Horror and the Gothic in Spanish Cinema - mml.cam.ac.uk · Psychological –dreams, hallucinations,...
Transcript of Horror and the Gothic in Spanish Cinema - mml.cam.ac.uk · Psychological –dreams, hallucinations,...
Horror and the
Gothic in Spanish
Cinema
Guillermo del Toro:
In the eighteenth century Romanticism – and with it the Gothic
tale – surged as a reaction against the suffocating dogmas of
Enlightenment. Empiricism weighed heavily upon our souls so
that, as the age of reason went to sleep, it produced monsters.
Reason and science were enthroned, then the Gothic
Romance exploded full of emotion and thrills.(Diestro-Dopido Pan’s Labyrinth, p.22)
Goya ‘El sueño de la razón produce monstruos’ 1797-1799
Take – An old castle, half of it ruinous
A long gallery, with a great many doors, some secret ones.Three murdered bodies, quite fresh.
As many skeletons, in chests and presses.
An old woman hanging by the neck; with her throat cut.
Assassins and desperadoes, 'quant. suff.'
Noises, whispers, and groans, threescore at least.
Mix them together in the form of three volumes, to be taken at any of
the watering places before going to bed.
(Walkers Hibernian Magazine, 1798)
Meteorological – rain, storms, mists, darkness
Topographical – forests, mountains, deserts, chasms, boundless
ocean
Architectural – towers, prisons, castles, crypts, ruins, secret passages,
mazes
Material – masks, disguises, armour, tapestries, billowing curtains
Textual – riddles, folklore, rumours, fragmented texts, stories in stories,
dialect
Spiritual – symbolism, religious allegory, Catholic ritual, magic and
the occult
Psychological – dreams, hallucinations, madness, doubles, ghosts,
death
(adapted from Nick Groom The Gothic)
Early Gothic cinema?
The Lumiere brothers Le squelette joyeux (1895)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMSLL5AH1m0
George Melies La manoir du diable (1896)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmKaz3Quzo
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1920)
Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)
Saint Francis in Meditation, Zurburán (1639)
Saint Paul the
Hermit, Ribera
(1638)
Goya’s Saturno devorando a su hijo (1819-1823)
echoed in the Pale Man devouring fairies in El laberinto del fauno
Goya’s witches (1819-1823) echoed in the aesthetic of
El espinazo del diablo
Arthur Rackham twisted dead tree in
Sleepy Hollow (1928) echoed in
El laberinto del fauno
Giménez’s Paracuellos (1975-) as influence on story and aesthetic of El espinazo del diablo
The iconography of Saint Lucy – Bayer’s Lonely metropolitan (1932) – the Pale Man
Marcelino, pan y vino (Vajda, 1955) – the miracle
of the living Christ becomes the mythical faun
Seeing and visibility – Ofelia and Ana in
El espíritu de la colmena (Erice, 1973) acquire a
new vision of the world
El espinazo del diablo
¿Qué es un fantasma? Un evento terrible condenado a repetirse una y otra vez, un instante de dolor quizás, algo muerto que parece por momentos vivo aún, un sentimiento suspendido en el tiempo, como una fotografía borrosa, como un insecto atrapado en ámbar. Un fantasma, eso soy yo.
Bloody remains and traces of
identity
Acquiring points of view – Jacinto’s
past and Santi watches Carlos
The bomb – a ticking heart
El laberinto opening sequence – reversal of time; mythic worlds; brutal realities
The abject – the consumed and the
expelled; borders of human, animal
and vegetable
Monsters, fantasy and
reality
Images of the uterine
Magical ending:
image, colour and
emotion