Undoing topics. A five-voice discussion about post-war Spanish cinema

Abstract

Introduction. The retrospective reappraisal of the Spanish cinema
Santos Zunzunegui

Discussion
Juan Miguel Company, Alejandro Montiel, Jean Claude Seguin, Jenaro Talens, Santos Zunzunegui

Conclusion. Re-viewing, re-thinking
Santos Zunzunegui

Five of the most important experts in Spanish Cinema History talk about the distinctive features that make the films produced in the period 1939-1962 neither good nor bad cinema, but unique, specific and historically dated. Issues such as the breakdown or continuity of the popular traditions that were successfully developed during the republican period, the role of censorship, the debatable aesthetic isolation of Spanish cinema in relation with the most important international movements, or the possible application to the Spanish case of the notion of auteur developed by the French magazine Cahiers du cinema are just some of the topics discussed here. Other equally weighty issues such as the presence or absence of the Civil War as a latent “trauma” in the films of the post-war or the possible existence of stylistic models characteristic of and unique to Spanish cinema, such as the grotesque esperpento style developed since the 1950s, are also explored in the reflections that follow.