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This is a zany, fast-talking comedy with strongly gothic elements, perhaps something like the Spanish Arsenic and Old Lace. Though filmed three years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the film was prohibited by the Republic, and was finally shown in Paris in 1936.Įloísa está debajo de un almendro (1943), dir. The shots of the goat and of the donkey (with bees) are probably the most-discussed, but perhaps more significant is the lesson in the schoolhouse, where the students learn the virtues of private property, in a place where, the film emphasizes, there is none to be had. It is not difficult to see the film casting a wider lens over all of Spain in the process. Buñuel’s film presents a visit to the region as something between travelogue and ethnographic study, coupled with a strong concern for social and economic development. Las Hurdes, in northern Extremadura, was fascinating to many ethnographers and filmmakers in the early 20th century, largely for its perceived backwardness and lack of development. Overall, the film depicts the difficulties of reconciling ideals of honor with the realities of rural life, and avoids patronizing the audience by focusing more strongly on secular ideas of human relationships than religious ones. It then presents a variation on this idea in microcosm, with a family reunited within one home, yet broken apart. It begins with the uprooting of nearly an entire town from the area around Segovia, due to a storm that ruins the town’s crops. Nevertheless, it is probably the most famous Spanish silent film, and makes up for its lack of sound with very impressive visuals, of towns and cities, of the countryside, and of its characters. La aldea maldita was made in 1930, the year after talkies first appeared in Spain. As an interesting aside, the filmmaker Kamus is played by Ricardo Baroja, brother of Pío, in one of the four films in which he acted. Nemesio Soldevila was a contemporary of Buñuel, though here he and Fernández Ardavín create something wholly unique in the same year that Un Chien andalou was first screened.

But it’s when Carlos sends his friend León to see the filmmaker Kamus that the film shifts into essentially postmodern territory, as Kamus claims that cinema can reveal the sixth sense of Truth, though his camera, and what it captures, presents a questionable reality. The primary plot is simple enough, as Carmen, a stage dancer, is given a ring by her fiancé Carlos, but she is forced to sell it to support her alcoholic (and bullfighting-obsessed) father, though he almost immediately regrets making her do so upon seeing how she is treated at work. Sobrevila.Įl sexto sentido, largely unknown, is a gem, beautifully shot and providing a clear example of how well-developed cinema was by the late 1920s. The descriptions for El verdugo, Los motivos de Berta, and Aita are hopefully coming soon I just need to rewatch those films.įilms that need to be given pages on the site:Ĭlick the pictures to jump to the film’s page.Įl sexto sentido (1929), dir. Some of the films left out for this reason include: El sur and La morte rouge (Erice), Umbracle (Portabella), Cría cuervos (Saura), and En la ciudad de Silvia (Guerín). I limited this to two films per director to keep the list as diverse as possible. I’m hoping to see more films from the 30s and 40s, so things might skew earlier as time goes by. It’s heavily focused on the 60s and 70s, which are the most interesting decades of Spanish cinema for me, with the output of the Barcelona School, and the emergence of directors like Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Víctor Erice, and Basilio Martín Patino. This tends toward films that have a strong political content, are experimental in nature, or that concern Spanish identity in spatial and geographic terms, along with some very good popular films. This is a chronological list of some of my favorite Spanish films.