the role of humour? Is it a form of resistance?

• This film brings out these questions in a very good way

• Miguel Debiles (1920 – 2010)

• He wrote cinco horas con Mario

• Focuses on the stream of consciousness of an idle aged woman who has just lost her husband

• Classic Francoist, grew up with the regime, catholic conservatism

• In 1960s when things were changing rapidly

1970s

• Jaime Chavarri (1943 - )

• He directed the film El Desencanto

• Devastating portrait of a real family in Franco Spain

• About the loss of the father and the fallout after his death

• Awareness of themselves, the damage that occurred – the damaged youth moving into a different Spain

• Eve of democracy where the young men would be the leaders of the country, but they look at themselves and say that the regime screwed them up

• Psychological damage due to the regime and what they went through

Franco and his generals

• ‘Los rojos’

• The Red Scare (google)

• A lot of tensions on the nationalist sides, but they manifested themselves more clearly after the war

• Franco had military discipline

• The Republican side had a lot of problems, in terms of the 1^st and 2^nd republic

• Anarchists were involved in a revolution, a changing of society, but people said they had to deal with the nationalists first

• The army: remained faithful to the Republic

• The hierarchy went behind the main generals

• Army is extremely important, not just in the victory but the creation of the army itself

• The Franco dictatorship is a military dictatorship

• Can look at is as a particularly bloody phenomenon

• Mola was the man who coined terms in English: ‘scorched earth’ and ‘the fifth column’

• The fifth column: the people in Barcelona that are resisting

• Franco (1892 – 1975): Sets himself up as a dictator like many others in the western world

The Falange

• Spanish version of...