Filming Under the Volcano

Abstract

‘And shadows of our fate at our meeting in Spain,’ the Consul writes to Yvonne in his unsent letter, adding rhetorically, ‘The Hollywood bar in Granada. Why Hollywood?’ (pp. 39–40).¹ One answer might be that by the 1930s the influence of Hollywood movies was worldwide and a Spanish bar-owner could rely on the single word ‘Hollywood’ to carry a resonance of glamour, romance and sex — and as the ‘Motion Picture Research Council of America’ grimly warned at the time, ‘Seventy-eight per cent of all pictures contain liquor situations’. Another answer might be that by introducing a fateful semiotic coincidence Lowry sought to underline the role played by Hollywood and films in both his hero’s downfall and the telling of it.