those bastards… we saw plenty there anyway.
I’ve often had similar questions, and found it surprising that Franco let so many communist film maker lens westerns in Spain.
And censorship was practiced in Spain. Most of you probably know about this, in 1961 Bunuel applied for and was granted permission to make a film in Spain. The result was Viridiana and Franco was incensed with the final film and set about to have all copies destroyed. It had to be smuggled out of the country. Franco banned Bunuel from every making another film in Spain. But Viridiana is not a communist or revolutionary film. It’s anti-clerical.
Perhaps the Italian westerns were allowed because they were seen as low profile action films from Italy, thus not representing Spain. Whereas Bunuel was a high profile director whose work was exhibited at Cannes and discussed in intellectual film magazines. His works were taken note of by critics whereas the spaghetti westerns were ignored by the critical community at the time.
In order to be allowed back into Spain Dali had to renounce his work with Bunuel and make the preposterous assertion that none of his paintings were anti-clerical or irreligious. (But, Dali’s late life after the death of his wife was rather pathetic.)
Thanks for that update Mortimer.
About Franco’s politics. There is debate about it, but some historians believe that originally he was a constitutional monarchist (im not sure if that is the correct term, but anyway I guess you get what I mean). And of course he named the prince Juan Carlos to be his successor. His political actions were of course fascist, theres no doubt about that. The external signs and rituals of falange were influenced by the fascists and nazis. Spaniards, please correct me if I am wrong.
I wondered the question of the topic myself also. I had a chance to discuss the theme briefly with a spanish film critic few years ago, and he told me that Franco was not so interested in the political allusions of the films if they weren’t too explicit. He was more concerned about the sexual and anti-clerical material and those were of course censored. And naturally, the Italian money as American was very welcome to the poor country.
Well above all Franco was an opportunist who took a chance and won, he was not the coup leadear in 1936 it was another General (forgot his name Molina? maybe I’ve to see the books to check) that died in Portugal in a plane crash before the civil war started. He was a ultra relegious fascist allright, and anti-communist because he beleive that it was the only way to Spain to survive as a nation, and he show no mercy to it’s enemies because he was aware that he would only survived if his side won, his army after the war was the army of the civil war, that’s why he keep a very very (brutal I might say) strong hand against those who are agaisnt the regime, several bands of Partizans tried to fight organized from France, but they never got any chance at all to win, because the other side knew what would happen to them if they loose the power by any chance.
In the other hand Franco was not much fun of the organizations like the Falange or the Carlistas (he actually despise them) especially the first ones, and as soon as possible after the civil war, took their power off (more stronger during the first years of WWII) and show them who was in charge.
He was also aware that the only way to the regime survive was with development and better living conditions for the people, and in that sense he was much more smarter than is Colleague in Portugal Salazar, that close the country to the foreign influence, drive us to some nonsence wars (making the same mistakes as France) and kept us, like some rural and living of the past outside Europe country, who only survived, cause ot the cold war period.
SW was just like an industry/bussiness and was also good for tourism and to make Spain a more appreciable country abroad, taking the weight off from politics, and helping forget to the rest of the democratic world that Spain was living in a fascist regime, and in any case the films could be censorship for local viewers, of course with tourism and development it’s difficult to sustain any dictatorship, and that was what Salazar in Portugal wanted to avoid in Portugal.
Funny enought those conditions were existent in the Portuguese colonies in Africa being the metropole and the colonies two totally diferent countries, with much more freendom and a style of life impossible to have in Continental Portugal at the time.
But of course we could say so much about this matter