From Imperio to Lola: Mapping Comedy in the Tradition of Spanish Folkloric Musicals (1930–1960)

Abstract

Spanish cinema has always been keen on comedy. With the arrival of sound cinema, films with folkloric songs and high doses of humour were the logical and smooth continuation of zarzuela, the national lyrical genre. Loved by audiences, Spanish folkloric musicals became elements of endogenous exoticism performed mainly by women, known as folkóricas. Comedy was fundamental to the plot, usually accompanied by Andalusian music, although films also used the folklore styles of other Spanish regions. While American-style comedies with jazz scores were also very popular in the 1930s and 1940s, the tradition of folkloric musical comedies continued with the arrival of the first generation of directors from the Escuela Oficial de Cine (Official Film School) in the 1950s, sprinkling these musicals with touches of irony and nonsense in Bienvenido Míster Marshall (García Berlanga, 1953). These young filmmakers saw in the españolada a possibility for social criticism after the autarchic period (1939–1950), a genre that was also to the audience’s taste, while folkloric musicals continued to be successful in their updated form in remakes of classics like Morena clara (1936, dir. Florián Rey; 1954, Luis Lucia).

This chapter presents an analysis of comedy in Spanish cinema marked by folklóricas in the 1930–1960 period. I analyse key films in Spanish cinema, specifically Morena clara and its 1950s remake, focusing particularly on transnational dialogues with Latin America and the key role of women in these films.

This study was written as part of the project Música y medios audiovisuales en España: creación, mediación y negociación de significados (Music and audiovisual media in Spain: Creation, mediation and negotiation of meanings) (MusMAE) (Reference: PID2019-106479GB-I00), funded by the State Research Agency (AEI, Agencia Estatal de Investigación), https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033.