[In the following essay, Thompson compares the stage production of Buero Vallejo's Un soñador para un pueblo to its film adaptation Esquilache.]

Film has always been an intertextually promiscuous medium, frequently producing offspring from liaisons (some committed and deeply-felt, some casual, some provoking accusations of rape) with narrative and theatre. After a hundred years of development, the distinctive features of cinema are well established, but the genes of the older media are still influential. Films continue to be concerned with story-telling, or playing games with narrative voices and structures, or presenting detailed portraits of complex fictional worlds; and they continue to dramatize human relationships by showing the acting-out of dialogues and conflicts, or to examine social rituals and role-playing. Each cinematic adaptation of a novel or a play constitutes an interpretation of the source text, a decoding and re-encoding that may offer valuable insights on the characteristics of both media. The critical usefulness of comparing a film with the original novel or play lies not so much in evaluating the success of the adaptation as in analysing how each of them works in its own terms. Josefina Molina's film Esquilache (1989) declares itself to be ‘libremente basado’ on Buero's play Un soñador para un pueblo (1958). Molina describes the genesis of her project in the following terms:

En 1958 vi en Córdoba representada la obra de Buero Vallejo Un soñador para un pueblo. Me impresionó. Casi treinta años más tarde, en el 86, tropecé entre mis libros con el texto impreso y entonces lo leí con detenimiento y sorpresa: la obra de Buero teía otra lectura al hilo de la experiencia política que mi país está viviendo. Terminé la última página convencida de que podía convertirse en una película útil para algo más que pasar el rato.

[ … ] Quienes hemos hecho el guión de esta película nos hemos acercado a la obra teatral con humildad, hemos intentado que el cine se beneficie del talento de Buero y hemos trabajado duro para estar a su altura, dotando a la historia de una estructura y un tiempo cinematográficos además de introducir libremente personajes y situaciones nuevas.¹

The aim, then, is a respectful adaptation in which the essence of Buero's historical vision will be retained. The film-maker assumes, though, that a cinematic treatment demands a different approach to form. In this study I intend to present a detailed analysis of the film's ‘estructura y tiempo cinematográficos’ and compare these with an account of the dramatic structure of Un soñador para un pueblo.² It will be argued that the technical and structural differences between them highlight important characteristics of the two media, and that each version makes effective and distinctive use of its own generic resources, particularly in the way in which each of them frames its action and characters.

Both Un soñador para un pueblo and Esquilache dramatize the story of the downfall of Carlos III's chief minister as a result of the popular uprising of March 1766 known as the motín de Esquilache. Buero offers a balanced, thoroughly researched dramatization of the causes and significance of a controversial episode in Spanish history, its public dimension skilfully played off against the personal crisis of the protagonist. Esquilache and King Carlos are portrayed as enlightened reformers struggling against intolerance and privilege; the common people as having genuine grievances but failing to recognize their own best interests; the uprising as the result of an aristocratic conspiracy exploiting popular discontent, the banning of long capes and wide-brimmed hats being the spark that sets off the insurrection. Into the given historical material Buero introduces three crucial elements of dramatic invention: Esquilache's relationship with his maidservant Fernandita, the way in which the political crisis is resolved by Esquilache's public and private self-sacrifice, and his final confrontation with Ensenada.³ Molina's film retains these central features, but organizes the material in a significantly different way.

THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF UN SOñADOR PARA UN PUEBLO

The play is divided into two parts, the first set between 9 and 22 March 1766 and the second covering the evening of 23 March and the morning of 24 March. The temporal progression of the action is straightforward, with the transition from one period to the next signalled by changes in lighting and the street-cries of a blind man who sells ballads and a prophetic almanac attributed to ‘Piscator’. The stage design keeps two acting areas in view at all times. The wall at one side and the façade of a house at the other are fixed, representing (together with the downstage space between them) a street near Esquilache's house in Madrid, the House of the Seven Chimneys. This is the space inhabited by the common people, the pueblo: the ruffians muffled in their capes (embozados), the tarts, the constables, the blind ballad-seller. A circular platform in the centre upstage rotates to reveal in turn two principal interior settings (Esquilache's study and a room in the Royal Palace) and two transitional settings (the tapestried corner representing the royal residence of El Pardo and the angle between the doors representing the entrance to Esquilache's house). These are the spaces in which power is exercised and Esquilache's relationships are played out. The action of the first part of the play alternates between the interior and the exterior, and although much of the second part takes place in the room in the Palace, this setting is still seen in relation to the open, collective space around it.

Esquilache stands at the centre of a carefully constructed series of interactions that play off one social force against another at the same time as gradually giving the audience a convincing sense of being in touch with the complex personal life of the protagonist. Fernandita becomes the most important of the secondary figures, to the extent that at the end, she takes over from Esquilache the status of protagonist: his part is done, and he stands immobile in the shadows as she takes centre stage and performs a symbolic act of self-liberation. None of the other lower-class characters acquires the same measure of individuality: they tend to function as groups, and the men are sometimes indistinguishable in their capes and hats. Their function in representing the pueblo is an important one, and Bernardo in particular plays a key role, but they comprise a manipulable mass, without the individualizing awareness that will be shown by Fernandita to be possible.

The key processes at work in Un soñador para un pueblo are therefore interaction, juxtaposition and balance, exemplified by the use of space, by the relationships between individual characters and between groups of characters, and by verbal and visual symbolism. It was Robert Nicholas who first drew attention to the significance of the symmetrical arrangement of the action of Part 1. He points out the alternation between interior and exterior, and identifies three sets of three encounters between Esquilache and another character:

Each series of interior scenes is characterized by a downward progression from the highest to the lowest social class. The aristocrats, Villasanta, Ensenada and the king, precede Pastora, embodiment of the ‘nouveaux riches,’ who in turn comes before the peasant Fernandita. The good element of the lower class (Fernandita) is followed by and contrasted with the evil segment of the lower class (in the street scenes). And the cycle begins again.⁴

Nicholas concludes that ‘the playwright has attempted to reflect the spirit of classicism, the dominant artistic mode of the epoch, in the symmetrical ordering of the action of his play’ (p. 64). This analysis can be elaborated to demonstrate precisely how controlled the text's structure is. The following scheme of Part 1 shows the links between exterior and interior locations, and interior scenes arranged in sets of five rather than three. The main linking elements are underlined, and silent action in one place during a scene in the other is shown by square brackets.

This structure is remarkably fluid, balanced and orderly. There is a clear alternation between the street (A, C, E, G) and the interiors (B, D, F). Apart from interruptions by the blind man during some of the interior scenes, the two locations are kept separate (only Fernandita moves freely between both). The transitions from one setting to the other are achieved by means of deft overlapping of business and shifts of lighting. The interior scenes form a regular pattern: each series consists of three main dialogues, framed by shorter scenes involving Campos (with a slight variation in the third series). Connections are made, ideas are clarified—the mechanism works like clockwork, like a gavotte, with neoclassical elegance. The stage design itself contributes to this effect, thanks to the ingenuity of the device of the revolving platform. Esquilache dominates his own interior space—central, slightly elevated, geometrically as well as decoratively elegant—and exercises (incomplete) control from a distance over the more open, irregular space outside. The audience too is allowed to feel in control, enjoying a privileged view of the two parallel areas of action and perceiving dramatic irony in the discrepancy between the completeness of their perspective and the incompleteness of that of the characters.

However, this sense of order begins to break down at the end of the first part. Esquilache's study and the street are brought closer together by the lighting of the lamps (first outside his window, then on the main stage immediately afterwards). Esquilache finds this reassuring, but as soon as he leaves, the destruction of the lamps (again, in both places) foreshadows an invasion of his space. At the beginning of Part 2, everything is disordered, as the following scheme shows:

The inhabitants of the street occupy and disrupt the interior, while Esquilache risks the dangers of a city under mob rule. Business goes on simultaneously—almost confusingly—on the main stage and the platform, without the regular alternation of Part 1. There is then a change of rhythm as the action settles down in the Palace scenes. Esquilache finds himself in a space similar to his own study, but clearly not a vantage point from which to control events outside. He is isolated, virtually imprisoned, and prevented from seeing what is happening in the courtyard, as are the audience, who for long periods have nothing to watch on the main stage. At the end, Esquilache remains alone in the room in the Palace while our attention turns to Fernandita in the foreground.

The blind man who sells ballads, newspapers and the Piscator almanac has several crucial functions within this structure. He punctuates the action and marks the passage of days with his call. Esquilache obtains a copy of the almanac that appears to predict his fall, and is repeatedly unsettled by the blind man's call, which is barely noticed by the other characters inside the house. The rational, pragmatic minister begins to believe that the old man represents the possibility of seeing into the future and into human relationships in a way that transcends rationality: ‘Ese ciego insignificante llevaba el destino en sus manos’ (Dreamer, p. 178). The ballad-seller's blindness seems to give him a mysterious kind of inner vision and, in a magical moment in Part 2, a special relationship with light: the stage direction calls for the lights to come up slowly as day breaks, and just as slowly, the blind man crosses the stage ‘como si fuese él quien trajese el nuevo día’ (Dreamer, p. 146). This is part of an elaborate pattern of verbal and visual symbolism in which the light of the street lamps is equated with the cultural and political enlightenment offered by Esquilache, in contrast with the blindness of a people who refuse to show their faces, failing to see what is in their best interests and extinguishing the lights.⁵ Only at the end does Esquilache realize that his confidence in his capacity to see clearly and make others see has been mistaken. He and Fernandita learn from one another a deeper perception of themselves in relation to other people, and their personal voyages of discovery are explicitly linked with the struggle of an entire people: ‘¡El pueblo eres tú! [ … ] Tal vez nunca cambie su triste oscuridad por la luz’ (p. 180).

THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF ESQUILACHE

The story told by the film consists of three periods whose ‘real’ chronological order is as follows:

A The build-up to the uprising, beginning on about 9 March 1766 and ending with Esquilache setting off for San Fernando on the night of 22 March.

B The night of the uprising (23 March 1766) and the events inside and outside the Royal Palace on 24 March, followed by a glimpse several days later of Esquilache on a ship heading for exile in Italy.

C Years later, as an ailing Esquilache (in Venice) listens to his son reading from a letter from King Carlos. Esquilache was ambassador to Venice from 1772 until his death in 1785 (the King died three years later).

The plot of the film, however, presents the events of A, B and C in a different order. Period C constitutes a frame within which both A and B are remembered by Esquilache and seen through his eyes. However, the status of C is not made clear at first. Scene 1 (following a prefatory text and the credits) simply shows rooms in an unidentified house, finishing with a long shot of a bed without allowing the audience to see its occupant or the people around it clearly. The voice-over (C-VO in the table below) is obviously the text of a letter to Esquilache (his name has been given in the prefatory text, and the voice-over begins ‘Querido Leopoldo …’), but it remains visually unmotivated until the final scene, when the bedside setting is established. In the meantime, this voice is used seven times as extra-diegetic sound during scenes in period B. At first, it appears to be subjective sound remembered or imagined by Esquilache from within period B while he is travelling in a coach to the Royal Palace. However, it gradually becomes clear that the letter is from the King to Esquilache in Venice (period C), looking back on the events of A and B from a time in which he assumes that both of them are close to death. Scene 45 is a kind of epilogue, but has already been anticipated by scene 1 and the voice-overs.

Consequently, until the framing function of C is clarified, it is period B that works as the narrative present of the film, and is itself a frame within which fragments of A appear as flashbacks representing Esquilache's recollections of the events of the preceding days as he rides in his coach towards the Royal Palace. The first half of the film thus consists of cross-cutting between B and A. The parallelism of the montage and the status of A as the principal character's mindscreen are reinforced by repeated overlapping of sound.⁶ This is achieved mostly by brief sound bridges in which a noise or voice is heard before the visual cut is made: for example, applause is heard over a close shot of Esquilache in the coach (scene 6 in the table) before the cut to the dinner scene (7); the noise of smashing glass at the end of Esquilache's speech appears for an instant, disconcertingly, to be a diegetic sound within 7, until the cut back to B (8) shows Esquilache looking out of the coach window at a rioter smashing one of his street lamps. At certain points, the voice of a character speaking in A continues over a brief cut back to the coach in B (A-VO in 10, 13, 15, 19).

The scenes in period A are episodic fragments. Each one highlights a relationship between Esquilache and one of the other main characters, while at the same time adding another piece of historical evidence to the account of the build-up to the uprising. The logical (and, we assume, chronological) sequence of these flashbacks is disrupted twice. Firstly, the main action of scene 15 (Esquilache watching Fernandita and Bernardo from the stairs) is intercut with a short exchange between Esquilache and Pastora which is from, or at least is repeated in, scene 16 (‘una pobre criada llena de buenas intenciones …’). Secondly, scene 18 cuts away from Esquilache in his bath (listening to Campos reading out the order about tailors) to a series of shots of an obviously later confrontation in the street (with Campos's reading continuing as voice-over), before cutting back to the bath.

Period B presents a continuous narrative beginning with a sequence in which Esquilache enters his ransacked house, finds Fernandita, is accosted by a group of rioters, and returns to his coach. The second sequence covers the coach ride through the streets of Madrid, during which Esquilache remembers episodes from the preceding days and witnesses scenes of rioting and popular protest. The third sequence is set in rooms and corridors of the Royal Palace, with views of events taking place in the courtyard (the Plaza de la Armería). Finally, the brief scene 44 serves as a transition between period B and the ‘epilogue’ of period C.

The following table divides the action of the film into scenes and shows the relationship between the three periods (entries indicate the setting of a scene or sequence of scenes, the names of the characters involved in the main dialogue in each scene, and the main topic of conversation).

SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES

Period A corresponds to Part 1 of Un soñador para un pueblo. Scenes 2, 3 and 4 of B correspond to the beginning of Part 2 of the play, and scenes 24 to 43 correspond to the rest of Part 2. Period C and the text of the letter have no counterparts in Buero's text. Some other components of the film do not feature in the play: Esquilache going into his house on 23 March (scene 2); the coach journey itself; the after-dinner speech to the Amigos del País (7); the stone thrown through Esquilache's window (in 10); the King's dinner (12); Esquilache seeing Bernardo stirring up the mob and his portrait in flames (14 and 21); Esquilache eavesdropping on Fernanda's meeting with Bernardo (15); the lottery setting for the conversation about the brooch (16); Esquilache's bath (18); his encounter with Isabel Farnese (28); Esquilache contemplating suicide, and vomiting while nursed by Fernanda (29); Esquilache seeing Bernardo in a palace corridor (37). The violence between rioters and troops shown by the film in the Plaza de la Armería in reality took place earlier in other parts of the city, and in the play is reported in these terms rather than played out on stage. Most of these new elements have the effect of opening out the drama, in terms of both physical space and socio-political context.

On the other hand, the film dispenses with certain parts of the play. Lines of dialogue are cut from virtually every scene, some of them highly significant in the original (for instance, Campos's report of Fernandita's defence of her master in 1-F, parts of several conversations between Esquilache and Fernandita, and several important exchanges in the final scenes which help to heighten Esquilache's dilemma). This reduction in the density of the spoken text, together with the introduction of new settings for some scenes and the fragmenting effect of the flashback technique, serves to break up the sense of measured juxtaposition on which the play's structure depends.

Perhaps the most conspicuous piece of cutting carried out by Molina and her team is the omission of the street scenes featuring embozados, María and Claudia, the blind man, the cesante (redundant civil servant), constables, and Fernandita. Even the skirmishes between constables and embozados (Part 1-E in the play) are reduced to a brief encounter without any dialogue, and the occupation of Esquilache's house by rioters is not shown. Whereas in the play these scenes provide a significant contrast with the scenes centred on Esquilache, in the film only certain elements of this collective dimension appear, and then only fleetingly (and mostly viewed from a distance). Instead, the mobility of the camera is exploited in order to give the audience glimpses of the exterior action that the play refrains from showing on stage: large crowd scenes, the violent clashes between rioters and troops, the confrontation in the Palace courtyard. Although Buero's restraint may have something to do with concern for the practicalities of staging, it makes a virtue out of an apparent limitation: the control suggested by the structure of Part 1 has broken down, Esquilache has been displaced and now the audience shares his frustration at not being able to follow what is going on outside.

A consequence of the reduction of the role of the pueblo is that we also see much less of the blind ballad-seller. The film does away entirely with his function as a structuring device and generates its own distinctive rhythm. He appears only once (in scene 22), and little is made of the predictions from Piscator. His appearance outside Esquilache's house just before the uprising breaks out is an effective moment in the film, but it is just another fragment of the protagonist's recollections, rather than a central signifying element. The blind man's importance as focus of the symbolism related to light and enlightenment is also sacrificed, along with the suggestion that his mysterious influence stimulates a deepening of self-awareness in the protagonist.

The idea of light and vision in the play acquires particular importance in relation to the role of Fernandita. Esquilache takes her blind, destructive passion for Bernardo as a general metaphor for human weakness and ignorance, and in urging her to believe that ‘tú puedes abrir los ojos’ he expresses a hope that humanity might one day liberate itself from blindness (Dreamer, pp. 178–80). The ending of the play is centred on her assertion of independence from Bernardo, while Esquilache stands motionless, withdrawn and melancholy in the background: a small but significant glimmer of hope amidst the gloom of defeat. The role of Fernanda is still prominent in the film (in which she is not known as Fernandita), but is not invested with the same symbolic function. She is not seen outside amongst the common people; even her dialogue with Bernardo (15 in the film, 1-C in the play) is set in the doorway of Esquilache's house rather than out in the street. The film omits her ingenuous remarks in support of Esquilache's reforms and the report of her defence of him in the street, which results in a blurring of the subtle shifts in Esquilache's perception of her, from initial suspicion to genuine trust and affection. The film's treatment of Fernanda seems to have a more straightforward emotional (and potentially sexual) emphasis, which is particularly noticeable in scene 15: an anguished Esquilache is shown watching Fernanda arguing with and then passionately kissing Bernardo.⁷ Later, Molina adds a scene in the Palace in which a retching and despairing Esquilache is held and soothed by Fernanda.

The presence of Fernanda with Esquilache is still important in the final scenes of the film, but the link between their relationship and his decision to accept defeat for the good of the people is much less direct. Esquilache no longer expresses frustration at being unable to avenge the harm done to her: ‘En esta mano estaba el Poder de España y ahora está vacía … ¡Dios mío, dame el Poder de nuevo!’ (Dreamer, p. 160). The line ‘no se trata del Poder, señor’ is also omitted later on (p. 168). Consequently, the temptation to use political power for personal reasons is not explicitly shown to be part of Esquilache's dilemma, and the emotional dimension of his self-sacrifice is not so sharply defined. The ethical importance of Fernanda is further reduced by the omission of her intervention in the final encounter between Esquilache and Ensenada. In the play, Esquilache holds her up as an emblem of fundamental human rights which must not be sacrificed for the sake of reasons of State, however rational and enlightened they may be, and submits himself and Ensenada to her moral judgment. On stage, her verdict on Esquilache is clearly favourable: she shows full understanding of his momentous decision and her last words to him are ‘que el cielo le colme de bendiciones’ (p. 180). On screen, her attitude as she leaves him is more ambiguous: she appears resentful of his refusal to take her with him to Italy and remarks ‘no tiene otra cosa que darme que grandes palabras’ (scene 42). Lastly, she rejects Bernardo as in the play, but the encounter is seen in a long shot from Esquilache's viewpoint and we do not hear what they say to one another.⁸ Furthermore, it is no longer the final, definitive moment. The shot of Fernanda walking off through an archway is followed by the shots of Esquilache at sea and finally the epilogue in Venice, in which she exists only as a fading memory: Esquilache mumbles ‘si pudiera recordar la última vez que ella me sirvió el chocola …’ (scene 45). While the play charts a gradually shifting balance between the two characters and carefully ties it into the ethical and political issues, in the film the presence of Fernanda is absorbed into the memory of Esquilache.

All this could be taken to imply that the makers of Esquilache have failed to make the most of significant elements of the source text. If we were to consider the film purely as a reading of Buero's play, we could conclude that the adaptation leaves serious gaps. Nevertheless, none of the observations above necessarily attributes inferior aesthetic value to the film. Molina takes Buero's characters, story and historical analysis and tailors them (‘libremente’) to fit a different medium, employing an effective and distinctively cinematic way of framing the subject matter which is radically different from the play's framing concept.

FRAMING

Both the play and the film are based upon forms of framing which have the effect of suggesting textual self-consciousness drawing attention to structure and artifice, and making explicit an exploration of ways of seeing. At the same time, both versions to some extent offer the audience a sense of sharing the dramatic experience or the perceptions of the protagonist. There is simultaneous distancing and identification, or formalization and naturalization, maintaining a tension that is characteristic of both media. It is not that one medium is essentially more or less naturalistic than the other, but the inherent tension can be said to work in opposite directions. In the theatre, the actors are physically present in the same space and time as the audience, who witness real people acting out the fiction and (to a limited extent) experience real interaction with them. And yet it is difficult to lose sight of the artificiality of the event, the confines of the scenic space, the structuring of the action, and the conscious playing of roles. André Helbo emphasises the ‘double enunciation’ characteristic of theatrical representation: ‘referring at the same time to the discourse (I am in the theatre) and the narrative (the character describes a program that tends to accomplish itself), the spectacle finds its conditions of existence in the paradox’.⁹

In the cinema, on the other hand, the actors are physically absent, experienced by the audience in a blatantly artificial manner as two-dimensional images on the same plane as everything else in the diegetic space. And yet real places, people and events can be shown on the screen and blended indistinguishably with constructed sets, actors and fictional events. A highly fragmented and technologically-dependent performance process can be edited into a narrative that appears perfectly coherent and continuous, and manipulation of framing, focus and camera angle can give an impression of physical closeness to the characters or sharing of their points of view (visual or psychological). A film is a fixed record of a past performance, yet the impression given to the spectator is often one of startling immediacy. Formal devices and the awareness of role-playing can be more easily naturalized than in the theatre, tending to be absorbed into the implied coherence of the cinematic fiction: ‘the implicit tendency consists in erasing the enunciator, in favoring the narrative’ (Helbo, 1993, p. 622).

The form of a particular theatrical or cinematic text is not necessarily determined in a predictable way by these essential conditions of representation and reception: their technical and aesthetic consequences are infinitely variable.¹⁰ However, what often come to be regarded as the most interesting features of a text are the ways in which it explores, exposes or creates tension out of the uniqueness of its medium. For example, a play may be valued for metatheatrical procedures that complicate the audience's suspension of disbelief (making the ‘dual enunciation’ explicit or violating conventional boundaries between stage and audience), or for exploitation of space that turns to advantage the confines of the stage. A film may be valued for dynamic use of space, for the visual richness of its placing of characters in physical environments, or for editing and camera angles that present action in an unexpected way or introduce shifts in the point of view.

Un soñador para un pueblo is not overtly metatheatrical and does not contain striking devices that play tricks with the audience's perceptions, yet the ingenuity of the stage design has a formalizing effect. The stage directions assume a more or less conventional theatrical space in which the audience is presented with a carefully composed stage picture. Within the overall frame of the proscenium arch, the central action on the platform is framed by and contrasted with the street scenes in the foreground. The audience's attention is shifted in a measured way between the two acting areas by changes in lighting, dialogue, movements of actors, and the revolving of the platform. The spatial relationships match formal and thematic relationships. Esquilache is the central character, but by no means the sole focus of attention, since he is presented in an ordered series of interactions with other characters, which is in turn set in the context of the world of the pueblo outside. Politics, and perhaps social existence in general, are associated with role-playing and deception, an artificial structure of relationships within which Esquilache seeks authenticity through Fernandita. History is thus presented as a complex dialectical process—as an interplay of social forces and as a tension between individual and collective action. Additional framing elements—the music at the beginning and end, and the linking or punctuating function of the blind man add to this rational dialectic a mysterious hint of the possibility of entirely different, intuitive perspectives.

The splitting of the stage space, the use of simultaneous action in different places, and the dynamic transitions from one setting or time to another suggest comparisons with the fluidity of cinema.¹¹ However, the gaze here is still essentially theatrical: the spectator looks at a single, continuous stage space with the two areas always in view; the relationship between the two areas is fixed; the changes in the function of the central part of the stage are made smoothly, but by means of an obviously mechanical device and in view of the audience. The combination of the structuring of space and plot with the symbolism of light and darkness adds up to a complex exploration of ways of seeing social, emotional and ethical issues. The play leads the audience towards a balanced, dialectical perspective, claiming to be objective but at the same time questioning its own objectivity (which appears complete and confident in Part 1, becomes incomplete and frustrated in Part 2, and suggests a more complex idea of completeness at the end), a trajectory exemplified by the learning process of the protagonist and of Fernandita.

In Molina's film the concept of framing is significant in two senses. The first is visual. The action is insistently framed so as to represent the perspective of the protagonist, both in the form of subjective mindscreen (reinforced by close-ups of his face) and as true point-of-view shots (the camera shows the view as seen by the character). The convention of understanding the perimeter of the film picture as a moving frame through which the spectator's gaze focuses on selected pieces of the diegetic world as if from within it is emphasized repeatedly by shots taken through the literal frames of windows (from the coach in scenes 8, 14, 21 and 23; from Esquilache's house in 11, 15 and 22; from the Palace in 24, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36 and 43) and doors (in the house in Venice in scenes 1 and 45; in the House of the Seven Chimneys in 10, 11 and 15; the Palace archway in 43). Many of the through-the-window shots are reinforced by shots from the outside of Esquilache's face looking out, or by over-the-shoulder shots, and the point of view is further emphasized by camera angles: Esquilache looks down into the street from his house and down into the courtyard from the room in the Palace. The occasional presence of other frames echoes this insistent motif: portraits on walls (especially the one of Pastora in scene 2), the miniature held by Esquilache in 44 and 45, a mirror in 38.

The other kind of frame is the narrative structure—period C framing B framing A—which also emphasizes the point of view of the principal character. There is a complicating factor, in that it is not clear at first that B is being presented as remembered by Esquilache and that the voice-over (C-VO) is a commentary looking back on B from a different narrative present. This creates tension between the predominantly subjective framing and the initially anonymous voice-over (which has an ambiguous status as both the utterance of one of the characters and a more or less authentic historical document). Although the film is as concerned as the play with both dimensions of the drama (public and private, political and personal), it presents history primarily in terms of individual experience and memory. The protagonist's memory predominates in terms of visual images and dramatic action, but the spectator's involvement with this personal perspective is modified by the detached tone and discursive nature of the King's letter, as well as by the screening right at the beginning of the film of a piece of text that acknowledges historical distance (‘En el siglo XVIII surge un movimiento de reforma …’) and presents itself as an objective summary of events and people:

Esquilache, poco conocedor del pueblo español, se encarga de imponer unas medidas que, aunque convenientes, resultan impopulares. [ … ] Ordena cambiar la indumentaria que favorece la impunidad de los malhechores. [ … ] Esa medida colmó el vaso de la antipatía popular.

The shift in tense here from presente histórico to pretérito indefinido reflects the tension maintained in this film between the recalling or narrating of past events and the illusion of the fictional present. In the theatre, the resonance of historical drama often depends on the paradox inherent in the live re-enactment of historical material: the audience is offered the illusion that it is happening here and now (present in two senses), which gives a further twist to the process of ‘dual enunciation’.¹² This creative tension is not so easy to generate in the cinema, which inevitably provides a record of something that has happened. Not only the events re-enacted but also the performance itself are in the past. Esquilache generates its own ambivalence through its structure, blending personal (fictionalized) recollection and public record, subjective and objective angles of vision.

The impact of Un soñador para un pueblo is achieved essentially by offering to the spectator's gaze an arrangement of perspectives within a static frame, in a way that is characteristic of theatrical representation. Esquilache, on the other hand, works in a characteristically cinematic way by manipulating the frame itself, through which the spectator's gaze is directed and targeted.

Notes

1. Josefina Molina, ‘Sobre la película’ in Sabre Films, Esquilache (press notes compiled for Berlin Film Festival, 1989).

2. The analysis of the play's structure is based on a section of my introduction to a recent edition: Antonio Buero Vallejo, A Dreamer for the People/Un soñador para un pueblo, translated and edited by Michael Thompson (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1994), pp. 23–30. Further references to this edition will be given in the text using the abbreviation Dreamer.

3. A detailed discussion of Buero's handling of his historical sources can be found in my introduction to Dreamer, pp. 3–23.

4. Robert L. Nicholas, The Tragic Stages of Antonio Buero Vallejo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1972), p. 62.

5. Several of Buero's plays feature blind or deaf characters, many of whom are endowed with some kind of mysterious ‘sixth sense’, and symbolism of blindness and vision, related to darkness and light, is a constant feature of Buero's work. See Martha Halsey, ‘“Light” and “darkness” as dramatic symbols in two tragedies of Buero Vallejo’, Hispania, 50 (1967), 63–8, and ‘More on “light” in the tragedies of Buero Vallejo’, Romance Notes, 11 (1969), 17–20.

6. Mindscreen: ‘a visual and sometimes aural field that is encoded to appear to be generated, remembered, perceived, or related by a mind (usually that of a character)’. From Bruce F. Kawin, How Movies Work (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), p. 548.

7. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Fernanda is played by Angela Molina—a recognizable star, older and considerably sexier than the innocent young girl envisaged by the theatrical text.

8. Buero recalls that the film-makers planned to leave out the final encounter between Fernandita and Bernardo altogether, but he insisted that it should be retained in some form. He agreed to the other changes, very reluctantly in some cases. Nevertheless, he still considers Esquilache the best of the film adaptations of his plays (statements made in a conversation with me in April 1995).

9. André Helbo (translated by Pane and Carjuzaa), ‘Adapting the theatre to cinema: Towards a pluridisciplinary approach of the spectacular event’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 18 (1993), 593–624 (pp. 619–20).

10. I use the word ‘text’ in a broad sense that embraces both the original verbal script and the finished performance (projected as photographs or staged live).

11. Ever since Un soñador para un pueblo, such openness and flexibility of action and design have been characteristic of Buero's theatre, in contrast to the more closed, static structures of earlier plays.

12. There is a stimulating discussion of the temporal ambivalence of historical drama in Francisco Ruiz Ramón, ‘Pasado/presente en el drama histórico español’, Estreno, 14 (1988), 22–24.