Wanderings in the hive: from the gray days of the post-war to the lit nights of the movidamadrilena (Comparative reading between La colmena [1951] by Camilo Jose Cela, and La colmena [1982], by Mario Camus)

Abstract

This paper proposes to make a comparative reading between La colmena (1951), by the award-winning and controversial Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela (1916-2002) and the eponymous film adaptation, held in 1982, by the also awarded Spanish director Mario Camus (1935). Considered one of the most important novels of Spanish literature of the twentieth century, this innovative narrative by Cela, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989, depicts, through the beehive moving image, dark days of the early forties, when the Spanish capital tries to recover from the destruction of the Civil War, under the oppression of the Franco dictatorship. Four decades later, in 1982, in full cultural effervescence caused by the return to democracy, the filmmaker Mario Camus turns into pictures the words of Cela. The gray tone is maintained, but the cold winter is gone, pointing to a spring full of promise.