Sally Faulkner is Professor of Hispanic Studies and Film Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema (2004) and A Cinema of Contradiction: Spanish Film of the 1960s (2006) and was awarded a Fellowship from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council for 2011.

A thorough study of Spanish cinema history from its inception to the present, which particular emphasis on the Post-Franco era, trauma, and transnational influence.

AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsTextual NoteIntroduction: Cinema and Society 1910-2010Chapter 1. Questions of Class and Questions of Art in Early Cinema Blood and SandChapter 2. Social Mobility and Cinema of the 1940s and 1950s: Consolation and CondemnationChapter 3. Charting Upward Social Mobility: 1960s Films about the Middle Classes and the MiddlebrowChapter 4. The 'Third Way' and the Spanish Middlebrow Film in the 1970sChapter 5. Miró Films and Middlebrow Cinema in the1980sChapter 6: Middlebrow Cinema of the 1990s: From Miró to Cine socialChapter 7. From cine social to Heritage Cinema in Films of the 2000sAbbreviations and glossaryBibliographyIndex

A History of Spanish Film explores Spanish film from the beginnings of the industry to the present day by combining some of the most exciting work taking place in film studies with some of the most urgent questions that have preoccupied twentieth-century Spain. It addresses new questions in film studies, like 'prestige film' and 'middlebrow cinema', and places these in the context of a country defined by social mobility, including the 1920s industrial boom, the 1940s post-Civil War depression, and the mass movement into the middle classes from the 1960s onwards. Close textual analysis of some 42 films from 1910-2010 provides an especially useful avenue into the study of this cinema for the student.- Uniquely offers extensive close readings of 42 films, which are especially useful to students and teachers of Spanish cinema.- Analyses Spanish silent cinema and films of the Franco era as well as contemporary examples.- Interrogates film's relations with other media, including literature, pictorial art and television.- Explores both 'auteur' and 'popular' cinemas.- Establishes 'prestige' and the 'middlebrow' as crucial new terms in Spanish cinema studies.- Considers the transnationality of Spanish cinema throughout its century of existence.- Contemporary directors covered in this book include Almodóvar, Bollaín, Díaz Yanes and more.