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L’ ATALANTE 20 JULY-DECEMBER 2015
38
THE TRAJECTORY OF
THE INVISIBLE VOICES:
THE VOICEOVER IN
SPANISH FICTION
FILMS* The notable presence of voiceovers in
Spanish fiction films of the period after
the Civil War reflects a practice which
had also been used at that time in other
countries and which needs to be placed
in relation with its use in documenta-
ries and newsreels, to avoid tracing it
all the way back to precedents like the
figure of the explicator in silent films.
In general terms, the evolution of its
use would move from an initially ex-
tradiegetic location, exercising from
this privileged position a full com-
mand over everything that occurs on
screen, to the progressive adoption of
an enunciative complexity that would
have the voice alerting the spectators
to what they are going to see or are al-
ready seeing, speaking directly to them
as if expecting an immediate answer,
or attempting to provoke their emo-
tional involvement. This complexity
would ultimately result in the insertion
of narrators into the story, embodying
the voice in the figure of a particular
character, which may or may not be
the protagonist. Whatever mode is
adopted, the intervention of the nar-
rator positions us clearly in the terrain
of a kind of fiction that is conscious of
its condition as such, with a centre of
reflexivity and thought removed from
what the images are showing us, which,
whether through nostalgia, melancholy
or humour, impregnates a remarkable
number of the most unique titles of the
early Francoist period.
I will now explore, at least briefly,
how from the theoretical point of view
the insertion of a voiceover as a promi-
nent element that configures the textual
framework raises essential questions of
filmic enunciation. First of all, the kind
of relationship established between
that voice and the subject-spectator, out
of which arises other equally impor-
tant issues concerning the organisation
of the story, such as the extent of the
knowledge of the facts that the specta-
tor should be given or the doses of in-
formation that the spectator receives.
All of this ultimately feeds into the par-
ticular way in which the narrative point
of view is articulated, from which we
Fernando Redondo Neira
JULY-DECEMBER 2015 L’ ATALANTE 20 39
might in turn discern who is showing
us what we see, who sees it at the same
time as the spectator, and who narrates
it and from what position in the story,
and on the basis of these questions we
may attempt to outline the figure of a
“maker of the images”. Literary studies
have attempted to answer some of the
questions raised here, chiefly through
the analytical explorations of Gerard
Genette, and film studies
have drawn from these
and, more specifically,
have used the concept
of focalisation, on which
the narratological propo-
sitions of Tom Gunning,
André Gaudreault, and
François Jost are based,
as well as the approaches
to film narration made by
another important author,
Seymour Chatman, who
opened up the field of
study with his affirmation
that “[f]ilms [...] are always
presented – mostly and
often exclusively shown,
but sometimes partially
told – by a narrator or narrators.” (Chat-
Man, 1990: 133). In considering the in-
tervention of this narrator and his or
her degree of involvement in the nar-
rative material, it will be important to
keep in mind Gerard Gennette’s affir-
mation that “[a]bsence is absolute, but
presence has degrees” (genette, 1983:
245). The analytical overview offered
here of a representative corpus of films
that adopt the voiceover as a key ele-
ment of the story will focus on estab-
lishing this degree of intervention, the
particular focalisation that operates on
the narrative material and, in short, the
method of organising our access to the
knowledge of the events narrated and,
consequently, to their meaning. This
overview will also be adopted from a
historical perspective that takes into ac-
count the evolution that the voiceover
underwent in the period.
Any reconstruction of the trajectory
followed by the voiceover up to its ap-
pearance in major Spanish films of the
1940s must first consider its presence in
film newsreels and the didactic, persua-
sive and politicised documentaries of
the 1930s. And attention will also have
to be given to its presence in the news-
reels and documentaries of the Spanish
Civil War, which made use of voiceover
commentary to give the collage of im-
ages typical of these documentary cor-
pora their characteristic tone between
informative and propagandistic. The
subsequent onset of the Second World
War would only lead to a notable re-
lapse of analogous use of such voiceo-
ver commentary in film. And in terms
of consumer habits, it is also important
to mention the acousmatic voices of
the radio, which prepared the ground
for the future sound film spectator and,
more specifically, for the spectator of
films that included these incorporeal
voices, as noted by various theorists
who have either addressed the use of
voiceover commentary in the classical
documentary or studied the introduc-
tion of sound. It would also be useful,
with respect to the particular relation-
ship that can be established with the
subject-spectator, to give at least a little
attention here to certain intertitles used
in silent films. Bernard P.E. Bentley, for
example, pointed out that in El golfo
(José de Togores, 1917) the intertitles
guide the spectator’s response and that
those appearing in La Casa de la Troya
(Manuel Noriega and Alejandro Pérez
Lugín, 1925) are notable for their mark-
edly humorous and ironic tone (bent-
Ley, 2008: 32). With respect to news-
reels and documentaries, Sarah Kosloff
notes, citing Lewis Jacobs, that narra-
tion appeared in these filmic forms
before it became a common resource
in fiction films, but its use in fiction
films was not widespread prior to 1939,
probably because in the
early years of sound film
audiences would have felt
cheated by anything other
than synchronous speech,
and the voiceover was
thus only fully established
in fiction films once the
novelty of synchronicity
had worn off (KosLoFF,
1988: 33).
Once this habit of use
and reception had been
established, the transfer
of the voiceover to fiction
occurred as a natural pro-
gression. Already in the
1930s we can find it in a
few Hollywood films, as
documented by Sarah Kozloff (1988:
31), who mentions titles such as The
Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale,
1935), which incorporates the voiceo-
ver to recycle footage taken from the
original Frankenstein (James Whale,
1931), which also already featured
a presenter-character who, appear-
ing from behind the theatre curtain,
warned the audience, with a cautionary
gaze at the camera as if he were directly
addressing the people seated in the the-
atre, that the story that they were about
to see may be upsetting. An earlier film,
Forgotten Commandments (Louis J. Gas-
nier, William Schorr, 1932), also uses a
voiceover, in this case belonging to the
character of a priest who, in a similar
manner, comments on some scenes
taken from The Ten Commandments
(Cecil B. de Mille, 1923). The fact that
both cases involve a particular practice
of appropriation points to a key ques-
tion in any analysis of the voiceover:
reflexivity. At the same time, as will be
THE TRAJECTORY OF THE INVISIBLE VOICES: THE VOICEOVER IN SPANISH FICTION FILMS
Any reconruion of
trajeory followed by
voiceover up to its
appearance in major Spani
films of 1940s mu
fir consider its presence in
film newsreels and didaic,
persuasive and policised
documentaries of 1930s
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L’ ATALANTE 20 JULY-DECEMBER 2015
40
explored in detail below, the voiceover
is always suggestive of the enuncia-
tive distance intrinsic to thought and
memory
This same enunciative distance,
which distorts the established transpar-
ency of the narrative, is characteristic
of the parodic register which, in the
case of Spain, is already observable
in the film series that Eduardo García
Maroto made in the 1930s: Una de fi-
eras (1934), Una de miedo (1935), and
…Y ahora… una de ladrones (1935). This
series also offers an early case of the
use of a narrating voiceover, except in
the last title in the trilogy. This mark of
reflexivity is taken to its fullest extent
here through the adoption of the form
of clear enunciative self-consciousness
in a thought-provoking metacinematic
strategy that constantly seeks the spec-
tator’s complicity.
At the opposite extreme from hu-
mour and parody, the omnipresent
voiceover of newsreels and documen-
taries on the war, with its powerful
command over the visuals, over which
it maintains a clearly tutelary, orienta-
tional and persuasive position, would
later be transferred, as suggested above,
to fiction, as evidenced in numerous
films of the post-war period. It would
be in a period of transition, in the mo-
ments immediately after the end of the
conflict, when it would appear in that
hybrid product represented by Edgar
Neville’s short film Vivan los hombres
libres (1939). Here, the visual document
of a now occupied Barcelona is mixed
with brief insertions offering a drama-
tised recreation of the terror and tor-
ture in the prisons. The highly marked
propagandistic intention is thus sup-
ported not only by the probative na-
ture of the images that characterises
the canonical practice of the expository
documentary, but also by a certain emo-
tional dimension evoked by the narrat-
ing voiceover’s reading of the desperate
letters of the prisoners.
Bearing in mind that my period of
study covers the years of the Second
World War and immediately thereafter,
it is worth highlighting Sarah Kosloff’s
observation that in the early 1940s
there was a veritable avalanche of Hol-
lywood films that used the voiceover
(1988: 34), which was present in war
films, semi-documentaries, film noir
and, finally, in literary adaptations,
where it no doubt represented a logi-
cal transfer from novel to film. Two
acclaimed films from this period, Casa-
blanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) and To
Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
make use of an initial voiceover, as
an extradiegetic narrator who, from
a position outside the story narrated,
fills the need to explain, contextualise
and frame the story in specific spatio-
temporal coordinates which of course
relate to the Second World War, in the
same way as such voiceover was being
used in newsreels and documentaries
reporting on the conflict. Curtiz’s film,
incidentally, also makes use of the well-
worn device of animated maps.
Trajectory of the voiceover through
Spanish cinema
In the above-mentioned films by Cur-
tiz and Lubitsch the war appears as a
primary reference which underpins the
story and which, in turn, is explained
through the intervention of a voiceo-
ver that anchors the images and as-
signs them their meanings. In Spain,
the indelible mark left by the painful
experience of the Civil War could was
fittingly evoked by
this narrating voiceo-
ver which, having ac-
companied so many
films during the
war itself, was trans-
ferred to numerous
fiction films of the
1940s and continued
to be used, also with
significant varia-
tions, in the decades
that followed. An ini-
tial approach to this
idea can be found in
the research of Cas-
tro de Paz, who notes
that the voiceover
appears to have seen
an “early but painful” shift to fiction
from the wartime newsreels. Castro de
Paz discusses this in his analysis of El
hombre que se quiso matar (Rafael Gil,
1942, shot in 1941): “narrated as a fable
by a voiceover external to the diegesis.
[…] This striking and aurally demiurgi-
cal position of the calm and didactic
extradiegetical narrator shrouds and
cushions a discourse of veritable critical
ferocity.” (Castro de PaZ, 2013: 103). As
it does not assume incontrovertible re-
alities of the cinema of the era (military,
religious, historical), the film requires a
different kind of complicity from the
subject-spectator, seeking his/her com-
prehension of its balanced doses of
melancholy and black humour. And it
must, in turn, manage the treatment of
the issue on which the whole fate of the
protagonist turns, his decision to com-
mit suicide; a treatment which, if not
banal, is certainly stripped of the seri-
ous drama that it would be expected to
have, and which itself reflects a kind
of mixture of embittered and good-
natured criticism that is so typical of
Fernández Flórez, the adapted author.
The voiceover is thus the element that
leads the grey and mediocre reality of
the post-war era into the realm of fa-
ble, towards a certain degree of unre-
ality and atemporality that will soften
what ultimately cannot be concealed:
the precarious lives of the people, their
Figure 1. El hombre que se quiso matar (Rafael Gil, 1942)
JULY-DECEMBER 2015 L’ ATALANTE 20 41
THE TRAJECTORY OF THE INVISIBLE VOICES: THE VOICEOVER IN SPANISH FICTION FILMS
struggle for subsistence in a harsh and
hostile environment, and also the pos-
sibility of realising dreams of salvation
like climbing the social ladder through
marriage.
And speaking of fable, understood
here in literary terms
as a “narrative-didactic
genre with an illustra-
tive purpose” (PLatas,
2004: 305), the voiceo-
ver would also have
another role to fulfil
in the specific case
of the historical cin-
ema of the Francoist
era: “a self-serving,
manipulative didacti-
cism that exploits the
general public’s ig-
norance of history, to
which end there is a
use and abuse of the
voiceover at the begin-
ning and end of films”
(Monterde, 2007: 93).
Its demiurgical and
omniscient nature, the finality of its af-
firmations and the control it exercises
over the characters and their fates are
some of the main attributes of this
voiceover, which presides over what is
shown on screen, chiefly at the begin-
ning of the story. A common styleme in
numerous films of the early Francoist
era, it not only appears to serve the
obvious function of locating and intro-
ducing the story, but also shows signs
of a certain task of containment, of con-
trol and subjection, in an effort to cush-
ion the harsh reality of its time which,
whether intentionally or not, and in
spite of the reassuring discourse under-
pinning the words of the narrator, will
ultimately evoke and expose the scars
left by the war experience.
Any analysis that begins with a con-
sideration of the voiceover as an ele-
ment of continuity between the news-
reels that had been fully established by
the post-war era and fiction films must
necessarily make mention of the long
shadow cast by the NO-DO newsreel
series. Its uninterrupted presence for
so many years in Spain’s film theatres
seemed to contaminate certain fiction
films whose use of the voiceover imi-
tates, reproduces or recreates that of
the official newsreel, thereby associ-
ating them with a “tendency towards
artificiality, to the use of an absolutely
vacuous bombastic and pompous
tone” (tranChe and sánCheZ-biosCa,
2001: 120). This colonisation of certain
films by the NO-DO series is observa-
ble, for example, in the voiceover at the
beginning of Los últimos de Filipinas
(Antonio Román, 1945), which repeats
the oft-heard refrains of those years on
military matters (fulfilment of duty,
defence of the fatherland, etc.). Of
course, such an approach is far from
surprising in the case of this film, but
it is worth highlighting the projected
voice, with its tone of gravity and im-
portance, the strict seriousness the
speaker seeks to convey with this par-
ticular modulation of his voice, in con-
trast with the irony, double-entendres
or appeals to the spectator’s complic-
ity in other titles that will be analysed
below. A similar voice can be heard,
for example, in La señora de Fátima
(Rafael Gil, 1951) or in La familia Vila
(Ignacio F. Iquino, 1950), with refer-
ence in these cases to another seman-
tic universe, of the religiosity and tra-
ditional family values that shaped the
Francoist period.
On the other hand, the use of voiceo-
vers also denotes an interest in staging
a story that is self-conscious, vesting
the agents involved in the filmic com-
munication with an
eloquent presence,
so that the reflexiv-
ity is transferred to
the subject-spectator,
who is invited more or
less explicitly to par-
ticipate in everything
that will be shown
and narrated. And as
everything is a ques-
tion of degree, follow-
ing Genette’s assertion
quoted above, this self-
consciousness would
evolve towards greater
levels of engagement
with the story and
with the story’s audi-
ence. And this evolu-
tion, in the case of
Spanish post-war cinema, could in
general terms take one of two possible
paths: the homodiegetic narrator, a pro-
tagonist in the events he narrates (and
experiences, and which the filmic text
shows), and the heterodiegetic narra-
tor, who, without giving up his position
outside the narrative universe, holds
the power to intervene directly in the
events in the story through the contact
he establishes with the world of the
story itself, by communicating directly
with the characters, or with the world
of the audience, by directly addressing
the spectator; in short, by his capacity
to submit the flow of the images to his
will.
As a paradigmatic example of the ho-
modiegetic narrator, and as a landmark
work against which to measure what
would be done in Spain in these years,
it is important to mention Rebecca
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1940). As is obvi-
ous, the voiceover, which we attribute
to the female protagonist, speaks to us
from within the story and has a notable
impact on the spectator’s experience in
Figure 2. El santuario no se rinde (Arturo Ruiz Castillo, 1949)
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L’ ATALANTE 20 JULY-DECEMBER 2015
42
that she engages the usual mechanisms
of identification sustained by the estab-
lishment of perceptual subjectivity. Ko-
sloff argues that this voice is so firmly
inscribed in the film that it seems gen-
erated not only by what she sees, but
also by what we, the spectators, are see-
ing (1988: 45). It would be this estab-
lishment of subjectivity that provoked
a unique critical controversy over the
film’s successful première in Spain.
According to Fernando González’s
analysis, it was classified at that time
as a “deceitful cinematic suggestion”
(2003: 74-93), as the atmosphere cre-
ated seemed to arise directly from the
characters’ perception and this was
considered, as González himself quotes
from an article by Gómez Tello in the
magazine Primer Plano, heretical and
materialist. However, this controversy
extended in general to what at that
time was considered an excessive use
of subjectivity beyond its expression
through the voiceover. In opposition
to this approach, films like those of
Rafael Gil, in close collaboration with
cinematographer Alfredo Fraile and
set designer Enrique Alarcón, would
represent a possible Spanish alterna-
tive through films which, in the words
of Castro de Paz, “would be meticulous
in their visual expression and finely
crafted in their lofty concept of atmos-
phere” (2007: 92). In his opinion, the
staging would almost always be de-
monstrative and omniscient, seeking to
introduce the subjectivity of the char-
acter without resorting (at least exces-
sively) to the orthodox subjective POV
so as not to fall into the realm of “mor-
ally reprehensible psychodrama” (CAS-
TRO DE PAZ, 2007: 92). The creation
of a particular atmosphere would thus
be made to depend on the work on the
mise en scène, on the sets, lighting and
shadows. This question has also been
analysed this way from different per-
spectives by other authors, including
Rubio Munt (2001: 144-145).
The narrative model of Rebecca can
also be found in El santuario no se
rinde (Arturo Ruiz Castillo, 1949), as
previously noted by Sánchez-Biosca
(2006: 160). In both cases, the story be-
gins with a dolly shot giving a POV ap-
proaching an old building, a place that
holds the memory of death. In both
films, the voiceover, positioned inside
the story, activates the memory of an
event from the past and makes explicit
the feelings that this memory provokes.
As it is not the filmic expression of a
dream, as in the approach to Mander-
ley, the scene begins with a detail shot
of some hands cutting some flowers,
which then appear in the foreground
when the movement towards the
sanctuary begins. This is also a plain-
tive voice which, while appearing to
constitute an apparent affirmation of
Catholic-National Francoism, above all
expresses the feeling of loss provoked
by the memory of the war, which ap-
pears here more as a desperate allegory
that ultimately fosters “a conciliatory
perspective determined by the alli-
ance between complex characters who
struggle constantly against an invisible
enemy in a tragic conflict that nobody
seems to comprehend” (góMeZ beCeiro,
2013: 103).
This homodiegetic narrator of a
significant number of Ruiz Castillo’s
films takes on more complex forms
in titles like Las inquietudes de Shanti
Andía (1947), where, in the famous fi-
nal scene, we are shown the person to
whom the story was addressed, who
is none other than Pio Baroja, author
of the novel adapted for the film. The
communication with this other outside
the diegesis where the subject-specta-
tor is located also appears in the first
shot when Shanti, with greying hair,
looks at the camera and begins telling
Figure 3. Cerca de la ciudad (Luis Lucia, 1952)
Its demiurgical and omniscient nare,
finali of its armaons and control
it exercises over araers and ir
fates are some of main aributes of this
voiceover, whi presides over what is own
on screen, iefly at beginning of ory
JULY-DECEMBER 2015 L’ ATALANTE 20 43
his story. The fact that the narrative fo-
cus is made to depend on a character
has already been noted by Juan Miguel
Company in a brief but revealing anal-
ysis of Spanish cinema in the 1940s,
which proposes “a constant fluctuation
between the points of view of the nar-
rative and of the characters participat-
ing in it, the articulation of which con-
tains much of the textual richness of
the films” (1997: 10).
This complex enunciation that incor-
porates the figure of the narratee and
thus includes both interlocutors in the
diegetic universe, the storyteller and
the listener, can be found in another,
later film by Ruiz Castillo, El guardián
del paraíso (1952), a recreation of post-
war Madrid that brings together char-
acters, situations and settings typical
of the sainete style of Spanish cinema
and which, in short, offers an authen-
tic picture of a post-war Spain marked
not only by material precariousness,
but also by the moral baseness of the
illegal trafficking of basic medications.
In Segundo López, aventurero urbano
(Ana Mariscal, 1952), another devastat-
ing portrait of post-war Madrid, we also
find the listener who subsequently nar-
rates what he has heard: “I accepted the
invitation from that stranger. He told
me all of this that you have just seen.”
A later film by Ruiz Castillo, Dos
caminos (1954), also makes use of a
voiceover that focuses the plot on the
main characters of the film, giving way
to respective flashbacks to then return
to the theme of possible reconciliation,
suggested in the values of reformation,
redemption or compassion for the van-
quished.
Later in the post-war period, a larger
degree of intervention in the narration
would be proposed through techniques
associated with the enunciative strat-
egy, thereby reinforcing what has al-
ready been stated through a clearly self-
reflexive representation. Moreover, the
inspiration identified above in the doc-
umentary and the newsreel is evident
in a film like Cerca de la ciudad (Luis
Lucia, 1952). The first intervention of
the voiceover is already powerful: “Our
first purpose: to make a documentary
about Madrid.” Although the voice is
maintained off camera, the presence
in the frame of the film crew reaffirms
the ironic, parodic and self-conscious
nature of filmic discourse. A number
of cinematic clichés of the period are
lampooned here: the imitation of the
voices of the NO-DO newsreels, the
composition of Dutch-angle shots to
catch the attention of international film
competitions, the attention given to
the working classes and working-class
neighbourhoods with the intention of
“reinventing neorealism”, making a
film with bulls so that it seems more
Spanish, and the fashion of making
films about priests. Finally, it is the last
of these options that is chosen. The pur-
pose of making a documentary about
Madrid is also maintained, although it
is to be a Madrid very different from
the one that appeared in the NO-DO
newsreels. The camera followed the
priest through the centre of the capital
on his journey to a neighbourhood on
the city’s outskirts, to that space of the
story situated “cerca de la ciudad” (“near
the city”), as if a neorealist approach to
the social context of this specific space
were indeed being attempted, although
obviously all the narrative material
is organised according to the codes
of priest films. The credits mark this
boundary between the initial intention
to make a documentary of the style of
the urban symphonies and a fictitious
construction that begins after entering
the suburban belt, where widespread
social decay, exemplified in juvenile
delinquency or parental absence (due
to imprisonment) in the harsh post-war
reality can only be resolved by the wel-
fare work initiated by the priest. This
boundary also marks the abandonment
of the voiceover. The character of the
priest is established here as an actant-
subject who crosses this border, going
THE TRAJECTORY OF THE INVISIBLE VOICES: THE VOICEOVER IN SPANISH FICTION FILMS
As a paradigmac example of homodiegec
narrator, and as a landmark work again whi
to measure what would be done in Spain in
se years, it is important to menon Rebecca
Figure 4. Nadie lo sabrá (Ramón Torrado, 1953)
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L’ ATALANTE 20 JULY-DECEMBER 2015
44
from one filmic model (documentary
and urban symphony) to the other
(priest fiction). Crossing to this other
side of the border ultimately entails the
abandonment of the strict focalisation
explicitly signalled by the voiceover in
following what the characters are doing
and is accompanied by the reverse shot
that shows us the supposed film crew,
to give way to a greater liberation of
the gaze through an omniscient enun-
ciation.
In Nadie lo sabrá (Ramón Torrado,
1953), there is an analogous break with
classical transparency
which, without upsetting
the natural flow of the
story, occurs through the
eloquent presence of the
enunciative strategy. The
film, which is also con-
structed on the humour
and parody provided by
the voiceover, begins with
recurring wide shots of
Madrid, with an aerial
angle that allows the cam-
era to bring this omnisci-
ent, demiurgical narrator down from
on high into the bustle of the capi-
tal to seek out the protagonist in the
working-class neighbourhoods. And
the voice will seek him out by calling
to other characters who, by looking to
one side of the camera to reply, evad-
ing the lens, incorporate this invisible
narrator into the story. The narrator
here is thus differentiated from the
one who speaks to the character played
by José Luis López Vázquez in Se vende
un tranvía (Luis G. Berlanga, 1959),
who looks directly at the camera and
thus establishes a very different rela-
tionship as it employs self-referential-
ity, thereby developing a story that is
conscious of its status as such. In Tor-
rado’s film, the narrator’s intervention
in the development of the plot will be
so significant that this voice will even
incite the character to commit the theft
that will change the course of his life.
Ordinary people, working-class neigh-
bourhoods, the daily struggle to get
ahead: all of these are social issues
present in another title, El malvado
Carabel (Fernando Fernán-Gómez,
1956), with which it bears some strik-
ing resemblances in the recounting of
the protagonist’s fate. Also here, the
voiceover that introduces and frames
the narrative appears to establish an
ironic distance from what is, in short,
the consideration of theft and fraud
as legitimate ways of combating the
oppression of everyday life in a mean-
spirited and unsupportive society.
The greater degree of intervention
in the story occurs in other uses of the
voiceover, different in each case but
sharing the same quality of exposing
the enunciative apparatus. This voice
which, as I have suggested above, ex-
plained, persuaded or exhorted in war
films, is maintained in numerous im-
portant fiction films of the post-war
period, acting on realities that speak
to us of impoverishment, of fraud or
of speculation. Only a few years before
the release of the films discussed above,
in El destino se disculpa (José Luis
Sáenz de Heredia, 1944), the voiceover
was fully inserted into the diegetical
space, albeit on a different dimension
from that of the story itself, taking
the form of an old man who is no less
than the embodiment of Fate, who, as a
kind of inserted scriptwriter, guides the
lives of the other characters and even
allows them to decide freely at a par-
ticular moment, as noted by Castro de
Paz and Paz Otero, who argue that in
this way “Fate symbolically cuts the ties
that guide the movements of his fable’s
protagonist. [...]” (2011: 109).
On the other hand, the narrator in La
ironía del dinero (Edgar Neville, 1957)
is no longer just a voice, but also an
actant-subject who, as in El destino se
disculpa, conducts the flow of com-
munication directly from the place of
enunciation to the place of reception,
as eloquently expressed through his
addressing the spectator to introduce
each episode of the film. The irony, al-
ready hinted at in the title, is that this
figure will add to his role of narrator
that of a character when he appears as
the victim in the last of the stories.
As a final example of
what I have intended
here as a significant sam-
ple of titles from Spanish
post-war cinema under-
pinned by the presence of
a voiceover, I cannot help
but conclude with Bien-
venido Mr. Marshall (Luis
García Berlanga, 1953),
which, first of all, once
again confirms the func-
tional value of the voiceo-
ver for the depiction of a
fable or moral tale, again portraying
the hopes and illusions of humble peo-
ple trying to get ahead in the harsh re-
ality of this period of Spanish history.
Here, as has been extensively analysed,
the voiceover does not merely intro-
duce the story at the beginning, but
will also have the ability to manipulate
what is shown at whim, for example
through freezing the image, or to enter
into the dreams of the story’s charac-
ters and give the spectator access to
them.
The significant use of voiceover in
Spanish post-war films clearly dem-
onstrates that fiction picked out from
newsreels and documentaries an ex-
pressive resource which, while in it-
self alluding in a certain sense to the
traumatic experience of the war, at
the same time represented a bold new
formula for relating to the universe of
the story and to the spectator to whom
that story was being told.
In Nadie lo sabrá, re is an
analogous break with assical
tranarency whi, without
upseng naral flow of
ory, occurs through
eloquent presence of
enunciave rategy
JULY-DECEMBER 2015 L’ ATALANTE 20 45
THE TRAJECTORY OF THE INVISIBLE VOICES: THE VOICEOVER IN SPANISH FICTION FILMS
Notes
* This study has been completed in the con-
text of the R+D+I research project: “Hacia
una reconsideración de la cultura posbélica:
análisis de los Modos de Representación en
el cine español (1939-1962) a partir de la
impronta de Wenceslao Fernández Flórez”
(CSO2012-34648). Ministry of the Economy
and Competitiveness. Government of Spain.
The images illustrating this article have
been contributed voluntarily by the author
of the text, who was responsible for locating
and requesting copyright for the purposes
of reproduction. In any event, the inclusion
of images in the texts of L’Atalante is always
done by way of citation, for their analysis,
commentary and critical assessment. (Edi-
tor’s note).
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Fernando Redondo Neira
(Camporrapado, A Coruña, 1971) has
a degree in Information Sciences from
the Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
and a PhD from the Universidade
de Santiago de Compostela, where
he is currently a lecturer in the
Faculty of Communication Sciences.
He belongs to Asociación Española
de Historiadores del Cine (AEHC)
and the Asociación Galega da
Investigadores en Comunicación
(AGACOM). He is the author of Carlos
Velo. Itinerarios do documental nos
anos trinta (2004) and coordinator of
the volume Ciudadanía y Documental.