A Cinema of Contradiction: Spanish Film in the 1960s

Faulkner, Sally. A Cinema of Contradiction: Spanish Film in the 1960s. Edinburgh UP, 2006. 198 pp.

The growing body of scholarly work on Spanish cinema has largely bypassed the 1960s. Certainly, light-weight comedies of the era continue to be popular with the masses, regularly featured, for example, on TVE 2's Saturday afternoon "Cine de Barrio." The decade's more high-brow material, embodied in the work of the Nuevo Cine Español (NCE) regularly earns its obligatory paragraphs from historians who describe it as a failed attempt at a quality national art cinema. In general, however, the decade's production remains unexplored by film scholars.

According to these scholars, the still-popular mass cinema of the era (the Viejo Cine Español or VCE) merely reproduced conservative values. The NCE's half-hearted critique of these values, on the other hand, if contestatory, remains mired in aesthetic and box office failure. While the 1960s was a decade of profound change for film industries everywhere, in Spain the negotiation of such change in a contradictory context of apertura, posibilismo, economic "miracle," and regime survival rendered the local industry generally ineffectual.

Sally Faulkner's A Cinema of Contradiction plays a key role in changing this established narrative. By examining more closely the context that has led to so much quick dismissal, Faulkner discovers significant combinations of conservative and contestatory values that give new life to both of the 1960s cinematic traditions. She effectively argues that the decade's film industry was actually quite complex, not in spite of its split into two very different approaches to film making, but because of this split. Production realities during the decade rarely if ever corresponded to popular perceptions or official rhetoric. Crews, specialists, actors, and most crucially, producers regularly crossed ideological lines. Faulkner asks what the effects on audiences might be of seeing the likes of Alberto Closas, Alfredo Mayo, Aurora Bautista, and even Pepe Isbert...