Mallorca

I was intrigued by a story in the Guardian the other day: 'almost a century after it was shot, a brief but beautifully made documentary that could be the first talking picture directed by a woman in Spain has been discovered after the forgotten and miscataloged footage was re-examined during the coronavirus lockdown.'  You can read the article for the story on the film's rediscovery and how they found out about the director, María Forteza. In the context of this blog, it was interesting to read the comments by archivist Josetxo Cerdán, that the film was 

'well shot and structured, and far better than most of the “aesthetic documentaries” of the time that were intended to show off the beauties of the countryside and of historical monuments. “They tend to be painfully dull: you get a monument, then another monument, then a mountain,” he said. “But this isn’t like that. You have the explanatory prologue and the little narrative of the boat arriving on the island and then the tour. The camera is also very well positioned in every shot.”'

That last point can be seen in the two screen grabs I have included here.  In the first shot, sheep move across the screen haloed by sunlight, and in the second a man walks down a narrow street of shadows.  Although music forms the soundtrack, you can imagine the sound of a bleating flock and the quiet of a town resting during the heat of the day. The film features music by Isaac Albeñiz (1860-1909), one of whose compositions for guitar is Mallorca.  Albéniz is best known for his Impressionist Iberia suite which is inspired by twelve places in Spain.

I'm not exactly sure what Josetxo Cerdán defines as 'aesthetic documentaries', although it is easy to imagine them.  By this time, the travelogue film, which dates back to the beginning of cinema, often resembled a clichéd series of moving postcards.  As the BFI website explains, they were often commissioned to promote tourism

'with bodies such as the Travel and Industrial Development Association (TIDA) in the 1930s, and with Tourist Boards from all countries and regions up to the present. The postcard analogy is therefore very apt, with films such as Claude Friese-Greene's The Open Road series (1924-1926) being largely a compilation of beautifully composed, and strangely familiar views, probably informed by a swift visit to the local gift shop.'

Mallorca has been dated to between 1932 and 1934.  I must admit I am unfamiliar with early 1930s Spanish travelogue films, so am not really able to contextualise it.  All I know about is the parody Luis Buñuel made, Land Without Bread, released in December 1933.  His controversial pseudo-documentary highlighted the poverty and disease of the inhabitants of Las Hurdes.  Graham Greene, who saw it in 1937, described it as "an honest and hideous picture", although the truthfulness of the film has long been disputed (see a Guardian article from 2000, 'Buñuel and the land that never was').  As I write this, the news is full of hideousness and it is tempting to keep to a diet of cultural escapism.  Travel looks impossible for some time and any footage recalling the simple pleasures of tourism now seems charming and nostalgic, no matter how clichéd it is.