The 1980s Literary Adaptation Genre

The coincidence of a number of social, political and industrial factors from the late 1970s onwards gave rise to a flourishing of the literary adaptation genre in 1980s Spanish cinema. These were: the will to recuperate a previously colonized past which characterized Spanish culture from the mid-1970s; the victory of Felipe González’s Socialist party in the elections of 1982 and their policy to subsidize art which projected their vision of a new, democratic, European Spain; and the changes in film funding which crystallized in the cinema-TVE deal of 1979 to co-produce films based on the Spanish literary canon, a policy formalized by the PSOE’s ‘Miró’ decrees of 1983. While in the previous decade there had been a short-lived burst of enthusiasm for adapting nineteenth-century novels (see chapter four of this study) the death of Franco and Spain’s transition to democracy generated an interest in filming literature banned by, or conceived in opposition to, the regime. Thus as well as biopics (Lorca, muerte de un poeta, Bardem 1987), the 1980s saw a number of film versions of Lorca and Valle-Inclán’s plays (e.g. La casa de Bernarda Alba, Camus 1987; Bodas de sangre, Saura 1981; Luces de Bohemia, Díez 1985; Divinas palabras, García Sánchez 1987) and the cinematic adaptation of major post-war novels (e.g. La colmena, Camus 1982; La plaza del diamante, Betriu 1982; Réquiem por un campesino español, Betriu 1985; Tiempo de silencio, Aranda 1986). Clearly forming part of the drive towards the recuperation of literature and history evidenced elsewhere in Spanish culture, these films complemented the ideology of the liberal, centrist governments and were financed either by the cinema-TVE or Miró subsidy policies.

From the late 1980s onwards, there has been a remarkable homogeneity of hostile critical response to these adaptations (Hopewell 1986; Company Ramón 1989; Monterde 1989; Smith 1995; Riambau 1995; Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998). This criticism tends to stress three problematic areas. Firstly a questioning of the contentious issue of state subsidies, secondly a Fidelity Criticism approach to the film versions of the literary originals which is inclined to demonstrate ‘adaptation-as-betrayal’ and thirdly an appeal to sceptical accounts of postmodern historicity, especially those offered by Marxist critics.