Distillation of aesthetics and history. The creative veins of Spanish cinema in Blancanieves of Pablo Berger

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the film Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012) embodies the main facets of cinematographic Spanishness. For that purpose, the article traces and points out throughout the film the presence of the four creative or artistic veins inherited from popular culture, in which, according to Santos Zunzunegui, Spanish cinema has expressed itself from its beginnings to the present day: traditionalist popularism, grotesque deformation, myth and avant-garde extraterritoriality. The film is the result of a miscegenation process that combines these expression forms, typical of Spanish cinema, with references to other international titles and aesthetic trends in a complex exercise of intertextuality. But Berger goes even further and assumes the role of film historian since the narrative and formal development of Blancanieves proposes a diachronic journey through the historical evolution of Spanish cinema, which is revealed both in the story and in the mise-en-scène of the protagonist's itinerary.