Franco’s Impact: The Effects of Authoritarianism on Post-War Cinema in Spain

By Emma Murphree | December 2020

Introduction:

Many would consider the act of filmmaking to be a revolutionary pursuit, given that the art form has a long history of promoting countercultural ideas. At the very least, it can be agreed that film is a powerful tool for influencing thought. But film is a double edged sword — both a vehicle for expanding intellectualism and progressive values, and a dangerous weapon with the potential to have lasting negative impacts on public perception. In the words of Joseph Stalin: “film is the strongest art.” Dictatorships provide an interesting lens with which to view film, and while patterns may appear in the way cinema functions under authoritarian regimes, it is difficult to predict what film, both as an industry and an artform, will look like in any given dictatorship. One might argue that in general, film suffers greatly under dictatorships, and while this may largely be the truth, in some cases this statement is overly reductive, particularly in the case of Spanish cinema under Franco.

The first instinct of many people is to dismiss authoritarian regimes as invariably hostile to art and freedom of expression. This is not without basis, as oftentimes, any art that stands in contradiction to the dictatorship is censored or eradicated. However, it is possible not all dictatorships are the “cultural wastelands” that we perceive them to be. In addition to preventing the release of films that he deemed in opposition to the regime or to Catholic doctrine, Franco held a tight grip on the distribution of foreign films. This abrasive artistic milieu prompted the exile of many Spanish intellectuals and creatives, the majority of whom were supporters of the left-wing Popular Front during the Spanish Civil War. Those that managed to continue creating art in Francoist Spain did so at great expense. As a result, many of the Spanish films revered as definitive of the era or moment in history (e.g. The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973) were forced to conceal their dissent and opposition to Franco, through making the themes and messages of the narrative overly complex. This begs the question: If creating art that is revolutionary and disruptive requires artists to present their art in a way that is practically or intellectually inaccessible to the majority of people, what is the purpose of creating it? How effectively do films that aspire to provoke anti-Catholic or anti-Franco sentiment accomplish their goals? In many cases, (whether due to censorship or lack of resources) the ability of films to reinforce socio political agendas may fall short under authoritarianism — but this does not diminish their merit as a means of speaking to the emotions of both individuals and Spain as a collective.

Cinema as Propaganda:

A common thread between successful dictatorships is the use of propaganda to maintain the regime’s control of the state. Without the use of propaganda to provide citizens with the illusion of control, dictatorships will often fail. Another key component that factors into the maintenance of power is a dictator’s ability to censor independent media. Both of these factors work to ensure that the regime is issuing a uniform narrative. Terror and indoctrination are some of the more obvious tactics employed by authoritarian regimes in order to cling to power, while propaganda can be more subtle, often taking refuge in film and various other forms of media and art. Propaganda in film has become so ubiquitous that it could be argued that all films contain some sort of propaganda, subtle or otherwise. Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were both incredibly adept at producing propaganda films in support of their regimes. Under Mussolini, film as an individual pursuit was all but eradicated and replaced with “one giant vehicle for propaganda.” While Franco may not have possessed the propaganda film prowess of Moussolini or Hitler, his regime invested a great deal of effort into censorship, both of films produced domestically and abroad.

Historical Background: Pre-War cinema, The Spanish Civil War and Franco’s rise to power

In 1928, director Luis Buñuel founded Spain’s first cinema club. The dissolution of silent movies as a genre greatly impeded the development of Spanish cinema, and as a result, very few films were produced in the early 1930s. Just as Spanish cinema was becoming synchronized with that of the rest of the world, the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. The film industry was devastated by the war, during which roughly 90% of silent films made before 1936 were destroyed. During the war, both the Popular Front and the Nationalists used cinema as propaganda in order to rally support for their respective agendas. Buñuel’s 1936 short documentary film Espana 1936, served as propaganda in favor of the Popular Front. During this time, the Nationalists began to enact censorship, namely through the National Department of Cinematography, eliciting the exile of many prominent figures in the film industry, including Buñuel.

1939 marked both the start of World War II and the end of the Spanish Civil War, a three-year-long conflict between the leftist Popular Front and the right wing Nationalists. The war, which claimed the lives of half a million people, installed General Francisco Franco as the dictator of Spain. The Spanish Civil War was largely a result of socio-political tensions regarding the role of the Catholic Church and Catholic values in shaping Spain’s politics. With Franco’s rise to power following the war, a new political party known as the Falange was formed, with adherence to Catholicism being the central tenet of the party’s beliefs. This attachment to promoting the values of the Catholic church provided the basis for many of the policies Franco would institute, including El Minesterio de Información y Turismo, an institution devoted to promoting Spain’s Catholic image through censorship and propaganda. With Franco as Caudillo, Spain effectively became a police state. The post-war period saw the killings of an estimated 15,000–50,000 of dissenters and political enemies.

Cinema Under Franco: Censorship and Dissent

Following Franco’s victory in 1939, the Spanish postwar period ushered in a new wave of Spanish cinema, one marred by authoritarianism and trauma. The effects of the war can be observed in many Spanish films that emerged in its wake, but very few films attempted to offer a critique of the regime, and even fewer are able to do so successfully. Some films that offered critiques of the regime were censored, and others were outright banned. The ones that still managed to get produced, required filmmakers to use subtle allegory and/or symbolism to veil their criticism of Franco, (e.g. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and The Hunt (1966))

Auteurs who refused to dilute their film’s message were forced to release their films abroad, as is the case with Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961), a film that heavily criticized Catholic dogma — and was subsequently banned from release in Spain. The film angered Franco so much that he made a futile attempt to bar its entry into the Cannes Film Festival, where it went on to win the Palme d’Or. Viridiana, among other films released in the 1950s, was heavily influenced by neorealism, an Italian artistic movement which focused on depicting the stories of the working class. Neorealism soon permeated into the Spanish cinematic milieu, prompting an increase in films that displayed social criticism, particularly criticism of Franco’s dictatorship. This movement was primarily influenced by the work of young Spanish directors such as Manuel Mur Oti, Jose Antonio Nieves Conde, Juan Antonio Bardem, Luis Garcia Berlanga, Marco Ferreri, and Luis Bunuel. Many of these films, in addition to containing oblique criticisms of Franco, depicted class conflict and criticism of the class tensions created by the regime. Bunuel’s Viridiana is a prime example of a film that uses class criticism, both of the upper and lower classes as a broader critique of Franco’s government.
Viridiana is particularly significant for its satirization of Catholicism and the “virtue” it claims to exhibit. The film is rife with tongue-in-cheek references to Catholicism and taboo imagery, including a tableau of beggars in a bacchanalian revelry that visually echoes Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. This striking frame, along with several other parodies of Catholicism, led to the official newspaper of the Vatican indicting Viridiana as “blasphemous.” But there is a lot more merit to Viridiana than a few lewd jokes at the expense of the church, as the film presents an incredibly nuanced depiction of the unfortunate realities of Catholicism and misguided charity. Viridiana, the eponymous protagonist and poster child for Catholic virtue, uses charity to fuel her ego and vanquish her guilt. This manifests itself in her attempt to educate and give alms to local beggars. Her efforts prove to be futile however, as the film culminates in a wild drunken orgy, in which the beggars that she attempts to “save” debase themselves with alcohol, sex, and violence. But Viridiana is not the only character plagued by sin. In the first act of the film, Don Jaime, Viridiana’s uncle, makes a peculiar request for her to wear his late wife’s wedding dress. He then proceeds to drug her and attempts to rape her. Throughout the duration of the first act, Don Jaime makes repeated attempts to justify his immorality. Just as Viridiana represents Catholic “virtue”, Don Jaime is representative of the declining aristocracy due to his belief that his affluence and status can absolve him of his moral reprehensibility. Bunuel draws a clear parallel between Don Jaime and Franco’s Spain, both of which conceal their immorality and perversions under a veneer of normalcy. Ultimately, Viridiana paints a condemning portrait of both Franco and the Catholic church, all the while flouting societal convention through its surrealist grotesquerie.

Fig. 1 Viridiana’s iconic Last Supper shot (image via Rotten Tomatoes)

The Spirit of the Beehive is widely regarded as a paragon of new wave Spanish cinema. The film, which was directed by Victor Ericé and released in 1973, chronicles the journey of Ana, a young girl living in Catalonia in the years directly following the Spanish Civil War, and the chain of events set into motion when she sees a showing of the 1931 version of Frankenstein. The Spirit of the Beehive is a film full of subtleties and complexities, making it very difficult to extrapolate meaning from the film. Unlike Viridiana, which was able to present a relatively strong condemnation of Franco and Catholicism due to its foreign release, The Spirit of the Beehive serves as an example for how filmmakers were able to present criticism of the regime while Franco was still in power. According to one of the film’s creators, The Spirit of the Beehive was prevented from release for several months while it was under investigation by the government. While the criticism of Franco may be subtle, it is perceptible. The film exudes an air of melancholy and isolation, an idea which is reinforced in the film through the use of barren landscapes, sparse dialogue, and the emotional detachment and lack of contact between the characters. Each character seems to exist in a separate plane from the others. There is only one scene in which all four characters are together, where dialogue is notably absent. Each of the four primary characters exhibit tendencies that underscore this idea of emotional detachment. Fernando, the father, is inattentive and consumed by his care for his beehive. Fernando’s wife spends the entire film pining for another man, whom the viewer never sees. Ana’s sister, Isabel, is unable to understand how her actions are at times borderline-sadistic, which results in Ana getting hurt. The family’s emotionally disjointed life can be read as symbolic of the emotional disintegration of Spain during and after the war.

The film also seeks to provide commentary on the operation of the Franco regime, through the use of an extended metaphor, whereby Ericé compares Francoist Spain to a beehive, mindless and devoid of any individuality. This beehive motif can also be observed in the set design of the film, where the windows on the family’s home have a hexagonal beehive-like pattern, allowing the viewer to infer that the “spirit of the beehive”, and by proxy, the brutality Franco’s Spain, have infiltrated family life. Additionally, the character of Ana can be seen as symbolic of Spain’s younger generation, a generation that had their innocence destroyed by the cruelty of war and fascism. Inversely, the character of Isabel can be read as symbolic of the Spanish Nationalists, in her cruelty and deceitfulness.

One of the most revolutionary films to emerge from Franco’s Spain is Furrows (1951), directed by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde. Furrows is a neo-realist film that displays the unsettling realities of life under the regime. The film follows the disintegration of the Perez family as poverty drives them to commit illegal or immoral acts in order to survive in post-war Madrid. In contrast to Viridiana and The Spirit of the Beehive, Furrows is more concerned with depicting taboo subject matter, rather than with explicitly criticizing the regime. For this reason, it also serves to emphasize the commitment of Franco’s regime to the Catholic doctrine. The film is groundbreaking in the sense that it depicts difficult topics such as poverty, class struggle, prostitution, and immigration — subjects that were virtually unseen in Spanish cinema up until the film’s release. Furrows would have likely been censored by Franco’s government, had it not been for Spain’s chief of cinematography, who appreciated the film for its artistic merit and thus, allowed it to be released uncensored, preserving its place in history as a rare surviving relic of uncensored, yet provocative cinema.

The Value of Cinema: Filmmaking as an Act of Protest

For virtually as long as the medium has existed, film has been a way of stimulating thought and calling people to action. Taking this into consideration, while films driven by theme and social criticism may be valuable from an artistic standpoint, their messages fall flat if they are not accessible to a wide audience. And where cerebrality lends itself to praise from others within the artistic sphere, the same thing often renders it inaccessible to certain demographics of viewers. Considering that many of the films mentioned in this paper, along with others of a similar caliber, fall short in terms of accessibility, films may not be as effective a catalyst for rebellion as their auteurs may have hoped. How effective really is filmmaking as an act of protest?

It is a possibility that the complexity of Spanish films under Franco’s regime also functioned as a way for filmmakers to cope with a regime that suppressed their intellectual freedom. This esoterism may have been a means of binding the artistic community together under a regime that desperately tried to tear it apart, a way for artists and fellow dissenters to survive and share their pain. This self-preservation in and of itself is arguably revolutionary.

Perhaps the real merit of Spanish neo-realist films lies not in their ability to stir up dissent and anti-Franco sentiment in the viewer, but in their ability to elicit an emotional response. It is conceivably more valuable to view these films as a snapshot of a moment in history, rather than damning portrayals of the Franco regime told through allegory and symbolism. There is art that transcends time, but there is also art that exists to satisfy a particular need at a particular time. History often plays favorites, assigning more worth to art that is able to speak to a wide variety of audiences, but maybe this is missguided. While The Spirit of the Beehive and Viridiana may contain indecipherable complexities, it also possessed a profound amount of relatability for their viewers — and examining these films from a modern, analytical lens is perhaps doing them a disservice. After all, it is difficult to watch The Spirit of the Beehive without feeling some sort of empathy for Ana — an empathy which is arguably much more valuable than any metaphor.