Mogambo a la española 

Madrid seemed excitingly big at first sight, but then proved disappointingly shallow, like a swimming pond into which you plunge to find that the water is only waist-deep, or a store which you enter with curiosity only to discover that it has put all of its interesting wares in the front window.  A city, I thought, must at least be big enough to get lost in, but in Madrid, every time I strayed from the monumental avenues, I found only drab provincial neighbourhoods, appendages to the powerhouse in the center rather than worlds of their own.  After I had explored the old quarter of the city, Madrid revealed itself to be a sprawling stone and concrete platform on which men met to grimly sell goods and services, a hard, wide-open marketplace milling with busy people whose hearts were in villages far from the capital.

Still, la vida madrileña had many pleasures, as well as the tapas bars.  Before coming to Spain I had only been to the theater a few times, and I preferred the cinema, because it seemed less artificial. The theater was also more expensive, but my new friend Javier explained that there was a section in the upper gallery reserved for what they called el claque, “the clapper”.  You got a very cheap seat on the understanding that you would applaud enthusiastically at every curtain. I have never been gifted at applauding without admiring, but I found most of the plays good enough, if only for the enthusiasm of the actors, to do my duty along with my friends.

Few of the many plays we saw, that autumn, were Spanish, perhaps one or two of the Siglo de Oro sort, by Lope de Vega or Calderón de la Barca, and of course none at all by Federico García Lorca.  His very name was proscribed by the Franco regime, but I also suspect that the Spanish theatre-goers were more interested in the latest imports from Paris and London, performed for them in Spanish, than in Andalucian folk dramas.

There was an implicitly political or at least philosophical message in almost all of these productions which could not find favour with the censor, but they were curiously tolerated.  We saw plays by Sartre and Camus, and avant-garde “absurd theater” efforts by Ionesco, with a man dressed as a rhinoceros romping about the stage. But, as Javier explained, these works were considered to be too complicated to affect most Spaniards, who preferred Hollywood movies anyway. 

There, the board of censors – which always included at least one priest - combed through every film that came their way, snipping out bare skin and sensuous kisses lest they threaten the sacred institution of the Catholic family.  Spaniards were awed by these lavish productions, and took dead seriously their representation of lust and betrayal and raging passion, which I found insufferably contrived.  But, strangely, they weren’t shocked either, because they assumed that, in that strange world across the sea, or across the Pyrenees, such unbridled behaviour was natural and normal.  And since they all deeply longed to behave in such a way themselves, they accepted it at face value. Except the priests, of course, who rejected it out of hand.

Javier, a priest-hater if there ever was one, told me about the strange mutation which had been carried out on one such film, “Mogambo”.  Starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, it had been seen widely in Spain several years earlier.  As Spaniards later discovered thanks to the foreign press, it was a saga about a couple who go on an African safari, during which the “great white hunter” who leads them seduces his client’s wife, with steamy scenes under the bush tent. 

But it was deemed too provocative to show a married woman committing adultery, so the censors changed the translation of the script, presenting  the lovers as brother and sister, even though they slept in the same bed and kissed on the lips.  As a result, the confused audiences came away with the impression that they had seen a film not about el amor libre, which was bad enough, but incest, which was even worse.

The Gran Vía was billboarded with the huge, luridly-painted semblances of the big American estrellas, under melodramatic Spanish titles which rarely resembled the English originals.  For example, a love story set in India called “Bhowani Junction” was titled Cruce de destinos, which means “crossroads (junction) of fates, or destinies”.  El cruce bhowani, it seemed, would not have had the tragic, classical ring which brought in the Spanish audiences. 

But what spoiled any pleasure the few such films into which I was dragged by my friends might have given me, given that I hated Hollywood movies as a rule, was the dubbing.  Sub-titles were unthinkable in a society which rejected the notion that any language but its own was worth listening to, just as the Romans thought about Latin, even after their Empire had fallen.

Also, few people were willing to pay for entertainment which required reading everything that was said, in spite of the inevitable loss of realism.  And the same handful of professional dubbers was used for all of the films (except those which were dubbed in Mexico) so that everyone easily recognized their voices from one production to the other. 

The style of delivery was always the same and without regard for characterization or situation, the male voices aggressively masculine, the women's hysterically feminine.  Even tomboyish Audrey Hepburn was made to warble feverishly as if she were about to swoon, when she told Cary Grant he looked good in his suit.  And even sensitive, ambiguous guys like Anthony Perkins and James Dean, with the new voices given to them in Madrid, bristled with virility like fierce but forgiving conquistadores. 

It was especially funny, although no one seemed to notice it but myself, when, in a safari film such as Mogambo, one of these well-modulated baritones simulated the voice of an African chieftain with rings in his lips.  But since I hated corny American films anyway, I just went to the theatre instead.

xxx