Fascist space and film: spatial practice and ideology in El Valle de los Caídos (1963) and La sombra de la cruz (2013)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how film reproduces and/or contests the spatial practices of the most emblematic fascist monument in Spain, the Valley of the Fallen. I focus on two documentary representations of the monument made by foreigners, Hollywood director Andrew Marton’s El Valle de los Caídos (1963) and Italian Alessandro Pugno’s La sombra de la cruz (2013). I analyze how montage and cinematography tell a story of a Francoist space in two distinct moments in time. Though products of considerably different historical and social contexts, both documentaries tell a similar narrative of a monk who joins the Benedictine order located in the Valley, and both works seek to translate a national Spanish essence to a wider audience through a cinematic representation of a symbolic space. Marton’s film, a product of Samuel Bronston Productions, is a performance of the spatial aspirations and ideals of the Franco regime: we observe a “will to architecture” and a desire to create or recreate what Lefebvre calls “absolute space” through long shots and a filmic-cartographic aviator gaze. In the contemporary film La sombra de la cruz (2013), the gaze is dissonant and full of temporal and spatial contrasts, revealing the fragility, frictional core and threat of fascist spatial practice and ideology. Ultimately, this article reflects on the legacy of Francoist space in Spain and how the filmic gaze has evolved in response.