Spanish Cinema: The Auterist Tradition

Modern Language Review, The, Jan, 2001 by Maria Donapetry

Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition. Ed. by PETER WILLIAM EVANS. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. xxii 350 pp. 40 [pounds sterling] (paperbound 14.99 [pounds sterling]).

This volume brings together twenty excellent studies of films directed by Berlanga, Bardem, Saura, Summers, Bunuel, Erice, Borau, Aranda, Fernan Gomez, Gutierrez Aragon, Miro, Uribe, Suarez, Almodovar, Colomo, Chavarri, Bigas Luna, Trueba, Medem, and Diaz Yanes, covering significant landmarks of Spanish cinema over the period 1952-1995. Jose Luis Borau, in a substantial prologue, attributes the success of Spanish cinema to 'those film-makers who placed above all else the desire to produce a work of art expressing a personal vision' (p. xvii). Since both work of art and personal vision are characterized by their singularity, their study is bound to highlight those specific qualities that make each of the films the distinctive work of a particular Spanish auteur.

The book does not concern itself with any given definition of auteur. In fact, Peter William Evans points out the problematic nature of this concept, and one of the contributors, Paul Julian Smith, analyses El espiritu de la colmena as a collaborative work. Even so, most of the essays favour the work of individual directors who have generally been considered outstanding in their own time and throughout the history of Spanish cinema. For the reader interested in one particular film or director, the book is a treat. Expert knowledge of cinema in general and of a director's work in particular combines with a sensitivity to Spanish history, society and politics, resulting in in-depth contextualized analyses of films. A random sample of the essays points to the originality, variety and often exceptional quality of the critical readings. In 'Fetishism and the Problem of Sexual Difference in Bunuel's Tristana', for instance, Jo Labanyi gives Bunuel his due, but in unexpected ways, in the sense that she is not intimidated by the canonical reputation of this Spanish director. Evans's 'Furtivos (Borau, 1975): My Mother, my Lover' not only conducts a close reading of the film in relation to historical context, but also examines the far-reaching allegory of mother-nation in a way that permits extrapolation from his illuminating analysis of Furtivos to any other film in which similar allegories appear.

The choice of directors and films ensures a high level of critical engagement, especially with reference to controversial topics. Marvin D'Lugo's 'Re-imaging the Community: Imanol Uribe's La muerte de Mikel (1983) and the Cinema of Transition', for example, tackles homosexuality, terrorism and identity in the Basque society with the same degree of intellectual rigour that is attributed to the director himself. Isabel Santaolalla's 'Julio Medem's Vacas (1991): Historicizing the Forest' discloses Medem's views of regional history through a study of the structure of the film and the role of nature, which challenges previous readings with the critical expertise that is common to the majority of the essays in the volume.

At the end of the Introduction, Evans observes, 'The films under discussion here provide some of the most fruitful opportunities for revisiting and theorizing post-1950s Spain and its evolving, relatively recent cinema history' (p. 6). I would add that the study of these films and our reading of the volume as a whole constitute a collective attempt to understand how Spanish films represent Spain as if in a two-way mirror, in which both the reflections and the reflecting devices are the objects of study.

MARIA DONAPETRY POMONA COLLEGE, CALIFORNIA