Performance and Spanish film is the first book to provide a detailed study of screen acting in Spanish film. With fifteen original essays by leading scholars of Spanish film, the book casts light on the manifold meanings, methods and influences of Spanish screen performance, from the silent era to the present day. In doing so, the book provides bold new readings of the work of significant Spanish actors and filmmakers, from Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Alfredo Landa, to Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Saura and Alejandro Amenábar. The fine-grained study of acting in each chapter also provides a means of exploring broader questions surrounding Spanish film practices, culture and society. Performance and Spanish film will be essential reading for both students and scholars of Spanish film alike, as well as to those more broadly interested in the history of screen acting.

A camp lipsynched routine by three air stewards distracts unsuspecting passengers from the fact that their plane is to make a crash landing. Performance functions as a diversion from unsavoury realities. In this way, Pedro Almodóvar's 2013 film I'm So Excited adopts a strategy of subversive anti-establishment censor-evading filmmaking practices under Franco. Contemporary cinematic performance in Spain intersects with politics to provide a platform for views and voices that do not conform to the dominant political narrative. An essential text for scholars, students and aficionados of Spanish cinema, Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance is the first single-authored monograph to focus on performance in this context. The book analyses interactions between performance and politics in technical and conceptual terms considering, for example, performance styles, the narrative role of performance and political interventions by actors such as Javier Bardem and Juan Diego Botto. Ultimately, Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance posits performance, within the specific context of contemporary Spanish cinema, as a politically-potent device and proposes that it is precisely for this reason that the arts have borne the brunt of aggressive austerity measures enforced by Spain's conservative government in recent years.

This volume is the first English-language collection exclusively dedicated to the study of genre in relation to Spanish cinema. Providing a variety of critical perspectives, the collection gives the reader a thorough account of the relationship between Spanish cinema and genre, drawing on case studies of several of the most remarkable Spanish films in recent years. The book analyses the significant changes in the aesthetics, production and reception of Spanish film from 1990 onwards. It brings together European and North American scholars to establish a critical dialogue on the topics under discussion, while providing multiple perspectives on the concepts of national cinemas and genre theory. In recent years film scholarship has attempted to negotiate the tension between the nationally specific and the internationally ubiquitous, discussing how globalisation has influenced film making and surrounding cultural practice. These broader social concerns have prompted scholars to emphasise a redefinition of national cinemas beyond strict national boundaries and to pay attention to the transnational character of any national site of film production and reception. This collection provides a thorough investigation of contemporary Spanish cinema within a transnational framework, by positing cinematic genres as the meeting spaces between a variety of diverse forces that necessarily operate within but also across territorial spaces. Paying close attention to the specifics of the Spanish cinematic and social panorama, the essays investigate the transnational economic, cultural and aesthetic forces at play in shaping Spanish film genres today.

This guide to Spanish film documents the film industry's interpretation of the isolating effects of the cultural traditionalism of the early twentieth century to the expanding international popularity of such films as Trueba's Belle Epoque, Aranda's Amantes, and Bigas Luna's Jamón, Jamón, and such actors as Victoria Abril, Carmen Maura, and Antonio Banderas. This is the first volume in a new Greenwood series that discusses, historically and critically, films, directors, and actors in film industries throughout the world. Each volume will include a detailed historical introduction and will provide an in-depth treatment of the most important films and individuals involved in the industry. End-of-entry bibliographies provide sources for further reading and appendixes provide additional useful information. The Guides will be valuable to scholars, students, and film buffs. Spanish cinema is in many ways a microcosm of the tensions and conflicts that have shaped the evolution of the nation over the course of this century. Spanish film as a cultural institution is rarely divorced from the political and social currents that have shaped the larger Spanish culture torn as it was between tendencies of localism and internationalism. It languished in industrial and artistic underdevelopment for many years under Franco; it is now, however, experiencing international recognition while remaining rooted in the specificity of its own popular cultural styles.

This is the first collection in English to focus exclusively on the various forms of popular film produced in Spain and to acknowledge the variety, range and depth of Spanish cinema. Contributors from across Hispanic, media and cultural studies explore a range of genres, from the musicals of the 1930s and 1940s to contemporary horror movies, historical epics of the 1940s and 1950s and contemporary representations of the Spanish Civil War. The book includes reappraisals of key popular directors such as Luis Garcia Berlanga and Antonio Mercero as well as critical analyses of celebrated stars like Marisol. It provides innovative consideration of the promotion and reception of horror in the 1960s, recollections of cinema-going in Madrid, and reflections on successful recent works such as Abre los Ojos and Solas.

A History of Spanish Film explores Spanish film from the beginnings of the industry to the present day by combining some of the most exciting work taking place in film studies with some of the most urgent questions that have preoccupied twentieth-century Spain. It addresses new questions in film studies, like 'prestige film' and 'middlebrow cinema', and places these in the context of a country defined by social mobility, including the 1920s industrial boom, the 1940s post-Civil War depression, and the mass movement into the middle classes from the 1960s onwards. Close textual analysis of some 42 films from 1910-2010 provides an especially useful avenue into the study of this cinema for the student. - Uniquely offers extensive close readings of 42 films, which are especially useful to students and teachers of Spanish cinema. - Analyses Spanish silent cinema and films of the Franco era as well as contemporary examples. - Interrogates film's relations with other media, including literature, pictorial art and television. - Explores both 'auteur' and 'popular' cinemas. - Establishes 'prestige' and the 'middlebrow' as crucial new terms in Spanish cinema studies. - Considers the transnationality of Spanish cinema throughout its century of existence. - Contemporary directors covered in this book include Almodóvar, Bollaín, Díaz Yanes and more.

Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema focuses on the careers of ten Spanish film actors, including Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, and Eduardo Noriega. Chris Perriam traces their development as stars in the Spanish context and builds on recent, exciting work on Spanish film and culture bycombining close study of performance in specific scenes with the theoretical paradigms of Star Studies and research into masculinities. Full use of popular and intellectual press coverage of these actors grounds the approach in the certain specifics of Spanish audience responses and productioncontexts in the period covered - more or less from Almodovar's Labyrinth of Passion to the latest premieres. Scenes from thirty key films are covered in detail, and the full range of each star's Spanish career is studied by briefer reference to some seventy films or more. Spanish cinema is among themost exciting and distinctive cinemas in Europe and this new study is a key contribution to the growing fields of Spanish Cultural and Film Studies.