From Silver Screen to Spanish Stage by Stuart Green

Author:Stuart Green [Green, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780708323434
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Published: 2011-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Further mediatization of theatre in Spain

With the continuation of his experiments of the pre-war period, only Enrique Rambal endeavoured to remediate cinema on stage at the same time as Jardiel. His 1943 production of Drácula (‘Dracula’) consisted of twenty-five cuadros set in an incredible variety of locations and employed texts to inform the audience of crucial plot developments and other details.30 The latter device was also used the following year in Rambal’s stage adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebeca (most likely inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation, which opened in Spain in late 1942). Both plays included moments when the impression of movement was created, most likely by back projection as Jardiel had done in Carlo Monte and 2.000 metros. The special effects for which Rambal had become known before the Civil War became still more impressive: in Drácula a ship was seen to catch fire, while in El Conde de Montecristo (‘The Count of Montecristo’) a character made a Houdinilike escape from a sack sinking in water (Delgado, 2003, pp. 80–1).

At the same time as Jardiel renounced his ambition to produce plays which could rival cinema in their narrative dynamism and spectacle, and as audiences were beginning to tire of Rambal’s feats, a number of others attempted to remediate film in some of their plays (Entrambasaguas, 1954, p. 102). Although this was done in a far less systematic fashion, the fact that these plays were produced by the better-equipped state theatres explains why their remediation of cinema is in some respects more complicated than that of Jardiel.

Of Claudio de la Torre’s Hotel Terminus, premiered in 1944, Rubio Jiménez (2003, p. 475) writes that ‘tiene más la organización de un guión cinematográfico que de una pieza teatral tradicional’ (it is organized more like a film script than a traditional play). This comment alludes not so much to the division of the action into frequently short segments which de la Torre labels escenas, but to the fact that each escena is composed of a number of brief conversations between various members of the play’s ensemble cast. Hence the audience’s attention jumps from one to another much more frequently than in the conventional comedia and in a way similar to what can be achieved by means of editing and cinematography on film. Considerable demands are also placed on sound reproduction equipment to accomplish the effects of a departing train, warning sirens, passing aeroplanes and the bomb that destroys the hotel. The first act of de la Torre’s Tren de madrugada, written two years later, experiments with a cinematic approach to spectacle: the first cuadro is set on a goods train heading towards the border of the unnamed country from which the characters are trying to escape, while the second is set in the countryside at dawn. A great deal of effort went into presenting on stage a train in movement and a landscape at first light, as evidenced by the praise accorded to set designer Rafael Martínez Romarete in one review (Marqueríe, 1946, p.

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