Introduction

The success of the biggest child star of the 1960s, Marisol (Pepa Flores), followed that of her male counterparts of the 1950s, Pablito Calvo and Joselito. Marisol's stardom continued the cine con niño genre of child-starred films through the 1960s in the company of fellow child actresses Ana Belén, Rocío Durcal, and twins Pili and Mili. Chapter Three further elaborates ventriloquism as an expression of Francoist anxiety of subaltern rebellion by children and colonial subjects and as a tool for the transmission of traditional gender roles. In fact, both a 1960 guide for women under Franco, by the Sección Femenina de la Falange, and a 1963 manual for ventriloquists are instructive in Marisol's gendered and biopolitical re-education. Ventriloquism, which appears in symbolic form through the interactions of characters and films throughout The Two cines, is incarnated in the character of the ventriloquist Joe Carter (Rafael Alonso) in Tómbola. But his ventriloquism extends beyond his dummy Marisol. The child protagonist's paternalism towards her best friend, who is likely from Spanish Guinea, supports an allegorical analysis of the biopolitics of Spanish colonialism in Africa. María Belén's character (Joëlle Rivero) invokes the colonial relationship between Spain and Africa, and thus the outcome of territorial appropriation. The ‘musa blanca’ (white muse’s) sidekick María Belén is, effectively, the dummy's dummy. Tómbola chill ingly reveals the Francoist ideological genre function and children as Franco's colonised subjects.

I continue to trace the counter-hegemonic nature of the viejo cine español's child-starred films. Thereby, I focus on the slippage between its distillation of Francoist values and their perversity in the film's fable of the taming and domestication of a wayward girl.