The romantic hero in six Spanish post-war lms (1944-1951)
El héroe romántico en seis películas españolas de posguerra (1944-1951)
doxa.comunicación |
nº 36, pp. 163-181
| 163
January-June of 2023
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Úrbez-Fernández, P.; Gutiérrez Delgado, R. and Díaz Hernández, O. (2023). e romantic hero in six Spanish post-war lms (1944-1951).
Doxa Comunicación
, 36,, pp. 163-181.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n36a1686
Pablo Úrbez-Fernández
. PhD in Communication from the University of Navarra (2022), where he has been assistant
professor of
Epistemology of Communication
and
Series Script
in the Audio-visual Communication Degree. He currently
works at Villanueva University as a lecturer in the subjects
History of Television, Digital Communication
and
Articial
Intelligence
. His line of research focuses on the script and the representation of history in the audio-visual medium..
University Villanueva, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0001-7781-8888
Ruth Gutiérrez Delgado
. PhD in Public Communication (2004) from the Faculty of Communication of the Universidad
de Navarra. She teaches
Epistemology of Communication
and
Series Scripts
in the Audio-visual Communication degree.
Her main area of research is focused on the Poetic, Myths and Heroism in audio-visual ction, their cognitive dimension
and relationship to the theory of knowledge.
University of Navarra, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-7258-3466
Onésimo Díaz Hernández.
PhD in Contemporary History (1995) from the Universidad del País Vasco and in the History
of the Church (2013) from the Università della Santa Croce. He teaches at the Universidad de Navarra on the subject of
e Church in the modern world: challenges and debates
. He is the author of ten books and does research into politics,
culture and religion in XXth century Spain.
University of Navarra, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-2736-4520
Abstract:
During the early years of Franco’s regime, six lms were released in
Spain whose main characters lived during the Romantic period:
Lola
Montes
(1944),
Espronceda
(1945),
Luis Candelas, el ladrón de Madrid
Resumen:
Durante los primeros años del franquismo se estrenaron en España
seis películas cuyo protagonista vivió durante el Romanticismo: Lola
Montes (1944), Espronceda (1945), Luis Candelas, el ladrón de Madrid
Received: 18/05/2022 - Accepted: 15/06/2022 - Early access: 23/07/2022 - Published: 01/01/2023
Recibido: 18/05/2022 - Aceptado: 15/06/2022 - En edición: 23/07/2022 - Publicado: 01/01/2023
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1. Introduction
Between 1939 and 1953 twenty-ve biographical lms were made in Spain, they told the tales of the lives of prominent
individuals from Spanish history, preferably from episodes linked to the Middle Ages, the Spanish Empire and the Peninsula
War. ese lms were produced during early Francoism and the period of autarchy.
In the middle of the Spanish Civil War, the journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales foresaw a great post-war famine all over Spain:
“a dictatorial government which, weapon in hand, will oblige all Spaniards to work desperately hard and go hungry without
complaint for twenty years” (2019, p. 9).
e Spain of the forties was characterised by food shortages and disease, both in the cities and in the countryside. e
authorities were aware of the appalling supply situation and introduced rationing cards to limit consumption of basic
goods. Moreover, harvests were poor, especially between 1945 and 1949. e Marshall Plan did not come to Franco’s Spain,
condemned to international isolation following the Second World War. ese were the “years of hunger” (Hernández Burgos,
2020, p. 151-172).
In contrast with this grey post-war atmosphere, there was a proliferation of comedies –by far the most frequently produced
lm genre–, fruit of the public’s need for distraction (Benet, 2012, p. 181). Spaniards’ spending on cinema tickets was truly
signicant, as “a particularly impoverished post-war country could enjoy an especially high quality of post-war lm”, giving
rise to the highest box oce gures in the Europe of the time (Faulkner, 2017, p. 84). All this to escape reality. Apart from
comedies, scriptwriters and directors looked for characters that lmgoers could dream about, transporting their minds to a
faraway past bearing little resemblance to the post-war reality. But, despite all this, we should not see this cinematography
as mere “lms of escapism”, for, as Zunzunegui put it (1999, p. 36): “Spanish lm production during the forties […] shows the
(1947),
El huésped de las tinieblas
(1948),
El Marqués de Salamanca
(1948) and
La canción de la Malibrán
(1951). Productions of this type
recreated the Romantic period in the light of the shared image of
Romanticism held in the 1940s. us, as well as transporting audiences
to an exuberant and evocative period cinema, what may be termed
the
Spanish version of Romanticism
, or “Spanish-style Romanticism” was
consolidated. is study focuses on the traits that make up this image
of the model romantic hero, analysing traits of the six main characters.
e six types dened by Argullol have been adopted as a particular
reference:
superhombre, sonámbulo, enamorado, genio demoníaco,
nómada and suicida
.
Keywords:
Spanish cinema; early Francoism; biopic; hero; Romanticism.
(1947), El huésped de las tinieblas (1948), El Marqués de Salamanca
(1948) y La canción de la Malibrán (1951). Este tipo de producciones
recrearon la época romántica al trasluz de la imagen compartida que se
tenía del Romanticismo en la década de 1940. De modo que, además de
trasladar al público a un cine de época exuberante y evocador, se conso
-
lidó la que podemos llamar la versión española de lo romántico o “un
romanticismo a la española”. Esta investigación se centra en los rasgos
que conforman dicha imagen del modelo de héroe romántico, analizan
-
do los rasgos de los seis protagonistas. Como estudio de referencia en
particular se han adoptado los seis tipos denidos por Argullol: super
-
hombre, sonámbulo, enamorado, genio demoníaco, nómada y suicida.
Palabras clave:
Cine español; primer franquismo; película biográca; héroe;
romanticismo.
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complexity of meanings which always make an appearance in any work found in the area that Louis Althusser termed cultural
superstructure”.
Biopics should be placed in this context, the number of such lms being “negligible” (Monterde, 2010, p. 230) when compared
to comedies, melodramas, and musicals. Moreover, biopics should be understood as a typology and not as a lm genre, if
we understand genre to mean, following Altman (2000, p. 35), a formal structure upon which lms are constructed, which
originates uses and customs and generates expectations. ere is therefore no common narrative style in this series of Spanish
biopics, some taking a melodramatic approach, others being adventures and yet others being musicals.
Some biographical lms are found to be linked to calligraphism
,
a cinematographic style of Italian origin dened by Cook
(1981, p. 379) as “a sort of reactionary formalism which dwelled upon literary subjects of the past”. It reached its peak in Spain
in melodramas (fruit of literary adaptations) such as
El escándalo
(Sáenz de Heredia, 1943) and
El clavo
(Rafael Gil, 1944),
giving rise to a class of lms historiography has termed “cine de levita” (Font, 1976, p. 93). us, the art directors of numerous
biopics have found in the style of this “cine de levita” their preferred material to shape the historical setting.
We can identify six movies from amongst these titles that are framed in the Romantic period, the chronology of which, in the
Spanish case, lacks “a clear consensus on where to place it between 1794 and 1898” (Silver, 1996, p. 15), as the Romantic period
is associated with the XIXth century, but it is dicult to pinpoint its beginning and end in Spain.
e main characters of the six lms we plan to analyse lived in the Romantic age: Lola Montez
1
(1821-1861), José de Espronceda
(1808-1842), Luis Candelas (1804-1837), José de Salamanca y Mayol (1811-1883), Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870) and
María Malibrán (1808-1836)
2
.
is paper starts from the hypothesis of looking at the celluloid representation of the historical characters, in order to nd
out if said representation adheres to the norms of the romantic hero, that is, we strive to see if the six movies reect typical
elements of Romanticism through duels, love aairs, tragedies, etcetera. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to show
whether the image of them oered by early-Francoist cinema was romantic, that being a national cinematography nourished
by the romantic literature of Bécquer and Espronceda, and by the lives of the outstanding gures of nineteenth century Spain,
such as the Marquess of Salamanca, as thus was forged the patriotic spirit encouraged by the edgling State through its lms.
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2. Methodology
Firstly, it is necessary to look at the administrative reasons that aected the lms selected. To do so we turned to the
administration’s les and reports indicating the reviews, changes and censorship of content corresponding to each production.
Secondly, in order to substantiate the lm analysis, focused on the modelling of the romantic myth, the classication proposed
by Argullol has been adopted, utilizing the six essential types (
Superhombre, Sonámbulo, Enamorado, Genio demoníaco,
Nómada
&
Suicida
). Parting from this base and bearing in mind that this study does not seek to review the precedents of the
heroic model, the proles of the main characters in the lms are analysed. us, some observations can be made concerning
the assimilation of the romantic heroic prole in the biopics of early Francoism.
3. e romantic hero
is study has proceeded without narratological-functional analysis of the main characters of the six lms chosen, with the
intention of highlighting only their temperamental and symbolic features: which means their characters are interpreted in
the light of the Romantic movement. Understanding of the romantic hero on this point requires a cultural vision of the hero
which necessarily involves contextualizing the gure as the representative image of a period: an aspirational ideal, more or
less shared. However, from an anthropological point of view, it is dicult to dene the matter. In this sense, it is perhaps better
to speak of a “model” or “cultural romantic example” than of a
hero
, in general, due to the immediate evocation of a series of
attributes such as resistance, bravery and a spirit of sacrice (Gutiérrez Delgado, 2019). However, we have herein followed the
sociological vision which extends use of the term ‘hero’ to those characters which lead the action, as Argullol’s study suggests
when establishing categories framed in a cultural movement. Nevertheless, before entering into details of the particularities of
the romantic hero, it would be pertinent to turn to the concept of hero. For example, recalling Savater, Gil Calvo (2006) focuses
the heroic question on several problematic features such as the necessity to demonstrate virtue, self-improvement and success
or, on the contrary, situations of failure (pp. 136-137). In the case of the romantic hero, the tendency towards self-destruction
as a revindication of self constitutes a form of debasement of the action. Even more so if that obsession for meeting death for
glory is based on a mental ction. In that sense, it is worth pointing out that the romantic hero is hardly authentic. According
to Gil Calvo’s distinction (2006), “(...) the great dierence between the authentic hero and their media ghost is that the former
faces objective reality while the latter only does so in ction” (p. 138). Scheler (2018) proposes another concept, in which the
nostalgic perspective is explicit to the classic heroic model which idealises and redenes it in the gure of the romantic hero.
Scheler says that the hero is
at ideal type of human, semidivine (Greek hero) or divine (God of will and power) (...), that at the core of its being is referred
to the noble and the attainment of nobility –therefore, of ‘pure’ and not technical vital values–, whose fundamental virtue is the
natural nobility
of body and soul and the corresponding sensitivity for the noble (p. 103).
Apart from being a model to be imitated, the hero denitively represents, catalyses, an idea of the
pure
noble. Without this
purity –embodying the noble–, of transcending the social and political order, there is no heroism. In this moral framework, the
romantic hero appears partially linked to the idea –also made explicit by Scheler– of the “overabundance of the spiritual will”,
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which has certain features: “power”, “vehemence”, “force”, “being at one’s prime” and “interior discipline”. We feel it necessary
to nuance Scheler, as the romantic hero lacks interior discipline, which would be equivalent to putting the brakes on his/her
emotional outbursts. It is therefore a failing which gives to the romantic prole a touch of downfall and blundering
Romantic heroes are irresistibly drawn towards suicide, a characteristic which immediately converts them into complex and
contradictory gures. Coexisting in them is an immense potential for action and desire, with patent weakness that swiftly
reveals to the spectator that their destiny is to be marked by misfortune. When this is not so, their horizon is dotted with
setbacks and misadventures which hinder them reaching their goals, often romantic ones.
Romantic appropriation often stems from an interpretation predominated by the reinforcement of passion in its most
irrepressible form. With this, the romantic vision reinterprets the events and characters’ personalities, painting them with
a faint hue of loss. In fact, the romantic is an aesthetic perspective (Clarke, p. 3). is worldview is about having an artistic
vision, –contemplating the hero’s actions–, understanding the most poetic dimensions. Nostalgia or, even melancholy, sets a
dissonant and dialectic tone when faced with rationalism. As one of the consequences, History is an object of this liberation
from rationalist pressures. ese idealising visions of certain periods and characters to be honoured generate tales with a spirit
that does not directly correspond to the facts that make up real life. e romantic hero is more a conclusion than a starting point.
At the base of Romanticism as the cause of the character’s appearance –the oft-termed “romantic hero”– there is an underlying
idealising contemplation of reality (Benz, 2016). In other respects, the idealisation which accompanies the romantic portrayal
of characters and heroes coexists with the reality of death. us, the romantic yearning to become a martyr for a lost or simply
impossible cause is realised. is heroic determination is thus a form of extinction and annihilation which gives a style of
protest to the portrayals: the gap between the ideal aspired to and the reality one lives with is insurmountable. e romantic
hero cannot stand a prosaic setting. at context, moreover, sees the birth of one of the most contentious derivations of the
romantic hero: that of romance.
e case of the truly romantic hero is framed in the universe of ideal, prescriptive gures, not necessarily the leader, limited
to the sphere of their being and highly conditioned by socio-political circumstances (Scheler, 2018). However, some aspects
relative to the revolutionary character of the romantic hero cause them to descend to the sphere of leadership, turning them
thus into a
model
of an intrepid and radical leader. Tormented, truncated lives and platonic desires, such as an impossible love,
make up the attributes and personality of the romantic hero. After them, idealism has a tragic tone.
eir ascendence links them to the Greek tragic hero. In the Greek conception of the tragic hero, according to Rodríguez
Adrados, we are presented with “the man faced by the most terrible situations, alone before the greatest of decisions, at risk
of error or of triumph” (1962, pp. 11-35). Bear in mind that this coincides perfectly with the historical need in which that
spirit reappears, just as set out in the context: a world riven with hunger and moral destruction which needs to dream and
nd escapist gures. However, the image of the romantic hero of the audio-visual period analysed makes apparent how, in
Spain, death was unnecessary as an end. erefore, as well as softening the heroic testimony, that process of “making Spanish”
disconnects the hero from mystic Romanticism, truer to the German tradition. e image of the Spanish romantic hero is thus
brought up to date in a lyrical key –at most “tragicomic”– and not tragic.
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us, the termed “liberation” of the passions, as one of the characteristic notes of the romantic spirit, nds its particular
cinematographic home in these lms. Such a materialisation consists of removing all taxing loads and gravitas from the main
characters. erefore, Romanticism assumes a slant adapted to the idiosyncrasy and historical circumstances in which its
reappearance is set. Within this framework of lightness and continuous “wit” in form and conduct, the presence of tragedy
(as an extreme and causal way of facing destiny) is softened in a mannerism of forms; at the same time, what is “romantic”
is the evocation of a series of locations, times (preferably the XIXth century) and dilemmas associated with the
idea
of a
singular melancholy. erefore, the tragic sentiment of loss is supplanted by a recuperation of hope. e images provided by
these movies represent several ideals integrated in a single consideration of Spanish Romanticism, that is: the bravery of the
adventurer who dreams of building a better world, following his/her ideal of justice and peace; perfect devotion to the beloved
and other forms of commitment to diverse causes.
4. A brief description of the lms
4.1. Lola Montes
Antonio Román directed
Lola Montes
in 1944, adapting a story by José María Pemán. e chance of recreating Lola Montez had
been fermenting for some time. During her time in Germany, Imperio Argentina and the lm director Florián Rey received a
proposal from Goebbels to lm her life, responding:
We could make a historical account of Lola Montes’ life, and present it as an Irish dancer marrying Montes, a Sevillian, half-gypsy
dancer, who immediately abandons him to reappear in Bavaria as a lover of King Ludwig I (Argentina & Víllora, 2001, p. 105).
But he wanted “her to become a propagandist of Hitlerian policy”, and to “incorporate the character into the modern world to
propose to students a convenient model of rebelliousness against the world”. Florián Rey turned it down as “nobody in Spain
knew Lola Montes” and the project never saw the light of day (Argentina & Víllora, 2001, pp. 105-108).
In 1942 Benito Perojo tried to relaunch the project, but it never came to fruition (Pérez Núñez, 2018: 221). Two years later,
Antonio Román took it up through his production company Alhambra Films. e director recognised it was a lm “that follows
a fantasy, taking two or three facts from a person’s life and imagining from that base, weaving a plausible, novelesque life”
(Coira, 1999, p. 99).
e lm follows the steps of an Irish woman living in Seville, María Dolores Gilbert, who, helped by a dandy –an undercover
revolutionary agent– takes dance classes from the master Pepe Montes, crossing Europe performing for him. However, Lola
displaces her master and, alone, boosts her reputation while going through a series of lovers. She ends up settling in the
Bavarian Court, where she becomes mistress to King Ludwig I and interferes in the politics of the kingdom, contributing to the
student revolt of 1848 (Amador, 2010, p. 15).
It would seem that, in the rst draft of the script, Lola could have redeemed herself, retraced her steps and joined Carlos
Benjumea. But the lm administration, without really meaning to, added a romantic component to the story’s outcome:
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e most sentimentally pleasing ending has been chosen, though it is the least logical and dramatic. Just turning over a new leaf
is not an option, Lola must die a violent death, though she rst regrets her errors and sins in a scene analogous to that herein
presented
3
.
e lm is placed half-way between the proposals of Florián Rey and Goebbels. On one side, it incorporates that desire to
weave a politico-social plot, as the rebellion against Ludwig I is portrayed, but it is neither the main story –it only takes up
the last third of the lm– nor does it have the ideological take that Hitler intended. Moreover, it has the folkloric tone that
Florián Rey and Imperio Argentina wanted, but Lola’s Spanish character disappears in the international setting (Seville, Paris,
Munich…), perhaps because of “certain desires to open up to the outside world or to establish foreign links” (Pérez Núñez
2018: 221), seeking to market the movie abroad.
4.2. Espronceda
In 1945, Fernando Alonso Casares directed a biopic of the poet José de Espronceda, with a script inspired by the author’s
Canto
a Teresa
. Unfortunately, the lm has been lost, making it dicult –though not impossible– to gather information about its story
and characters. Hueso described the plot as follows:
A vision of the life of the poet José de Espronceda, his family problems and their inuence on his literary activity. It tells us of
his love for Teresa Mancha during his journeys to London and Paris, until their return to Madrid where she, obeying her father’s
wishes, marries a rich, older merchant. After that, the poet, pressured by his mother, marries Bernarda. However, the memory of
his beloved Teresa will forever remain in Espronceda’s work (Hueso, 1998, p. 157).
For Martín Camacho,
Espronceda
belongs to “’period cinema’ due to its starched attire and upmarket character” (2010, p. 736).
His study turns to lm magazines to consider the movie’s production and lming, as well as gathering the reviews following its
opening. Nevertheless, for questions relative to its story, we rely on the cinematographic novel
Espronceda
Some of the romantic notes from the story were patent to the censor’s eyes, commenting: “I nd it really dicult in every
aspect: there is adultery and a revolutionary atmosphere”. Despite this, trust in the moral criteria of the lm-makers permitted
its approval: “warning the director that such circumstances could give rise to a censor’s qualms but authorizing its lming as
both the director and his consultant […] and scriptwriter Don Eduardo Marquina deserve credit for dealing with the aair with
the dignity of the necessary morality”
4
.
4.3. Luis Candelas, El ladrón de Madrid
After
Espronceda,
Fernando Alonso Casares directed his second lm, a biography of bandit Luis Candelas. He trusted that
“this popular, adventure story will resonate with the national public and may also be apt for export” (Cañada, 2000, p. 83).
Méndez-Leite praised the care taken with “the visual details and the aesthetic, chiey in the ensemble scenes and in the
outdoor sequences, many of them perfect and well-organised” (1965, p. 10), though Pérez Núñez categorised it as “an attempt
at ‘bandit movies’ that […] didn’t turn out too convincing” (2018, p. 300).
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ere had been three previous versions of the lm, two in 1926 and the other in 1936. e 1947 piece had an original script,
penned by the director, but the character’s popularity had been clear from the proliferation of biographies and plays written
by José Conde Souleret (1893), José Silva Aramburu (1927), Antonio Espina (1929 and re-edited) and Nicolás González Ruiz
(1946).
e lm by Fernando Alonso Casares was “a major production employing up to two thousand extras and top names” (Cañada,
2004, p. 84). He shows us Luis Candelas born in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés in Madrid, where he and his gang of thieves
lift wallets, disguise themselves to steal from private parties and seduce aristocrats to steal their jewels. His lovers Pepa
la
Malagueña
and Lola
la Naranjera
compete for his love, but he ends up marrying a lady of spotless reputation, pushed by
his mother’s insistence that he be honourable. However, Candelas does not leave his life as a bandit and his lovers, leading
to periods in prison. During the robbery of a stagecoach, disguised, he meets and falls for María. She is equally enamoured,
loving him even though she knows he is a bandit, trying to turn him to the path of righteousness. Candelas tries to redeem
himself, but María nally leaves him when she nds he is already married. Betrayed by a member of the gang, Candelas is
arrested again and condemned to die by strangulation. Before his execution, he confesses his sins to a friar.
e censor’s reports indicate the lm administration’s sensibility towards the lm’s content. ey could show the main
character’s villainy, but “the fact that the story has a tragic ending is suciently chastening. ere is no wish to make an
example of the gure or actions of Luis Candelas”. e tragic ending, in this sense, would full a more didactic than aesthetic
function. Similarly, they warned that “Luis’s love for María must display a certain desire by the thief to truly redeem himself”.
Following this didactic line, the romantic lead’s search for redemption must be manifest, which implies his recognition that
his life has not been a happy one
5
.
4.4. El huésped de las tinieblas
Antonio del Amo directed this 1948 lm about the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. He did not intend to give a thorough historical
account, something made clear in a poster: “this lm is not a biography of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, but a fantastic interpretation
of the sublime and tormented dreams of the great Sevillian poet”. Gómez Mesa thought similarly, dening the movie as “a
biography rather more imagined than true –interpretative of the poetic meaning– of Bécquer” (1978, p. 49).
Two producers took on the project: ERCE and Sagitario Films, who three years later were to also produce
La canción de la
Malibrán
. e script was the work of Manuel Mur Oti and Antonio Gimeno. ough we have not found an explicit link between
the two lms, it is worth noting that in 1946
El gran amor de Bécquer
, directed by Alberto de Zavalía had opened in Argentina,
with a script written by María Teresa León and Rafael Alberti.
e movie starts by showing the poet saving the life of a young revolutionary, not knowing that he is the brother of Dora, with
whom he falls in love. His conversations with Dora provide the inspiration for his poems, but their marriage is made impossible
by the opposition of her aunt, who intends to wed her to Arthur. Bécquer, aicted by illness, withdraws to the monastery of
Veruela, where he rests and writes stories and legends inspired by the dreams he has there. On his return, his relationship with
5
Censorship report on
Luis Candelas, el ladrón de Madrid
. File. 45-46. AGA 36. 04683
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Dora is still impossible, as she has married. ey meet again some time later, Bécquer still poor and sickly. But it is Dora who
passes away rst, the poet bidding her farewell at her bedside.
Doubts were raised by the censors concerning the duel, a poisoning and the illicit love between Dora and Bécquer. However,
several of these realities were resolved by presenting it all under a cape of fantasy, as the poisoning “is admissible as a nightmare”,
and (cutting one shot of “romantic eusion”), the illicit relationship of the lovers could have taken place in “Bécquer’s dream
in a cell in the monastery”
6
.
4.5. El Marqués de Salamanca
In 1948, Edgar Neville presented this lm related to the centenary of the construction of the rst railway in Spain, with a script
by Tomás Borrás. e opening credits describe the Marquess as “the romantic native of Málaga, Don José de Salamanca. is
was the man who spent money he didn’t have and had money it was almost impossible to spend”. us, his adscription to
Romanticism is beyond all doubt.
e story begins just before the Marquess dies, when Alfonso XII tells a friend of Salamanca’s life. When he had come to Madrid
in 1835, he had surrounded himself with inuential people, his admired María Buschental and general Narváez, and had
started to make money trading in salt. He projected the building of the rst railway, became Narváez’s enemy, went into exile
in France and on his return to Madrid refurbished a theatre and built the Madrid neighbourhood that bears his name. e lm
takes a costumbrist and farcical tone.
4.6. La canción de la Malibrán
Luis Escobar directed this lm about María Malibrán in 1951. She was a Parisian opera singer –of Spanish parents– who soon
achieved international fame and worked with Bellini and Rossini. She died of illness at 28. Compared to the ve previous
lms, María Malibrán’s character is the least
romántico
, although it does conserve certain heroic characteristics, as we shall
see below.
e lm starts in the XXth century, when two dancers notice a painting of María Malibrán on a corridor wall in the opera. A
ashback takes us to the XIXth century, when a young María Malibrán, under the strict tutelage of her father, becomes famous
when stepping in by pure chance for the leading actress in the
e Barber of Seville
. An unhappy marriage sees her travel to the
US, where she continues singing, but is not content. When her husband is incarcerated, she goes to Paris, where she renounces
her dreams and sings in variety theatres to make easy money and free her husband. A noble gentleman, Carlos, falls for her and
helps her return to the stage. Her husband’s arrival interrupts her adultery, although he dies in a card game and the two lovers
are united again. e adultery is only hinted at, as the censor emphasized the risk of making it explicit:
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El huésped de las tinieblas
. File. 272-47. AGA 36. 04697.
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ere is however a certain sympathy towards the love, then illicit, between María and Carlos, and which can only be realized after
the death of Malibrán. [...] it must be made clear that, before his death, there is no adultery between Carlos and María. With this
stipulation, its authorization may proceed
7
.
Unlike
Lola Montes
, which had no qualms in showing the character’s liberality, Escobar whitewashes María Malibrán’s life,
giving the persona a naive aura, far from libertine, who had only one lover –as opposed to the many in real life– and showing no
signs of the disease that brought about her premature death. e lm is weakened by not exploiting the romantic components
–arrogance, lovers, illness, tragic death– that characterised the real woman.
5. Argullol´s romantic hero and the protagonists of biographical lm
5.1. El superhombre
Compared to the classical and medieval hero, the romantic hero presents a dierent archetype. In the words of Sánchez García,
he/she presents
A new concept concerning the importance of individual subjectivity as a means to interpret society and nature […]. Assuming the
challenge of being what one really is, beyond conventions, and facing the derivations that this decision brings with it serves to
distinguish the superior individual. Neither birth nor wealth, but personal worth (Sánchez García, 2018, p. 46).
e Marquess of Salamanca built his subjectivity in the business world. In 1835 he arrived in Madrid with a suitcase and no
money, but he did have an objective: “I’ll be rich in a few days”. His ambition was the means of forging his identity, as well as
his faith in his abilities: “put me in touch with the most powerful people and I’ll take care of the rest”. Moreover, another trait
of the romantic hero is the breaking with tradition, the transgressing of norms, due to his/her drive to innovate, to be original
and to seek new horizons. José de Salamanca started his adventure towards the status of “multimillionaire” in the salt business,
but after that he decided to build the rst railway line in the country and a modern neighbourhood similar to those in Europe’s
great cities, as well as doing up a theatre to make it the nest of the time.
In the case of Lola Montez, Hueso underlines the rearmation of “her individual character over and above the vicissitudes she
came up against and the aairs that marked her turbulent life” (2009: 161). She did not accept the advice of others concerning
her future, it is she who decides where and when to dance, who seeks out and turns down lovers and who pulls the strings of the
King of Bavaria. As the character of Walter puts it: “although her ambition is great, she is enough in herself to satisfy her wishes”.
Lola Montez is also an innovator, as during the student uprising in Bavaria, her dancing is accused of being “revolutionary” as
it dees classical norms.
e love that Espronceda feels for Teresa makes her proclaim: “ere is no world beyond us” (Ediciones Puerto, 1945, p. 11).
Regarding Luis Candelas, the price he has to pay for his liberty and individualism is the constant struggle against the forces of
order. María Malibrán, nally, moves like a robot during the rst half of the lm, obeying her parents, then her husband and
7
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nally her sister-in-law. Only later does she gain a “romantic awareness”, as, on being reprimanded by her sister-in-law, it is
she who, of her own free will, decides to leave home and take up the reins of her life.
5.2. El sonámbulo
e great romantic revolution in the consideration of dreams lies, precisely, in not being limited to their pure –and still analytical–
passive perception: the romantic reveals to the somnambulist, in the oneiric act, an itinerary of freedom and creativity which is
denied in daily life (Argullol, 2008, p. 420).
Bécquer nds in his dreams the inspiration necessary for his work. In Veruela monastery, he dreams the song of a miserere,
and on leaving his cell sees the monks walking around a corpse, his corpse. Dora appears in the same dream, walking with him
in the surroundings of the monastery until he comes across an open-air dance, all bathed in darkness, as “for the romantic, the
journey to the forbidden, into the darkness, is the greatest of human adventures” (Argullol, 2008, p. 360). Finally, they come
across Dora’s betrothed, who makes Bécquer dig a grave, although, after drinking from a poisoned cup, it is he who occupies it.
When he wakes, Bécquer tells the prior of his dreams and insists he wants to keep on dreaming, as the dream is preferable as
there is nothing for him in this world. Here is romantic idealism: the dream is preferable –fruit of his subjectivity– to reality.
Something similar happens to María Malibrán, who lives a fantasy after abandoning her sister-in-law and living independently,
smitten with her lover and rehearsing for her promising return to the stage. e unexpected appearance of her husband,
precisely when she is performing Bellini’s
La sonámbula
, makes for a bitter awakening.
Dreams can connect the hero to the transcendental, but not to earthly transcendence –tragic destiny impedes it–, but to the
transcendence of his work after death. For Espronceda, “a writer’s time does not come till after his death. Immortality comes
not to the living” (Ediciones Puerto, 1945, p. 28). In Salamanca’s case, “for things to start on the right foot, they always have to
be clothed in a little poetry”, as it is art –ingenuity– that is the tool for transcendence.
Argullol states that “the romantic poet, beyond pain, celebrates; as he knows that his only real hope, above death’s triumph, is
to make the triumph of the word prevail” (2008, p. 455). Again, it is Salamanca who confesses that, more than money, what he
wants is to leave his mark on Spain; therefore, regarding his work: “the pleasure of creating it, is payment enough”.
5.3. El enamorado
González Ruiz wrote that “the romantic movement, in its reaction against the world around it, boldly broke with intellectualism,
and raised the ag of sentiment” (1941, p. 63). Perhaps love is the romantic sentiment par excellence. Espronceda proclaimed
in the lm that “life and love are above everything else” (Ediciones Puerto, 1945, p. 22).
However romantic love is not platonic,
but it contemplates, with all their consequences, pleasure and sensuality. ‘Platonic’ love is totally anti-tragic as it renounces
pleasure to prevent pain, whereas romantic love, takes one and the other as inseparable siblings (Argullol, 2008, pp. 409-410).
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ese characters love and suer because of that love, a poisoned love that causes their misfortunes and those of their beloved.
us, “Teresa too deserves to nd peace but will not nd it until she abandons Espronceda” (Ediciones Puerto, 1945, p. 34).
For Lola Montez, the accursed love is that of Carlos Benjumea, a young Spanish ocer. His goodness, as well as his
identication with order and tradition, are the contrary of the protagonist’s immoderate lifestyle. Carlos will continue with
his adventures across Europe, and she falls for him, but their love is condemned to fail due to Lola’s liberality, unable to give
up her independence or her success on the stage; as the character of Walter says: “winners cannot have a heart, their fame
would fall to pieces before the heat of inecient sentimentalism”. Paradoxically, it is one sentimentalism –a desire for glory and
independence– which displaces another –falling in love–.
e romantic lover unable […] to be happy even in situations that apparently should cause happiness, aspires to such wealth that
he loses himself in the spaces of desire. Insatiability is his sentence, and the more he sates his thirst for innity, the emptier he
nds the glass of his serenity. at is why, he inevitably loves and hates at the same time (Argullol, 2008, p. 416).
María Malibrán’s misfortune is to have married, naively taken in, a wealthy gambler whose bad luck at the table sees him
imprisoned for debt. e marriage is a barrier to her union with her lover, although their adultery is nally consummated. With
her husband’s reappearance, unhappiness returns to her life.
In Bécquer’s case, his misfortune is to fall for Dora being “a poor starry-eyed poet”. e two lovers swear that they will ght
against all odds, but Bécquer proves unable to improve his social standing and impose his will on Dora’s aunt and ancé.
Bécquer not only suers separation from his loved one, but because he is unable to stie his feelings and forget. Finding her
again years later, he confesses: “I have lived only for your memory and for you”.
We also nd in Bécquer another characteristic of romantic love. His trysts with Dora take on an artistic-literary aspect, such as
when she recites some of her own verses in a park; those same verses later serve as inspiration for the poet’s work. Concerning
women in Romanticism:
e attractive thing in them is their intellectual capacity and that they oer themselves as companions in a dialogue for spirits
whose restlessness calls for communication and friendship. ese are women with a great sense of their own dignity and self-
awareness […], experienced in life, and who therefore can be, and in fact are, ideal companions in a relationship that has as much
of «logic» as it does of eroticism (Hernández-Pacheco, 1995, p. 115).
Something similar occurs between Espronceda and Teresa, as the director himself pointed out: “before meeting her, Espronceda
was a poet lost on Olympus. Once she became his muse, he was seated in the salon of the chosen ones” (Centeno, p. 1945).
We can also consider José de Salamanca’s love for María as romantic, she being the spouse of the magnate Buschental. If
in the case of Espronceda and Bécquer the
romantic muse
inspiredtheir literary work, Salamanca is inspired in his projects
and buildings. But
El Marqués de Salamanca
adheres even more to Romanticism when we consider that the protagonist got
married in 1835 to Petronila Livermore, with whom he had two children. Edgar Neville, nonetheless, presents a Marquess who
is apparently single and unable to consummate his union with María.
e love between the two characters is born of their mutual admiration and their conversations deal more with business than
with desire, something only Salamanca confesses to explicitly when he is ruined in the lm: “you’re worth more than all the
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friends and all the money in the world. If you would but listen to me now…”. At María’s insistence, the two characters never
consummate their adultery, though she always hides their meetings from her husband.
Finally, Luis Candelas is also a romantic hero for the love he professes for María, but we must bear in mind that this is not only
true of the ctional character, but that this archetype would also t the real-life Luis Candelas. He wed Manuela Sánchez in
1823 and abandoned her, he had numerous lovers such as Lola
la Naranjera
–a character in the lm–, Paca,
la Maja,
and Mary
Alicia, but “his true love was Clara or Clara María, an eighteen-year-old orphan, beautiful, humble and loyal” (Gómez del Val).
us, taking the true aairs of Luis Candelas as a basis, the movie highlights his romantic love through the redeeming role
of young María. In this sense, the character shares traits with Zorrilla’s Tenorio, in that a woman’s purity moves his heart to
remorse.
5.4. El genio demoníaco
Argullol uses the term
genio demoníaco
for the romantic hero who embodies “man’s destructive drives” and who “makes an
appeal to the devil” (2008, p. 429). is second characteristic is dicult to nd among the Spanish romantics, who lived a full
but dierent Romanticism from that of other European countries. Lista, for example says, “the only ‘good’ romanticism was the
spiritual, nationalistic, catholic, and medieval, in short, a historic romanticism” (Silver, 1996, p. 42). us, the catholic stamp
on the Spanish romantics hindered the artistic development of a current of
demoníaca
stricto sensu
.
Having said that, the Spanish romantics did cultivate a hero who was libertine and dedicated to vice, proud of his moral
dissolution and absolutely not a model of virtue. For Wordsworth:
e born poet is distinguished from other men particularly by his gift of intense sensitivity and susceptibility to passion, […which]
is not incompatible with vice, and… vice leads to misfortune –more acute due to those sensibilities typical of a genius (Abrahams,
1975, p. 154).
So much is this so that Teresa recriminates Espronceda: “I would be ashamed to see the slightest weakness in a man who
taught me to ride roughshod over everything” (Ediciones Puerto, 1945, p. 23). Espronceda is described as “arrogant, intelligent,
resolute. But together with these qualities, there are many defects: a reveller, spendthrift, inconsistent and prone to falling in
love” (p. 10). Opposed to him, we nd he who is his rival for Teresa’s love, Bayo: “serious and formal; possesses great capital
[…]; getting on in years” (p. 11). is contraposition rearms Espronceda’s characterisation as a romantic hero, in that Bayo is
his opposite. Against the poet’s defects, Bayo is “serious and formal”; against poverty: “great capital”; against the cult of youth:
“getting on”.
Lola Montez “is only moved by money and luxury” (Jurado, 2015, p. 327), and her condition as a sinner does not change until
the end of the lm, when she confesses to a priest. She is, moreover, conscious of her ability, and does not hesitate to use both
her artistic talent and her beauty –a true
femme fatale
– to achieve her ends. us, faced by the revolution that causes her fall,
she does not hesitate to seduce one of the young revolutionaries, without success.
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Concerning Candelas, his trade is to stimulate his
genio demoníaco
. He and his gang rob in dierent ways, are pursued and
defy authority. To make his mother happy, he weds a woman who he does not hesitate to abandon, and continually lands in
jail. Candelas is no virtuous hero or defender of good.
Edgar Neville presents us with a truly complex José de Salamanca. Salamanca does not live, like the others, a life of excess,
and even has honourable aspirations, like the building of the railway and the refurbishing of the theatre. But this romantic
hero does not hesitate to disregard virtue to achieve his ends. He speculates and participates in corrupt deals, bribes, uses
condential information to trade on the stock market and ruins the competition to then gain popularity by paying o their
debts.
5.5. El nómada
Following Argullol, “the romantic hero is, in dreams or reality, an obsessive nomad. He needs to range over wide spaces
–as wide as possible– to liberate his spirit from the stiing airs of limitation” (2008, pp. 439-440). To this end, some of the
characters roam abroad.
e lm
Espronceda
begins in London, during the poet’s exile. It is there that he falls in love with Teresa –another exile–
and where his character is rearmed by the contrast between his Spanish character as opposed to that of foreigners. María
Malibrán’s rst performance of
e Barber of Seville
also takes place in London. From there she travels to the United States,
where she sings in Washington, Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Tired of the States, she begs of her husband that they
move to Paris. In one of her performances there she is presented as an artist “who comes to us from the youngest of countries,
America”.
Lola Montez leaves Spain to triumph as a dancer, and after a stay in Paris travels to Berlin, Prague, Saint Petersburg, London,
Dresden and Brussels, until she settles in Bavaria, under the protection of King Ludwig I.
In the Marquess’s case, we are told that he “went to London and what the government didn’t get, he did, a loan”. His servants
mention that he has houses in seven European cities, including Paris and Rome. Following a business failure, he did not get
discouraged, but travelled and built the Danubian railways and those of California, moreover he established a rail network in
the Papal States.
5.6. El suicida
González Ruiz wrote in 1941 that “the romantics often [give] us, in literature and in life, a note of hopeless melancholy, the
shattering of our moral brake, and in more than one process, of rigorous and implacable logic, suicide”. Following Argullol, we
should understand suicide not as a single act that culminates in our death, but as that process of ‘self-destruction’ that brings
the actor to “the full dominion of his identity” (2008, pp. 446-447).
is process of self-destruction, a consequence of their dramatic actions, bears with it a tragic destiny, from which the
characters cannot escape. e suicidal hero accepts that destiny, and so refuses to change his/her actions.
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Lola Montez sees the progress of the student revolution in 1848, she being the cause, but she refuses to give in. Even when the
revolutionary victory is a fact, she proudly dees them and stares death straight in the eye. Only when she has lost all she had
does she repent her sins, but we must remember that the tragic destiny has already been consummated. As a consequence of
her behaviour, the revolution triumphed and she lost everything, but during that process she refused to modify her convictions,
such that her transformation takes place a posteriori.
Tragic destiny is inseparable from loneliness and melancholy. Faced with the impossibility of being with Teresa, Espronceda
“feels sadder and more desolate every day” (Ediciones Puerto, 1945, p. 20). Furthermore, he will never be happy, as tragic
destiny imposes on them only one alternative: a wretched love in life, or death, Teresa admits: “I want you to understand that
I live only for your love. But neither can you live if you leave me, because I shall know how to make anguish accompany you to
the end of your days, for having ruined my life” (p. 39).
Bécquer arms: “I’ve never felt more alone”. Tragic destiny means that he can never consummate his love for Dora in this
world. Bécquer attends her on her deathbed, now married, and sometime after it is he who abandons this life. When he dies,
Dora’s ghost appears to gather up his body and says “at last”; therefore, their love triumphs, but is only possible after death.
A caption tells us in the
El Marqués de Salamanca
: “Here is the story of a man who admits his melancholy: ‘e worst deal… my
life!’”. José de Salamanca was an ambitious, intelligent and ingenious man –el
genio romántico
– in business, and achieved great
things which brought him popularity, but he died poor. Every time he triumphed, he was ruined; like a phoenix, he regained
his wealth, completed a project and went broke again. A tragic destiny denied him happiness. He achieved the wellbeing of
others through his buildings –the railway, the theatre…–, but he was unable to enjoy his own work; trapped on the wheel of
destiny, he spun it again and again to escape from nancial ruin that was always waiting around the next corner.
Finally, Candelas’s destiny was doomed to failure. His idea of redeeming himself and changing his ways –initially false, but
later sincere– was frustrated by the weight of his past, by the pressure of his accomplices and by the incomprehension of the
authorities. e only thing aiding Candelas towards a good life is the purity of María’s love, but his skills, habits, friendships
and objectives are not suited to that end. He feels:
the formlessness of the world around him. A world in which ideals, ends, situations, and even adversities are not dened; one in
which the hero does not feel guided by the call of a vigorous moral collective nor driven by grand Promethean objectives (Argullol,
2008, pp. 380-381).
Candelas is rm in facing death, and redemption is not possible in life, there is no place in this world for a repentant bandit:
only death –following the confession of his sins– will permit his redemption.
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6. Conclusions
Amongst the past ages that serve as a framework for the adaptation of biopics, there are six lms with a protagonist who
lived during Romanticism. e proliferation of novels and novelised biographies during the XXth century inuenced the
popularity and the form of representing these characters, as, as we have seen,
Lola Montes
“chased her fantasy”,
El huésped de
las tinieblas
is a “fantastic interpretation” of the poet’s “sublime and tormented dreams”, and
El Marqués de Salamanca
omits
the entrepreneur’s real-life marriage.
As seen above, the interpretation of Romanticism through the characters selected gives a particular tone to the idea of the
natural nobility of the hero, as expounded by Scheler. While the six main characters in these lms embody the noble during their
lives, in their biopics their tragic, ill-fated destiny is softened giving to these versions a certain triumphalist and costumbrist air.
Professionally, four of them cultivated noble arts: Espronceda and Bécquer, poetry; Lola Montez, dance; and María Malibrán,
singing. José de Salamanca built magnicent buildings for posterity, and Luis Candelas saw his nobility blossom when he
found true love. e lack of interior discipline, together with a self-destructive feeling due to the sentimental excesses of their
behaviour cause the characters’ misfortunes.
eir loves (Lola Montez, Espronceda, Bécquer), profession (Salamanca) and social reintegration (Luis Candelas) are ultimately
fatalistically cut short. We can see, in their attitude, their way of facing their fatalist destiny; nostalgia and melancholy (Bécquer,
Espronceda, Malibrán), and also arrogance (Lola Montez), fruit of impotence before irreversible events. One perceives a
romantic touch in their rebelliousness against a rationalism and order impossible to change that seems to banish freedom
from their lives. However, the characteristic note by which Romanticism is modulated in Spain, leaving a ‘Spanish version’ of
Romanticism, is the emphasis on the greatness of their work from a national point of view: they are heroes due to their feats
which inspire and reinforce national pride. Moreover, their incontinent spirits are a didactic revelation of a moral character
one can sympathise with and ‘learn’ from.
e six characters from these lms display the characteristics of the romantic hero dened by Argullol “a la española”. It is
important to highlight that the Spaniards who ocked to the cinemas between 1944 and 1951 saw as the dening traits of these
heroes a pernicious subjectivity and an individualism corresponding to the
superhombre
which resulted in miserable lives.
erefore, in these six lms “the work” is separate from “the author”, with the purpose -unconscious or not- of recognising
merit but discarding the genius’s moral blundering. e suggestive capacity of the oneiric world of the
sonámbulo
, the
radicalness of love –even its destructiveness– as an exponent of romantic sentiments, the compatibility of vice and heroism
for the
genio demoníaco
, the fascination of travel –adventure and a lack of roots– typical of the
nómada
, as well as the self-
destructive character, unable to transcend during his earthly existence, consubstantial to the
suicida
reveal an aesthetic patina
with which to supercially interpret fatality; while the decided, lively air of the costumbrist and folkloric atmosphere -with a
hue of religiosity- oers an ending open to hope of eternal life for these passionate “poor souls”.
us, the six characters nd themselves as inserts in the peculiarities specic to Spanish Romanticism. In short, whilst still
sharing traits of European Romanticism, these traits are softened, due –mainly– to the catholicity –religious and cultural–
diused by Spanish intellectuals and writers. ese characters will not contend with the devil
stricto sensu
, but limit themselves
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to extolling vice; their process of destruction will give o a ray of hope; and their radicality in love is to be understood as a
loyalty
in aeternum
despite their separation.
ese lms allow an adequate approach to Spanish Romanticism, in both its acceptations: chronological (the rst half of the
XIXth century, the setting for the lms) and intellectual (the specic way in which Romanticism was assimilated in Spain).
ese lm-makers probably lmed the six movies drawn by the rst acceptation: escaping to the past, costumes, recreated
scenes, duels and frock coats. e second acceptation –analysed in this paper– was nothing but the obligatory consequence of
having recreated that period.
7. Acknowledgments
is paper has been translated to English by Brian O’Halloran.
8. Specic contributions of each author
Name and Surname
Conception and design of the workPablo Úrbez-Fernández
Methodology
Ruth Gutiérrez Delgado
Data collection and analysisPablo Úrbez-Fernández
Discussion and conclusionsPablo Úrbez-Fernández y Ruth Gutiérrez Delgado
Drafting, formatting, version review and approvalOnésimo Díaz Hernández
9. Bibliographic references
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3-22.
Argentina, I.; V
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llora, P.-M. (2001).
Imperio Argentina, Malena Clara
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Argullol, R. (2008).
El héroe y el único: el espíritu trágico del romanticismo
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Benet, V. (2012).
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nº 36, pp. 163-181
|
January-June of 2023
Pablo Úrbez-Fernández, Ruth Gutiérrez Delgado and Onésimo Díaz Hernández
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
181
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