Popular Spanish Film Under Franco

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 1-12

3. Comedy and the Weakening of the State

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 13-40

4. Tactics and Thresholds in Edgar Neville’s Life on a Thread (1945)

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 41-62

5. Metropolitan Masquerades: The Destabilization of Madrid in the Neville Trilogy

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 63-96

6. Populism, the National-Popular and the Politics of Luis García Berlanga: Welcome Mister Marshall! (1952)

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 97-121

7. Humor and Hegemony: Berlanga, the State and the Family in Plácido (1961) and The Executioner (1963)

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 122-144

8. ‘Making Do’ or the Cultural Logic of the Ersatz Economy in the Spanish Films of Marco Ferreri

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 145-166

9. The Pueblo Travestied in Fernando Fernán Gómez’s The Strange Journey (1964)

   • Steven Marsh

   Pages 167-188

10. Conclusion: Gila’s Telephone

    • Steven Marsh

    Pages 189-198

11. Back Matter

    Pages 199-222

    PDF

Popular Spanish Film Under Franco is the first book of its kind to analyze cinematic comedy during the initial two decades of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Focusing on the intersection between popular culture and political populism, it breaks new theoretical ground in re-evaluating the policies of the regime and the tactics employed by those who sought to undermine it. Its cultural studies approach - combining Gramsci, de Certeau and Bakhtin - interrogates the ambiguous nature of subversion and challenges common assumptions concerning post-war Spanish film.

• cinema
• Cultural Studies
• culture
• dictatorship
• film
• humour
• logic
• european union politics

'Steven Marsh offers a thoughtful analysis of Spanish comedy during Francoism that makes us better understand the role of resistance played by popular culture...This is a stimulating book that paves the way for further research on comedy in the ideological arena.' - David Rodr?guez-Solás, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

STEVEN MARSH teaches Film and Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of South Carolina, USA. Previously he lived in Madrid for 16 years. He is joint editor of Gender and Spanish Cinema (2004), an author on the international collaborative project An Oral History of Cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain, and is currently writing a book on the cultural politics of everyday life in the city of Madrid since 1975. He is co-editor of the journal Studies in Hispanic Cinemas.

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