Manchester University Press - Performance and Spanish film

Performance and Spanish film is the first book to provide a detailed study of screen acting in Spanish film. With fifteen original essays by leading scholars of Spanish film, the book casts light on the manifold meanings, methods and influences of Spanish screen performance, from the silent era to the present day. In doing so, the book provides bold new readings of the work of significant Spanish actors and filmmakers, from Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Alfredo Landa, to Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Saura and Alejandro Amenábar. The fine-grained study of acting in each chapter also provides a means of exploring broader questions surrounding Spanish film practices, culture and society.

Performance and Spanish film will be essential reading for both students and scholars of Spanish film alike, as well as to those more broadly interested in the history of screen acting.

Reviews

'.the book is a remarkable contribution that contextualizes many questions about performance in Spanish cinema presenting them attractively to international audiences. Of interest to both academics and students, it deserves the attention of film scholars and historians working in Spanish studies or looking for comparative references, as the rich film history of Spain has much to offer.'
Panagiotis Zestanakis, University of Crete, Historical Journal of Film Radio of Television

Introduction: approaching performance in Spanish film - Dean Allbritton, Alejandro Melero, Tom Whittaker
1 Acting for the camera in Spanish film magazines of the 1920s and 1930s - Eva Woods Peiró
2 Performance and gesture as crisis in La aldea maldita/The Cursed Village (Florián Rey, 1930) - Sarah Wright
3 Exaggeration and nation: the politics of performance in the Spanish sophisticated comedy of the 1940s - Stuart Green
4 The voice of comedy: Gracita Morales - Kathleen M. Vernon
5 The sounds of José Luis López Vázquez: vocal performance, gesture and technology in Spanish film - Tom Whittaker
6 The influence of Argentinean acting schools in Spain from the 1980s - Carmen Ciller
7 Askance, athwart, aside: the queer plays of actors, auteurs and machines - Brad Epps
8 The future of nostalgia: re-vindicating Spanish actors and acting in and through Cine de barrio - Duncan Wheeler
9 Performing the nation: mannerism and mourning in Spanish heritage cinema - Sally Faulkner
10 Performing sex in Spanish erotic films of the 1980s - Alejandro Melero
11 Becoming Mario: performance and persona adaptation in Mario Casas's career - Alberto Mira
12 Performing fatness: oversized male bodies in recent Spanish cinema - Santiago Fouz-Hernández
13 Disabling Bardem's body: the performance of disability and illness - Dean Allbritton
14 Body doubles: the performance of Basqueness by Carmelo Gómez and Silvia Munt - Rob Stone
15 Los amantes pasajeros/I'm So Excited! (2013): 'performing' la crisis - Maria M. Delgado
Index

Editors

Tom Whittaker is Senior Lecturer in Film and Spanish Studies at the University of Liverpool
Dean Allbritton is Assistant Professor in Spanish at Colby College
Alejandro Melero is Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Carlos III University, Madrid