Cornerhouse Film Review: Long Holidays of 1936 – 'LAS LARGAS VACACIONES DEL 36'

ON Wednesday at the Manchester Cornerhouse cinema, during a discussion following the screening of 'Long Holidays of 1936' - a Spanish film made a year after the death of General Franco – 'El Cauldillo', it became clear that there is still much interest in the Spanish Civil War among a section of the general public. The film was shot, still under a degree of censorship in 1976, in Catalonia and represented a rural village summer retreat for the middle classes of Barcelona. It opened with a shot of a local town crier on the day of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on the 18th, July 1936 and ended with the conquest of Barcelona by General Franco's Nationalists in January 1939.  The well attended discussion party was chaired by Carmen Herrero from the Manchester Metropolitan University, and it was made up of mostly middle-class ladies and a sprinkling of men.

The questions ranged from why the film's the dialogue in Catalan? to what was the Moorish involvement in the Spanish Civil War? Catalan, of course, was still a prohibited language in 1976 when the film was made.

There was some consternation caused when one woman, probably not so academic as some of the others, said that she had lived in Spain during the Franco era and said that the level of crime had been lower then, and that she felt safer as a woman to go out alone on the streets late at night. This of course ran counter to the tone of the gathering which was lightly-boiled liberal leftist and with lower middle-class ladies probably from south Manchester and beyond into Cheshire. Even Carmen Herrero came down on her, trying to claim that much of the crime was hidden at that time and that there were 'banditos' in the countryside and that the regime was severe in it's treatment of its opponents. 

The truth is that low level anti-social behaviour in Franco's Spain in the 1960s was probably much lower than it is today, and one probably has much more chance of getting your bag snatched in the streets now. But there were forms of crime in Spain then that were more exotic. Occasionally while I was working delivering Gas Butaño to the villages of the Cabo San Antonio in 1963-4, I learned of women being accosted but it was rare; perhaps more seriously I found out the the Municipal police had shot and wounded an English tourist in a bar in Javier on the Costa Blanca in a dispute about drinking after hours; then when we were moving to a city we were warned of dangers such as the possibility that the Gipsies may kidnap our young son if they thought we had money; meanwhile a strange ancient belief prevailed well into the 20th Century among some of the Spanish wealthy that if they bathed in the blood of a young child that it would keep them young and they were willing to pay the Gipsies to get it.

It is not easy to convince someone who is English, the extent that the fear of the Moor or 'El Moro' has in the mind of the Spaniard or Catalan. El Moro represents the bogeyman and at the beginning of the film on the 18th, July 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War someone shouts 'The Moors are coming!' and at the end of the film as the conquest of Franco's Nationalists of Catalonia takes place in January 1939, the screen fades with the blurred images of the turbaned Moorish horsemen riding through the Catalan countryside. To a Spaniard and a Catalan, the message would be clear that modern civilisation had taken a step backwards to something more medieval and ancient with the fall of the Spanish republic. It is because with Franco it is not the same as anticipating an efficient and disciplined modern regime as one might in Germany with Hitler and the Nazis, or in Italy with the Futurists, in Spain, with Franco, it was rather more like a return to the Dark Ages.

This week's Spanish films at the Manchester Cornerhouse

Read Our Review on 'Biutiful' in 'British Royalty & Barcelona's Gangmasters' on Feb. 2nd below: 'Where the tourists never go!'

Fans of Spanish film are in for a treat this April at Cornerhouse. Screening from Friday 8th, The Silent House (La Casa Muda) wowed critics at Cannes 2010. This artsy horror marks a noteworthy debut from Uruguayan director, Gustavo Hernandez. Impressively shot using a digital ‘still’ camera in just a single take, the film tells the story of Laura and her father who unearth the otherworldly secrets of an isolated cottage.

'A stylish, handheld house-of-horrors number, which like the best examples of the genre uses suspense rather than gore to rack up the tension.' Lee Marshall, Screen Daily.

Biutiful (see our film review of 'Biutiful' on February 2nd, 2011) is back by popular demand, and we're screening it over three dates as part of our Play It Again season. Recommended by Jessie Gibbs, coordinator on our ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival, Javier Bardem gives an Oscar-nominated performance as Uxbal, a man treading a fine line between sinner and saint as he strives to provide for his family in the murky underworld of Barcelona. Advance booking is recommended if you don’t want to miss this compelling and accomplished picture on the big screen.

Films:

The Silent House: La casa muda

Cert 15

Showing from Fri 8 April

Laura and her father are preparing to renovate an isolated cottage, and in readiness for an early start they stay overnight in the house. As they settle down for the night Laura hears noises from outside and urges her father to investigate...

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Biutiful

Cert 15

Showing from Sun 24 April

Anchored by a stunning central performance from Javier Bardem, the new film from Amores Perros and 21 Grams director Alejandro González Iñárritu tells the compelling story of one man’s struggle to find spiritual redemption in Barcelona.

Listening to Judge Garzón: Escuchando al juez Garzón

SHOWING on Wednesday night at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester, as part of the ¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Film Festival, is a screening of an interview with the Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón. Judge Garzón is perhaps the most famous living Judge because of the part he played in 1998 in the detention in this country of the Chilean dictator General Pinochet after issuing an international arrest warrant on him for the torture of Spanish citizens. The Chilean Truth Commission (1990–91) report was the basis for the warrant, marking an unprecedented use of universal jurisdiction to attempt to try a former dictator for an international crime. Garzón's request for the extradition of Pinochet to Spain was later rejected by the then British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, on health grounds.

Garzón also filed charges of genocide against Argentine military officers on the disappearance of Spanish citizens during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship. Eventually Adolfo Scilingo and Miguel Angel Cavallo were prosecuted in separate cases. Scilingo was convicted and sentenced to over 1000 years incarceration for his crimes.

In October 2008, Garzón opened a controversial inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War and the years that followed the war. This action was controversial because the offenses were nearly 70 years old, previous to the concept of crimes against humanity, and a 1977 general amnesty act barred any investigations related to criminal offenses with a political aim previous to 1976. In 2008 the inquiry was suspended. In September 2009, a trade union called "Manos Limpias" (Clean Hands) filed a lawsuit against Garzón alleging that Garzón had abused his judicial authority by opening the inquiry. Garzón denied any wrongdoing.

In April 2010, Garzón was indicted by the Spanish Supreme Court for prevarication for arbitrarily changing his juridical criteria to engineer the case in order to bypass the law limiting his jurisdiction. If convicted, he could be barred from his duties for 20 years. Garzón's indictment has been highly divisive within Spain and controversial abroad. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch condemned the indictment, and The New York Times published an editorial supporting him, whereas The Wall Street Journal condemned Garzón's proceedings in an editorial supporting the rule of law. There were public protests in Spain from left wing organizations supporting Garzón.

Wednesday night's black and white screening will take place at 8.40pm at the Cornerhouse cinema on Oxford Street, Manchester.

Review: La Buena Nueva (The Good News)

YESTERDAY, the Cornerhouse in Manchester showed the Spanish film 'La Buena Nueva' (The Good News), the true story of the trials of a young sincere priest who is sent to a poor village in Navarra, bordering the Basque region, but in 1936 the centre of traditional right-wing Carlist politics and religion. On his arrival the socialist mayor and his party are about to be overthrown by a group of Falange fighters and incomers, who are sent to unite with the local Carlists to take over the village. Several socialists who take to the hills to escape are shot by the Falange. Others are thrown in a pit.

The priest trys to maintain some sort of neutrality for the Church and adopt a prudent postion helping some of the widows of the victims. But tensions develop, not just between the priest and the Falangist incomers, but also between the Carlists and the Falange. Conflicts between differing approaches to the Church and religion of the conquerering parties are lightly touch upon. More interesting is the priest threat to the boss of the Falange that one day he would have to pay for the killings. The implication throughout the film is the underlying suggestion that some day the bodies will be discovered, making the film a harbinger of what is now happening in so far as there is a recuperation of historical memory and a recovery of the bodies of Spanish Civil War victims all over Spain. Writers in Spain are already turning out novels about the civil war and no doubt there will be many more films on similar subjects.