Synopses & Reviews
The war that won't die charts the changing nature of cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War. When the civil broke out in 1936, a significant number of artists, filmmakers and writers - from George Orwell and Pablo Picasso to Joris Ivens and Joan Miró - rallied to support the country's democratically-elected Republican government. The arts played an important role in shaping popular understandings of this dramatic historical period and this book examines cinema's specific role in this process.
The book's focus is on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century - including Hollywood Blockbusters, East European films, the work of the avant garde in Paris and films produced under Franco's censorial dictatorship. In providing critical analyses of a diverse range of cinematic depictions of the period, the book draws on, and situates these analyses within, contemporary debates on Spanish Civil War historiography, the philosophy of history, and the relationship between the past and its cinematic representation. The book highlights the elasticity of cinematic depictions of one historical event, and suggests that the civil war setting will continue to be one to which filmmakers turn as the battle for Spain's future is partially played out in the cinematically recreated battles of the past.
The book will appeal to scholars and students of Film, Media and Hispanic Studies, but also to historians and, indeed, anyone interested in why the Spanish Civil War remains such a contested political topic.
Review
The research is rich in specifics, and makes abundantly clear why the conflict presents a particularly fruitful subject of analysis in relation to these issues.
Synopsis
Students and Lecturers and intelligent readers interested in the Spanish Civil War and the representation of history in cinema
About the Author
David Archibald is Lecturer in Theatre Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of illustrations
Introduction: film, history and the Spanish Civil War
1. Hollywood and the Spanish Civil War: For Whom the Bell Tolls
2. The Spanish Civil War in East German Cinema: Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges
3. Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War in cinema: ¡Viva La Muerte!/Long Live
Death and L' arbre de Guernica/The Tree of Guernica
4. Film under Franco: La caza/The Hunt and El jardín de
las delicias/The Garden of Delights
5. Re-cycling Basque history: patterns of the past in Vacas/Cows
6. No laughing matter? Comedy and the Spanish Civil War in cinema
7. Ghosts of the past: El espinazo del Diablo/The Devil's Backbone
8. A story from the Spanish revolution: Land and Freedom/Tierra y Libertad
9. The search for truth in Soldados de Salamina/Soldiers of Salamina
Conclusion
Filmography
Bibliography
Index