Double Censorship: The Reception of Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk in SPAIN, 1946–77

Abstract

The reception of American cinema in Spain after the Spanish Civil War was largely conditioned by the activity of censorship boards. American films were very popular in Spain in the decades following World War II. Yet they frequently reached the audience with mutilations, or with changes to the script. In fact, some directors who had already experienced problems with censorship in the United States suffered a ‘double censorship’ when their movies reached Spain. This article explores governmental responses to the cinematic production of Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk in Francoist Spain, between 1946, when Kazan’s and Dmytryk’s films were first released in Spain, until 1977, when censorship was abolished. Using the censorship files available at the Spanish General Administration Archive, we discuss how the censors’ moral, political and religious views affected the reception of Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk in this period. From a comparative perspective, it is interesting to see that, while American and Spanish censors basically agreed on moral issues, they had different views on the threat that racial and political matters entailed for the spectators.