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THE PROMISED LAND. The Migration Phenomenon as Seen through Cinema

As the inspiration for many filmmakers, the search for a better life has ultimately created a new genre: migration films.

filmotech.com. 09/03/2011. Themes

Perhaps because it is a universal issue, migration and immigration have interested filmmakers from all over the world throughout film history. Here in Spain, affected by migrations in various directions, our filmography on the subject is particularly rich and abundant. Actor / director Carlos Iglesias, who first explored the subject in his magnificent work Un Franco, Catorce Pesetas (Crossing Borders), takes up the idea again in Ispansi, a film about war children now being released in cinemas. Here, filmotech.com reviews some of the best movies devoted to immigration.

The Immigrant: In 1917 Charles Chaplin directed this twenty-minute film in which he plays a man who has just arrived in New York, accompanied by his wife, and who gets into various scrapes as usual. With his distinctive sentimental, comic style, Chaplin portrays the problem of uprooted people with biting humour.

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath: In 1940, John Ford made one of the greatest American movies of all time, based on John Steinbeck's famous novel. The film follows the bitter experiences of a group of desperate farmers who, ruined by the effects of the Great Depression, migrate from Oklahoma to California, which they believe is the promised land where they will find shelter and salvation. The film boasts a superb performance from Henry Fonda and of course Ford's magical vision ? he won the Oscar for Best Director that year.

In America, America (1963), Greek-born filmmaker Elia Kazan drew upon his own uncle's experiences to tell the story of the adventures of a young man from Anatolia who wants to go to New York, his particular promised land, and who is deeply affected by the long, arduous journey. Considered a masterpiece in film history, this is one of the most personal - and favourite - films from this brilliant director.

Pelle, the Conqueror

Rocco e I soui fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers) (1960) traces the fortunes of a family from the south of Italy who migrate to Milan to make a new start, portraying the difficulties the brothers have adapting to and integrating into the industrialized North. Italian aristocrat Luchino Visconti directed this great film imbuing it with a considerable dose of social criticism. It's a perfect synthesis of neo-realism and melodrama, with operatic overtones.

In My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Stephen Frears, a specialist in English society under Margaret Thatcher, paints a merciless - though not devoid of humour - portrait of multicultural Britain in the eighties, including, among other things, the tense relations between the locals and immigrants from Pakistan.

 

La Aldea Maldita

In 1987 Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror) won an Oscar and a Golden Palm at Cannes. Bille August, the director, tells the story of two Swedish peasants, father and son, who travel to Denmark to escape poverty, only to find that life there as immigrants can be even harsher than in their native land.

Spanish Cinema

In 1930, Florián Rey wrote and directed La Aldea Maldita (The Cursed Village), one of the most outstanding examples of Spanish silent film, in which a group of people are forced to leave their home town to seek new horizons. This exodus has a profound influence on each migrant. Rey has created a cinematographic gem here, narrated in an extremely elliptical, effective way, with surprising photography and editing. Sound was added later and the film achieved some international renown. 

Un Franco, 14 Pesetas (Crossing Borders)

In 1951, when Franco's power was at its height, José Antonio Nieves Conde brought out Surcos (Furrows), a film which subtly criticised the regime in power but got past the censors with few problems. Like many Spanish films about migrations, the plot focuses on a family who want to leave the country and go to Madrid, a city which treats them brutally and ultimately corrupts them. Surcos, one of the true classics of Spanish cinema, is a tremendously daring work, both in terms of its content and style, a very black film influenced by Italian neo-realism with a great script by Nieves Conde and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, which perfectly portrays the brutality of cities, lack of roots, and the problems of housing and corruption. 

Years later, films like Españolas en París (Spaniards in Paris) (1970) appeared, in which Roberto Bodegas explores a phenomenon peculiar to that time: the Spanish girls who went to live in France, in particular Paris, to work as maids and help their families in Spain by sending money. Ana Belén, young and lively, was one of these girls given a cool welcome by her haughty and arrogant French employers.  

Bwana

Comedy also exploited the Spanish exodus to wealthier parts of Europe.  In Pedro Lazaga's Vente a Alemania, Pepe (1971), Alfredo Landa added a touch of acid humour to the misfortunes of a Spaniard in booming Germany, working non-stop from dawn to dusk cleaning and glueing glass.
 
In 1990, in Las Cartas de Alou (Letters from Alou), director Montxo Armendáriz presented a realistic portrait of all the difficulties (language, housing, indifference) which the Senegalese encounter on trying to become integrated into a new and different society.

Ispansi

In Bwana (1996), Basque filmmaker Imanol Uribe explores racism and xenophobia through the story of a black illegal immigrant and his relationship with a Spanish family he meets by chance.

Llorenç Soler also examines racist prejudices, together with legal impediments, in Saïd (1999), a film about a young Moroccan who crosses the Straits of Gibraltar on a raft in order to reach Barcelona.

Three sisters from Cuba arrive in Madrid with the intention of making new lives there in Cosas que Dejé en La Habana (Things I Left in Havana) (1997), by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón. The film represents the director's heartfelt tribute to friends and relatives.

In 2006, actor Carlos Iglesias ventured into directing for the first time with Un Franco, 14 Pesetas (Crossing Borders), a warm film which, using his personal memories, links the vicissitudes of two families who emigrate to Switzerland where, in spite of their initial difficulties, they end up getting used to their new lifestyles.

Based on dramatic accounts of the deaths of numerous immigrants who attempt to reach the southern coast of Spain from Morocco, Madrid filmmaker Chus Gutiérrez shows us another side of immigration in Retorno a Hansala (2008). She takes her leading characters to the North African village from which many of the deceased immigrants depart, presenting us a drama of the shattered families left behind and the friends and young people, who despite the high risks involved, desperately try to get to the Spanish coast.

 

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