Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen (review)

Abstract

At the end of the Introduction,Evansobserves, 'The filmsunder discussionhere provide some of the most fruitfulopportunitiesfor revisiting and theorizing postI95os Spain and its evolving, relatively recent cinema history' (p. 6). I would add that the study of these films and our reading of the volume as a whole constitute a collective attempt to understandhow Spanishfilms representSpain as if in a twoway mirror,in which both the reflectionsand the reflectingdevices are the objects of study. POMONACOLLEGE, CALIFORNIA MARIA DONAPETRY FeministDiscourseand Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen. By SUSANMARTIN-MARQUEZ. (Oxford Hispanic Studies) Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press. I999. 322 pp. ?40Although it concentrates on a limited number of films and directors, and is motivated by the need to show in full detailwhat has for long been missed (unseen) in Spanish cinema, Susan Martin-Marquez'sbook is a wide-ranging revisionary project, discerning 'a feminist voice throughout the history of sound cinema in Spain' (p. 29I). The detailing is as meticulous and exciting as it is necessary and salutary:a panoramic approachwould surelynot only have riskedmimickingnonsubversivelythe several list-based histories penned by men so far in the field of Spanish cinema but also muffledthat 'voice'. Key texts of feminist film theory are deftly summarized and their ideas, misconceptions, and mismatches with Spanish contexts illuminatinglyplaced in the argument,often side by side with the richesof textual archive work (dismissive reviews, snatches of gender-blind histories, the many voices of patriarchal power behind desks). Feminist practice, whether in production, promotion, or reception, is emphasized, revealed, or hypothesized in relationto exemplaryclose scrutinyof women's creativity,power, andperformance acrossa range of phenomena from cameramoves to careermoves. Each element of this study is firmly set in social, national, and industrial contexts. In Part One, Rosario Pi, as star-makerand director in the I930S,intervenes in power struggles between Spain and the USA, and between the female subject(as creative artist,as character,or as performer)and dominant, patriarchaland nationalisticdiscourses. Ana Mariscal, as a starin the I940s and I950s, is the Francoistfeminine ideal who in her life and in her banned novel Hombres (reissued in I992) finds conformity difficult and whose performances reveal counter-discourses, contradictions, slippages ; subsequently,as a director, she is both an astute claimant of supposedmale terrain and much more complex and varied in her output of ten features than historyhas allowed:Segundo Ldpez, aventurero urbano (1952)has self-consciousqualities which Martin-Marquezuses to point up Mariscal'spromotion of the awarenessof the constructednessboth of gender and filmunder Franco,and to demonstratehow in El camino (1963) Delibes is ousted by strongself-authorizinggesturesand shiftsof emphasis (particularlytowards the view of provincial life as less an affirmationof Spanishness,more a sustainedsurrenderto scopophiliacpleasureand perversions). PilarMiro is the thirdof the exemplaryhistoricalfiguresand the most likelyto have been 'seen' in Martin-Marquez'ssense:there is an intricatestudy of Mir6's career and its contradictions(overlappingat times with existing but unpublishedworkby Jayne Hamilton) centredon a stimulatinganalysisof'the reversalof[... ] gendered cinematic norms' (p. 154) in El crimen de Cuenca and of sound, corporeality, and image in Gary Cooper, queestds enloscielos (again,studiedin some detailby Hamilton). Of particularinterestis the use of Kaja Silvermanon dissonance and dislocationto focus on agency and on alternative, resistant interpretation (although in the At the end of the Introduction,Evansobserves, 'The filmsunder discussionhere provide some of the most fruitfulopportunitiesfor revisiting and theorizing postI95os Spain and its evolving, relatively recent cinema history' (p. 6). I would add that the study of these films and our reading of the volume as a whole constitute a collective attempt to understandhow Spanishfilms representSpain as if in a twoway mirror,in which both the reflectionsand the reflectingdevices are the objects of study. POMONACOLLEGE, CALIFORNIA MARIA DONAPETRY FeministDiscourseand Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen. By SUSANMARTIN-MARQUEZ. (Oxford Hispanic Studies) Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press. I999. 322 pp. ?40Although it concentrates on a limited number of films and directors, and is motivated by the need to show in full detailwhat has for long been missed (unseen) in Spanish cinema, Susan Martin-Marquez'sbook is a wide-ranging revisionary project, discerning 'a feminist voice throughout the history of sound cinema in Spain' (p. 29I). The detailing is as meticulous and exciting as it is necessary and salutary:a panoramic...