Outside the Canon. Women Pop Artists in the Collection
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Film and Music

The films of Cecilia Bartolomé work as a response to cinema from the era in which they were made, not only to the genre of light-hearted comedy, a more obvious approach, and even the musical, but also to New Spanish Cinema, demonstrating that women could make films despite the difficulties they came up against. Thus, without falling into victimisation and with a masterly use of satire and irony, Bartolomé questioned each of the limitations imposed upon women and highlighted how another way of life — independent and far from conventionalisms — was possible for women of that time.

Cecilia Bartolomé

Margarita y el lobo (Margarita and the Wolf) is a medium-length film made in 1969 by Cecilia Bartolomé as a final project in her Film Directing degree at the Official School of Cinematography in Madrid. Along with Carmen de Carabanchel (Carmen from Carabanchel) — a short film produced four years previously, also as part of her studies at the same School – it can be considered the first feminist film in the history of Spanish cinema. Based on the novel Les Stances à Sophie (1963), by French feminist Christiane Rochefort, Margarita y el lobo is a musical in which Bartolomé tells the story of a young middle-class woman who, after falling in love and marrying a boy from high society, separates to live an independent life.

The film is structured into five chapters, and in each one the director introduces a theme to deconstruct the standard life model of women as “angel of the home” and to execute a critique, devastating and hilarious in equal measure, of the system and its most emblematic institutions, such as Justice, University and the Catholic Church. The obligation to be happy, marriage as the only option for women in life, adultery, lesbianism, and prostitution accompany a track from a different musical genre for each case, including bossa nova, The Beatles’ pop music and a sung version of the Creed. The film was censored, as was the artistic practice of the artist, which meant almost ten years would pass before she was able to shoot her first feature-length film Vámonos, Bárbara (Let’s Go, Bárbara, 1978), a chant for women’s freedom.
Cecilia Bartolomé: Carmen de Carabanchel (Carmen from Carabanchel, 1965)

Cecilia Bartolomé: Carmen de Carabanchel (Carmen from Carabanchel, 1965)

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Cecilia Bartolomé, Margarita y el lobo, 1968

Cecilia Bartolomé: Margarita y el lobo (Margarita and The Wolf, 1968)

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Cecilia Bartolomé: Vámonos, Bárbara (Let’s Go, Bárbara, 1978)

Cecilia Bartolomé: Vámonos, Bárbara (Let’s Go, Bárbara, 1978)

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The Films from that Era

Las Conversaciones de Salamanca (The Salamanca Conversations), held from 14 to 19 May 1955, brought together cinema critics and professionals from divergent ideological spheres, facilitating intellectual debate around the aesthetic and social role of film. In line with the new wave cinema surfacing across Europe, it set forth the need to create high-grade cinema with a national character that would reflect the situation facing Spanish citizens and their reality.

Pivotal titles from New Spanish Cinema are Calle Mayor (Main Street, 1956) by Juan Antonio Bardem, Miguel Picazo’s La tía Tula (Aunt Tula, 1964) and Nueve cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Berta, 1966) by Basilio Martín Patino, films in which, starting from realist considerations, depict stifling family environments and domestic spaces where repression impedes normal relationships. In these stories, oppressive living conditions for women are front and centre and take on a symbolic quality.

Almost exact opposites are Rafael Salviá’s Las chicas de la Cruz Roja (Red Cross Girls, 1958) and La gran familia (The Big Family, 1962) by Fernando Palacios, both falling within the light-hearted comedy genre, the españolada (stereotypically Spanish) inherited from the sainete (Spanish comic sketch), displaying the stereotype and fixity of social classes under an umbrella of happiness and joy before the scarcity of material resources. The option of marriage and family appear as the only possible paths in the organisation of a woman’s life, and in these titles the female characters represent a moralising and exemplary role, avowing women’s place in society.
Juan Antonio Bardem: Calle Mayor (Main Street, 1956)

Juan Antonio Bardem: Calle Mayor (Main Street, 1956)

In a small town a single woman called Isabel is the subject of mockery from men who, trying to make fun of her, convince a guy called Juan to feign a love affair.

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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Rafael Salvià: Las chicas de la Cruz Roja (Red Cross Girls, 1958)

Rafael Salvià: Las chicas de la Cruz Roja (Red Cross Girls, 1958)

One of the decade’s box office hits in Spain, this film consolidated a kind of “Italian style” comedy, with different intersecting stories, always characterised by an ending of optimism.

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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Fernando Palacios: La gran familia (The Big Family, 1962)

Fernando Palacios: La gran familia (The Big Family, 1962)

The story of a large family made up of a married couple, fifteen children and a grandfather. Carlos Alonso is a surveyor who frenziedly moonlights — he has no other choice if he wants to provide for the family, although there is still the remote hope of winning the National Birth Prize.

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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Miguel Picazo: La tía Tula (Unamuno) (Aunt Tula, 1964)

Miguel Picazo: La tía Tula (Unamuno) (Aunt Tula, 1964)

Based on a novel by Miguel de Unamuno, La tía Tula is a psychological and social portrait of provincial Spanish society — people like Aunt Tula, with a mass of powerful and insurmountable contradictions: on the one hand, spartan rigidity and straightness; on the other, a volcano boiling over, rocked by desire and transgression to tear down the monotony engulfing her.

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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Basilio Martín Patino: Nueve cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Berta, 1966)

Basilio Martín Patino: Nueve cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Berta, 1966)

Lorenzo, a student from Salamanca, has recently spent a summer in England and discovered other ways of life and new horizons. It is there that he meets Berta, the daughter of an exile and the source of his attraction. Upon his return, the traditional family environment, the routine relationships of his family and girlfriend and the tedium of the city start to smother him. His restlessness and disgruntlement are heightened in the letters he writes to that idealised Berta that remains overseas.

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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Roberto Bodegas: Españolas en París (Spanish Women in Paris, 1971)

Roberto Bodegas: Españolas en París (Spanish Women in Paris, 1971)

At the start of the 1970s, over forty thousand Spanish women worked in Paris as servants. Few had previously crossed the border; most had not even left their villages…

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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Jaime de Armiñán: Mi querida señorita (My Dear Young Lady, 1971)

Jaime de Armiñán: Mi querida señorita (My Dear Young Lady, 1971)

Adela Castro is a middle-aged spinster resigned to the fact that her physique will mean no man will want her. But on her return to the city of Santiago on old widower friend asks for her hand in marriage. Adela asks for advice from her confessor, concerned she is not a “normal” woman given that she shaves.

Poster courtesy of Filmoteca Española

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The Music from that Era

At the end of the 1960s in Spain, opposite music promoted by Francoism (traditional Castile folk, Andalusian flamenco, zarzuela), the protest song began to make its presence felt. The demand for rights and freedom against the repression of the regime was also expressed through music bearing a strong relation to social change and used as a way of making the country’s different cultural identities silenced by the dictatorship visible. As with artists, women singers and singer-songwriters confronted the official culture of Francoism, demonstrating their commitment to promoting change and bringing to light feminist aspirations.

A compilation of songs by Vainica Doble, Maria del Mar Bonet, Cecilia, Pepa Flores (Marisol), Rosa León and Marina Rossell can be heard on RRS Museo Reina Sofía Radio.

Songs

  1. María del Mar Bonet. Qué volent aquesta gent, Concentric (1968)
  2. Rosa León. La secretaria ideal, EMI (The Ideal Secretary, 1973)
  3. Marisol. Comprada, Zafiro (Bought, 1979)
  4. Rosa León. La soltera, EMI (The Unmarried Woman, 1973)
  5. Rosa León. El reino del revés, EMI (The Kingdom of Misfortune, 1974)
  6. María del Mar Bonet. M'en aniré de casa, Concentric (1968)
  7. Vainica Doble. La cocinita mágica, Guimbarda (The Magic Kitchenette, 1980)
  8. Rosa León. Canción consumo, EMI (Consumption Song, 1973)
  9. Marisol. Amor verdadero, Zafiro (True Love, 1969)
  10. Vainica Doble. Madre no hay más que una, Guimbarda (There Is Only One Mother, 1981)
  11. Nuestro Pequeño Mundo. Me casó mi madre, Movieplay (My Mother Married Me Off, 1968)
  12. Vainica Doble. El rey de la casa, Guimbarda (King of the House, 1981)
  13. Rosa León. Canción de cuna para un gobernante, Ariola (Lullaby for a Governor, 1975)
  14. Marisol. Duerma usted tranquila, madre, Zafiro (Sleep Soundly, Mother 1979)
  15. Rosa León. Los fantasmas, EMI (The Ghosts, 1973)
  16. Vainica Doble. Coplas del iconoclasta enamorado, Ariola (Coplas of the Iconoclast in Love, 1973)
  17. Cecilia. Un ramito de violetas, CBS (A Bouquet of Violets, 1975)
  18. Vainica Doble. Habanera del primer amor, Ariola (Habanera of the First Love, 1973)
  19. Rosa León. Viva el beat, el rock, el pop, el soul, y lo demás, EMI (Long Live Beat Music, Rock, Pop, Soul and the Rest, 1973)
  20. Marina Rossell. Sóc una dona, CBS (1980)
  21. Vainica Doble. Déjame vivir con alegría, Movieplay (Let Me Live with Joy, 1976)
  22. Rosa León. La vaca estudiosa, EMI (The Studious Cow, 1974)
  23. Cecilia. Mi querida España, CBS (My Dear Spain, 1975)