Hermetic Space As Abstraction of the Mechanisms of Censorship: Symptomatic ‘Archive Fever’ in Carlos Saura’s La madriguera

Abstract

This article engages in a close reading of Carlos Saura’s little studied La madriguera (1969) by exposing in its use of spatial and material configurations a hermetically sealed Spain under Francoism during the ‘apertura’ period of the 1960s. It seeks to elucidate how Saura’s use of claustrophobic space suggests an unveiling of the process of abstraction embedded in the mechanisms of censorship as they affect the Spanish spectator of the 1960s, who sits immobilized in the dark theatre, unconsciously juxtaposed to the unassuming agoraphobia foregrounded in the film through its protagonists’ self-imposed hermetism. The film unveils these mechanisms through a metafilmic language by self-reflecting in its domestic fortress, in the theatre of its protagonists Teresa and Pedro constantly performing roles of a time out of joint, recollections of childhood and virtual fantasies that have no place in the present.