Cinema of Spain
The art of motion-picture making within Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.
Only a small portion of box office sales in Spain are generated by domestic films. The different Spanish governments have therefore implemented measures aimed at supporting local film production and the movie theaters, which currently include the assurance of funding from the main television broadcasters. Nowadays, the Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales is the State agency in charge of regulating the allocation of public funds to the domestic film industry.
History
The first Spanish film exhibition took place on 5 May 1895, in Barcelona. Exhibitions of Lumière films were screened in Madrid, Málaga and Barcelona in May and December 1896, respectively.The matter of which Spanish film came first is in dispute. The first was either Salida de la misa de doce de la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragoza –Exit of the Twelve O'Clock Mass from the Church of El Pilar of Zaragoza–, Plaza del puerto en Barcelona –Plaza of the Port of Barcelona– or Llegada de un tren de Teruel a Segorbe –Arrival of a Train from Teruel in Segorbe–. It is also possible that the first film was Riña en un café. These films were all released in 1897.
The first Spanish film director to achieve great success internationally was Segundo de Chomón, who worked in France and Italy but made several famous fantasy films in Spain, such as El hotel eléctrico.
The height of silent cinema
In 1914, Barcelona was the center of the nation's film industry. The españoladas predominated until the 1960s. Prominent among these were the films of Florián Rey, starring Imperio Argentina, and the first version of Nobleza Baturra. Historical dramas such as Vida de Cristóbal Colón y su Descubrimiento de América –The Life of Christopher Columbus and His Discovery of America–, adaptations of newspaper serials such as Los misterios de Barcelona –The Mysteries of Barcelona–, and of stage plays such as Don Juan Tenorio and zarzuelas, were also produced. Even the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Jacinto Benavente, who said that "in film they pay me the scraps," would shoot film versions of his theatrical works.In 1928, Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Luis Buñuel founded the first cine-club, in Madrid. By that point, Madrid was already the primary center of the industry; forty-four of the fifty-eight films released up until that point had been produced there.
The rural drama La aldea maldita –The Cursed Village– was a hit in Paris, where, at the same time, Buñuel and Salvador Dalí premiered Un chien andalou. Un chien andalou has become one of the most well-known avant-garde films of that era.
The crisis of sound
By 1931, the introduction of foreign sound films had hurt the Spanish film industry to the point where only a single title was released that year.In 1935, Manuel Casanova founded the Compañía Industrial Film Española S.A. and introduced sound to Spanish film-making. Cifesa would grow to become the biggest production company to ever exist in Spain. Sometimes criticized as an instrument of the right wing, it nevertheless supported young filmmakers such as Buñuel and his pseudo-documentary Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan. In 1933 it was responsible for filming seventeen motion pictures and in 1934, twenty-one. The most notable success was Paloma Fair. They were also responsible for Don Quijote de la Mancha, the most elaborate version of the Cervantes classic up to that time. By 1935 production had risen to thirty-seven films.
The Civil War and its aftermath
The Civil War devastated the silent film era: only ten per cent of all silent films made before 1936 survived the war. Films were also destroyed for their celluloid content and made into goods.Around 1936, both sides of the Civil War began to use cinema as a means of propaganda. A typical example of this is España 1936, which also contains much rare newsreel footage. The pro-Franco side founded the National Department of Cinematography, causing many actors to go into exile.
The new regime then began to impose censorship and the obligatory dubbing to Spanish to all films released. Highlights in this era are El difunto es un vivo, Traces of Light, Madness for Love, Last Stand in the Philippines, Raza, and The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks. Cifesa produced Ella, él y sus millones as well as Fedra.
A policy of autarky tried to keep foreign currency in the country and establish a domestic film industry. If the distributors wanted licences to import and dub foreign films, they would have to acquire them from producers of local films. The number of licences depended on the merits acknowledged by the government to each local film. The American distributors of the MPAA tried to open the market removing the local producers. To that end, they embargoed Spain since May 1951. The embargo goes into 1952 due to complications with American studios outside MPAA and reorganizations within the Spanish government. Spanish producers, lacking the income from the dubbing licences and with an uncertain future, greatly diminished their production as well. An agreement between Spain and the United States was finally reached.
On the other hand, Miracle of Marcelino is the first Spanish film to obtain worldwide recognition from critics and public, winning the Silver Bear award at the 5th Berlin International Film Festival. This film would trigger a trend of child actors, such as Joselito, Marisol, Rocío Dúrcal or Pili y Mili starring in popular musical films.
In 1951, the regime instituted the Ministry of Information and Tourism to safeguard and develop the Spanish brand, the social imagery and the public image under the slogan "Spain is different" which was launched in the 1920s and then internationally spread in the 1960s. Its main purpose was to promote the Spanish tourist industry and a massive inflow of people who came from all the Europe towards the Andalusia, looking for what they saw in the Spanish films: sun and sea, comfortable transports and hotels, good ethnic cuisine, passion and adventure, and the so called españoladas.. Also mirrored on . Fog and Sun was the first movies belonging to the genre of the "touristic cinema". It was followed by Veraneo en España and by Spain Again.
Musical films The Last Torch Song and The Violet Seller, both starring Sara Montiel, were huge international commercial successes, making Montiel the first worldwide famous film star –and the highest paid– of Spanish cinema.
Social criticism
In the 1950s, the influence of neorealism became evident in the works of a number of rather young film directors, such as Furrows, Reckless, We're All Necessary, Pride, Death of a Cyclist, Calle Mayor, El pisito, El cochecito, Welcome Mr. Marshall!, or Plácido, ranged from melodrama to esperpento or black comedy, but all of them showed a strong social criticism, unexpected under a political censorship, like the one featured by Franco`s regime. From the amorality and selfishness of the upper middle class or the ridiculousness and mediocrity of the small town people to the hopelessness of the impoverished working class, every social stratum of the contemporary Spain was shown up.Luis Buñuel in turn returned to Spain to film the shocking Viridiana and Tristana.
Co-productions and foreign productions
A 1954 report by Eduardo Moya from the Ministry of Trade remarked that the Spanish cinema industry had to become competitive at home and abroad. Co-productions with France and Italy could bring the equipment and skills needed.Numerous co-productions with France and, most of all, Italy along the 1950s–1970s invigorated Spanish cinema both industrially and artistically. Actually the just mentioned Buñuel's movies were co-productions: Viridiana was Spanish-Mexican, and Tristana Spanish-French-Italian. Also, the hundreds of Spaghetti-westerns and sword and sandal films shot in southern Spain by mixed Spanish-Italian teams were co-productions.
Under the Spanish-American agreements, part of the foreign profits locked in Spain since the war were invested in runaway productions to be distributed abroad.
Several American epic-scale superproductions or blockbusters were shot in Spain, produced either by Samuel Bronston, such as King of Kings, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and Circus World ; or by others, such as Alexander the Great, The Pride and the Passion, Solomon and Sheba, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, The Trojan Women. These movies employed many Spanish technical professionals, and as a byproduct caused that some film stars, like Ava Gardner and Orson Welles lived in Spain for years. Actually Welles, with Mr. Arkadin, in fact a French-Spanish-Swiss co-production, was one of the first American filmmakers to devise Spain as location for his shootings, and he did it again for Chimes at Midnight, this time a Spanish-Swiss co-production.
Warner Bros., an American studio had opened its local headquarters in Spain in the early 1970s under the name of Warner Española S.A. Warner Española, alongside releasing Warner Bros. films is also involved in distribution of Spanish films such as Ensalada Baudelaire, Adios Pequeña and most of 1990s Pedro Almodóvar's films such as High Heels, Kika, and Live Flesh.
Many international actors starred in Spanish films: Italians Vittorio de Sica, Vittorio Gassman and Rossano Brazzi with Mexican María Félix in The Black Crown ; Italian couple Raf Vallone and Elena Varzi in The Eyes Leave a Trace, Mexican Arturo de Córdova in The Red Fish, Americans Betsy Blair in Calle Mayor ; Edmund Gwenn in Calabuch, or Richard Basehart in Miracles of Thursday among many others. All the foreign actors were dubbed into Spanish. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal has also recently received international notoriety in films by Spanish directors.