Chilly beginnings, very quickly stifled
It was in Madrid, in 1896, that Jean Busseret, a representative of the Lumière brothers, organized the first Spanish film projection at the Cine Doré. That same year, Eduardo Jimeno filmed the midday mass at the Pilar church in Zaragoza. The Spanish film industry was turned upside down with the arrival of talking pictures. Francisco Elías Riquelme directed El misterio de la Puerta del Sol (1930), the first Spanish sound film about Pompeyo and Rodolfo, two Madrid workers with dreams of becoming movie stars, who decided to attract attention by planning a fake murder. The film was a technical failure and was not shown in theaters. In 1939, the rise of Franco's regime dealt a heavy blow to Spanish cinema. With the creation of the Junta de clasificación y censura (a council whose job is to monitor the social, political and moral content of films) and the Cifesa (Compañia Industrial de Film Español) , which fell into the hands of Franco's regime, productions were reduced and censorship was at its height. All the arts were oppressed by this dictatorship, and in the front line, the cinema. General Franco went so far as to write the screenplay for Raza (1941) under the name of Jaime de Andrade. Directed by José Luis Sáenz, this film tells the story of a Spanish family that, thanks to patriotism and militarism, finds a resolution to the quarrels that divide them. Raza ("race" in Spanish) imposes the image of Spain on the cinema: that of the war cult, of past glory and of Catholicism. Like his country, Spanish art loses all its freedom.
Timid attempts, always monitored
Despite the oppression, some independent productions tried to bring a new life to Spanish cinema. This is the case of Lorenzo Llobet-Gràcia and his work Vida en Sombras (1947). The film was highly criticized and censored by the Junta Superior. At the end of the 1950s, Franco decided to slightly soften his regulations regarding cinema. Spain became the territory of foreign productions or co-productions. The country is a perfect playground for shooting Westerns and Peplums. Thanks to Spanish personnel and capital, Eurociné (a French film company known for its exploitation films) creates low-cost, but not insignificant works, such as horror and Z-series films. While France can screen the full-length versions, Spain continues to offer more "morally correct" versions, free of violence and sex. After 24 years of exile in America, Luis Buñuel, world-renowned director, returns to Spanish territory. He was part of the early rebellion against Franco and participated in a pro-republican film. He never hid his ideas. Viridiana (1961) allowed him to win the Palme d'Or in Cannes, but not without causing a scandal. The Vatican qualifying the film as blasphemous, Viridiana is obviously one of the victims of Franco's censorship.
The Movida or the rise of emancipation
" For me, Madrid was the place where films were shown exclusively, but also the metropolis where everyone could 'live their life', in definition: a dream. " This is how Pedro Almodóvar describes the capital, in his book Patty Diphusa: La Vénus des lavabos. The director was one of the precursors of Movida, the creative cultural movement of the early 1980s that first took root in Madrid. The Movida madrileña is comparable to the arrival of Punk and New Wave in England. This movement, driven by Spanish youth and the emergence of new artists, helped give modern Spain a place in democratic Europe. With Pepi, Luci, Bom et autres filles du quartier (1980 ), il shows us a completely different side of the city. Pepi is a young girl growing marijuana at home. One day, a neighboring policeman discovers the situation and arrives at her house to blame her. He ends up abusing Pepi, who decides to take revenge, with the help of Bom and Luci, the policeman's disenchanted wife. Already faithful to the director's favourite themes (sex, independence, homosexuality...), this film shows an offbeat, jovial, sulphurous Madrid. The previously conservative capital moves into the world of the underground. Almodóvar continues to sublimate his muse, filming, for example, the Cine Doré in Parle avec elle (2002), the Museo Chicote cocktail bar in Étreintes brisées (2009), the legendary Segovia Viaduct, 90 km from the capital and seen in Les amants passagers (2013) or the plaza de las Comendadoras in his film Madres paralelas (2021).
Image of modernity on a global scale
However, to reduce Madrid to Almodóvar would be a sad mistake. The Spanish capital has not only been the setting for many films, but also sometimes the main protagonist. Here is a small selection of films to see: Mario Camus' La Colmena (1982), an adaptation of Camilo José Cela's work about Madrid in the 1950s; Eloy de la Iglesia's La Estanquera de Vallecas (1987), a film that has become a cult favorite; Montxo Armendáriz's Historias del Kronen (1995); Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis (1996) and Abre los ojos (1997); Martín Hache (1997) by Adolfo Aristarain; Barrio (1998) by Fernando León de Aranoa; La Comunidad (2000) and Crimen ferpecto (2004) by Alex de la Iglesia; The Ghosts of Goya (2006) by Milos Forman; Revenge in the Skin (2007) with Matt Damon or No Way Out with Bruce Willis (2012). Over time, Madrid has developed an image of a passionate, free, characterful and intriguing city. In recent years, it is the producers of the small screen who are snatching the Hispanic capital. The distribution platform Netflix is taking it over, producing La Casa de Papel (2017), a series about young bank robbers and their coup du siècle; Las Chicas del Cable (2017), which features four switchboard operators from a Madrid telephone company fighting for their independence and rights; andElite (2018), another series about the gilded youth of Las Encinas High School confronted with the murder of a student. These television works establish Madrid as a "must see" for teenagers, just like Paris, London or New York.
