Updated 9 October 2006
English 212, Section 3: World Cinema
Week 7: 9 October 2006
Professor: Don Larsson
6:00-6:40 Almodóvar, Spanish Film and Postmodern Cinema
6:40-8:20 View All about My Mother
8:20-8:30 Break
8:30-9:30 Discuss All about My Mother
Spanish Cinema in the Context of European Modernism
Pre-World War II:
§ Spanish film production very small compared to more developed European countries like France, Germany, etc.
§ 1936-1939: Spanish Civil War
o “Republican” (or “Loyalist”) forces support elected government alliance of moderate to extreme leftist and anarchist groups
o “Nationalist” (“Falangist,” “Francoist”) forces are supported by conservatives, Fascists, the Church, and the military, led by General Francisco Franco
o Western powers stay neutral, put arms embargo on aid to Nationalists
o USSR, under Stalin, supports Nationalists
o Germany and Italy, under Hitler and Mussolini, support Franco
o “Dress rehearsal for World War II”
o Many documentaries on the war produced by Spanish and foreign Republican sympathizers (American film The Spanish Earth [1937], directed by American filmmaker Joris Ivens with script by John Don Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, and other American writers)
§ 1939: Franco wins and remains in power until his death in 1975
Film Production under Franco
§ Subject to state censorship, slowly loosened in 1950s-1960s
§ 1955: National Film Congress in Salamanca calls for new Spanish cinema
§ Luis Garcia Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem direct films influenced by Italian Neorealism: Death of a Cyclist (1955), Main Street/Calle Mayor (1957)
§ 1961: Luis Bunuel returns to Spain to make Viridiana, wins top award at Cannes Festival but is banned in Spain, new wave of censorship follows
§ 1960s: Emergence of producer Elias Querejeta and especially director Carlos Saura (The Hunt—1965, influences Sam Peckinpah in U.S.)
§ Early 1970s: Franco grows ill, censorship softens; Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive (1973) portrays emotional cost of the Civil War and the Franco years
Post-Franco Filmmaking
§ 1978: Parliamentary democracy restored in Spain, Spanish cinema subsidized by state but production hampered by lack of industry direction
§ 1980s-1990s: Spain moves toward membership in European Community
o Emergence of new generation of post-Franco filmmakers, led by Almodóvar
o Spanish films begin to win international audiences and awards:
§ Amantes/Lovers, directed by Vincente Aranda (1990)
§ Jamón Jamón /Ham Ham, directed by Bigas Luna (1991)
§ Belle Époque, directed by Fernando Trueba (1992)
o Some Spanish actors, like Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, become international stars
Three Major Spanish Directors:
Luis Bunuel (1900-1983)
§ First draws attention for surrealist silent films with Salvador Dali: Un Chien Andalou/An Andalusian Dog, and L’Age d’or/The Age of Gold (1930)
§ 1933: documentary Las Hurdes/Land without Bread
§ After Franco’s victory, moves to U.S., then Mexico, resumes directing in Mexico in 1940s, most notable film is Los Olvidados/The Young and the Damned (1950)
§ 1961: Invited to Spain, films Viridiana, wins at Cannes but arouses wrath of Church, banned in Spain, Bunuel continues to direct in Europe, mostly in France
o The Exterminating Angel (1962)
o Belle de Jour (1967)
o The Milky Way (1969)
o Tristana (1970)
o The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
o The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
o That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
§ Only a few films made in Spain itself. Bunuel acquires status of international “art cinema” auteur
§ Satirizes middle class customs, the Church, deals with obsessions outside the mainstream of middle-class society
§ Later films less clearly “Surrealist” than earliest films, but always aims at juxtaposing disconcerting images within the same context
Carlos Saura (1932- )
§ Graduated from film school in Madrid in 1950s
§ Influenced by Italian Neorealism
§ First major success in La Caza/The Hunt (1966), but banned in Spain
§ Films continue to indirectly criticize repression under Franco:
o Peppermint Frappe (1967)
o The Garden of Delights (1970)
o Cria Cuervos (1976)
§ Late 1970s, begins series of filmed ballets and dances:
o Blood Wedding (1981)
o Carmen (1983)
o El Amor Brujo (1986)
o Tango (1997)
§ Other recent films include Goya in Bordeaux (1999)
§ Themes deal with personal and emotional costs of political repression but also celebrate the arts and artists
§ Employs a wide variety of styles
Pedro Almodóvar (1949- )
§ Born in poor region of Spain, moves to Madrid in 1968
§ 1970s: Supports self with jobs while making short short films with friends
§ 1980: First major film Pepi, Luci and Bom released on 35mm. blown up from original 16mm.
§ 1980s: Acquires cult status among international audiences for focus on outsiders, punks, drifters, transsexuals, and others; episodic plots that parody melodrama
§ Major films include:
o What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984)
o Matador (1986)
o Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
o Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)
o Carne Tremula/Live Flesh (1997)
o All about My Mother (1999)
o Talk to Her (2003)
o Bad Education (2004)
o Volver/To Return (2006)
What is Postmodernism in Film?
§ Uses some of the formal experimentation of modernism but for different purposes, carries modernist devices to extremes
§ Not as concerned with philosophical issues of nature of reality, reality of vision, lack of personal identity in industrial society
§ Often self-referential, self-aware in presentation
§ Often refers to popular culture as shortcut or sign for meanings and emotions
§ Influenced by proliferation of media (images, music, etc.)
§ Looks at life in context of culture, diversity in population, economics, other formats
Godard as turning point between Modernism and Postmodernism
All about My Mother/Todo sobre di mi madre (1999)
Director and Script: Almodóvar; Cinematography: Affonso Beato; Editing: Jose Salcedo; Music: Alberto Iglesias
Cast: Cecilia Roth (Manuela, Esteban’s mother); Marisa Paredes (Huma Rojo, the actress); Candela Pena (Nina, Huma’s costar and lover); Penelope Cruz (Sister Maria Rosa Sanz); Antonia San Juan (Agrado, Manuela’s transvestite friend); Toni Cantó (Lola, Esteban’s father), Eloy Azorin (Esteban)
Questions on All about My Mother:
1. What is the effect of the title and the opening of the film in suggesting that this is his story about his mother?
2. Why does Manuela go from Madrid to Barcelona? How does life change for her while she is there?
3. What is Manuela’s relationship with the actresses Huma and Nina? How do they affect her life?
4. How is Manuela’s life affected for changed by her relationships with Agrado and Rosa?
5. What is the effect of the meeting between Manuela and Esteban’s father?
6. What is the relevance of references to the film All about Eve, the play A Streetcar Named Desire, and the poetry of Francisco Garcia Lorca?
Discussion Summary:
All about My Mother shares some concerns with Bergman’s Persona but is utterly different in narrative and style, as different as 1966 is from 1999 and as Sweden is from Spain. Both films have women and their search for identity at their core, and both refer at least briefly to their political contexts, but Bergman’s film is typically “modernist” in the puzzles presented by its narrative, its concern with interior psychological states, and the alienation of its characters, expressed by their isolation in the house on the island. All about My Mother, on the other hand, is set in contemporary Spanish settings, populated by a range of characters (mostly women or “men who want to be women”). It is less concerned with interior psychological states created by loss of identity and alienation and more with the emotions generated by love and loss. Its narrative is much clearer than that of Persona but it openly presents itself as a story being told, one of several similar tales that are openly referred to.
Persona concludes with an apparent mysterious merger or exchange of identities between Anna and Elizabet. The “mask” that the title refers to suggests the need to strip away masks, to expose the real identities (or lack of identities) underneath the “personas” that we present to others. Almodovar, on the other hand, seems to suggest that we define our identities by the masks and personas that we choose. All of the characters in the film are defined and define themselves by the roles they choose to play. Esteban, on the verge of turning 18, is just beginning to choose his own adult identity, perhaps as a writer. He has a curiosity about the world that extends to others and to his own life, in particular wanting to know about his father. As he writes in his notebook, we see the pencil tip apparently writing on the screen itself—maybe even writing the film and the audience. His life, though, is cut short before he can realize his ambitions, and it is that death that motivates the rest of the action throughout the film. At first, we are tempted to think that the film is entirely Esteban’s—it is about his mother, he writes on the screen, and he narrates just as he lies dying—but then his voice is not heard any more. Manuela, his mother, continues the film, acting for her son and taking some unexpected detours along the way. At the end, when a note from the director dedicates the film “to my mother, to women, to men who want to be women,” etc., he picks the cue back up from Esteban. “My” mother, in this context, is Almodovar’s as much as she is Estaban’s.
Manuela, Esteban’s mother, is herself an example of shifting identities. She first appears to be a doctor in a hospital. We then learn that she is a transplant consultant whose job is to locate donors for organ transplants and to convince families and friends of the dying to allow those transplants to take place. Later, she acts in a seminar, playing the role of one of those family members who has to be told that the transplant is not for her dying husband but his donation for someone else. We see her in one corner of the seminar room, while Estaban watches, looking in the opposite direction at TV screen where she is appearing for the assembled medical staff. When Esteban dies, Manuela suddenly finds herself playing a similar role, but for real this time. She breaks an ethical rule—she follows Esteban’s heart to its new recipient. But where is the identity of her son? It is not in the heart with the new body, but Esteban remains a kind of presence throughout the film, reinforced by his the presence of his picture and his notebook as well as by the repetition of his name, which was the original name of his father and becomes the name of his baby stepbrother at the end.
Acting—whether on a TV monitor or in a theater—becomes the symbol of the assumption of identities. Manuela, who was once an amateur actress herself, first met her husband (Esteban I) in a production of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, where she played the sexually charged and vulnerable Stella who is the wife to the hyper-macho and often brutal Stanley Kolwalski. The other key role in Williams’ play is Blanche Dubois, Stella’s older sister who herself is playing a role, assuming an identity that Stanley seeks to strip away in the play. This is also the play that Manuela and Esteban had gone to see on the night he died, running for an autograph of the actress who played Blanche, Huma Rojo (itself a stage name—an identity for an actress playing a character who is herself assuming a misleading identity). Several scenes take place backstage, in Huma’s dressing room, which Almodovar himself has described as a kind of midway point between the reality of the streets outside the theater and the artificial world of the stage.
Besides A Streetcar Named Desire, another important popular culture reference is the 1950 film All about Eve (whose title is echoed by the film itself). Esteban and Manuela watch the movie at the beginning of the film, and Esteban complains that the Spanish title is not an appropriate translation, drawing our attention back to the fact that we are watch a film. All about Eve itself is a backstage theater story, about a Broadway star, Margo Channing, played by Bette Davis (in one of her most famous roles). A young fan named Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) comes back to her dressing room seeking an autograph and eventually getting a job with Margo, who realizes almost too late that Eve has actually been scheming to learn from her, and steal her stardom and her husband too. Later, when Manuela goes to work for Huma Rojo and her costar/lover Nina, Nina accuses her of being just like Eve Harrington, at which point Manuela breaks down and explains why she had sought out Huma, tells her about Esteban, and points out the impact of Streetcar on her own life. (Earlier, when Manuela helps Huma to look for Nina, the older actress says, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” Blanche Dubois’ most famous line from the Williams play).
But it is not just the world of the theater where people adopt different identities in different ways; people also do that in real life. The virginal Sister Rosa turns out to have gotten pregnant and infected by the AIDS virus by Manuela’s former husband and Esteban’s father, also named Esteban but now a transsexual known as “Lola.” The identities that society assigns people break down. The nun becomes pregnant. Esteban, a macho male in some ways, is a transsexual who, when we finally see him, has an ambiguous, androgynous appearance. The recurring name “Esteban” suggests that some things remain the same from generation to generation (reinforced by the fact that Rosa’s own mother is also named “Rosa”), but at the same time “Esteban” can become “Lola.” People become the identities that they choose and those who pretend to be superior to “low-life” outsiders such as Lola are no better. Rosa’s mother, in most respects a “respectable” middle-class woman, makes money by forging paintings by the great artist Marc Chagall.
The final test case for identity in the film is Rosa’s father, who is suffering from memory loss that suggests Alzheimer’s. if the “real” person is not located in a body part that can be transplanted, in a name or even sexual identity that can be changed, or in that person’s memory, where is it located? Again, Almodovar suggests, it is located in the choices that we make in the face of all that can happen because of death and illness. Adrago, Manuela’s transsexual friend, is the emblem of such choices. Despite what many would consider a degraded life, offering oral sex for money to men who might abuse her, she is also in some ways the most “complete” person in the film, the one most sure of herself. When she gives her speech to the theater audience, she says, “. . . you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being.”
That is probably the clearest statement of the movie. The product of a country that has been learning to find or reclaim its own “identity” after the decades of Franco’s dictatorship, All about My Mother suggests that happiness is the result of how we shape our own identities to cope with the losses and disappointments of life.