Raise Ravens

The Hunf is a film deeply rooted in the aftermath of theSpanish Civi l War. Eight years later, in 7973, CousinAngdlica proved to be, as Saura later observed, ,the filmwhich contains the greatest number of experiences andthoughts upon the War'. It was also the film whichclosed a cycle in which he had grappled, albeit ob-liquely, with the issues and the consequences of thatterrible conflict.l Raise Rauens,filmed in the months thatpreceded Franco's death in 1975, can be regarded asone of the first fi lms of the transition towards democ-racy. The death of the central character's father, a militaryman who fought against the Communists, is a re-".k-able coincidence in the l ight of what was about tohappen to Franco himself. For the family he leavesbehind it marks the end of an era. His three children,like spain itself, stand on the threshold of an uncertainfuture.

Rgise Raaens was also an important moment in saura'scareer in the sense that i t marked the end of an associa-tion with the scriptwriter, Rafael Azcona, which wentback to 7967.2 Azcona had taught Saura much aboutwriting scripts but by this time the director felt suffi-ciently confident to undertake the task alone. Morethan that, however, Saura was increasingly worried byAzcona's misogyny and concluded that there could beno part for a man who held such an att i tude towardswomen in a film that would largely be about threegenerations of women. Although he would work again

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with other scriptwriters, Raise Raaens points to Saura'sdesire to be in total control of his work.

As far as the film's early history is concerned, themilitary raised strong objections to its presentation ofan army officer as an adulterer. Their chief spokesmanwas the Vice-President of the Government itself, Gen-eral Santiago Diaz de Mendivil. Nevertheless, in thepolitical circumstances of the time, with Adolfo Su6rezabout to become President and initiate a crucial stepaway from military dictatorship, the protests were re-sisted and the Direcci6n General de Cinematografiabacked the film. It based its argument on the groundsthat Saura was by now a director of international stand-ing and that withdrawal of the film would producestrong reaction both inside and outside Spain. Further-more, such action would cast serious doubts on all theGovernment's recent statements about freedom of ex-pression and the principles of democracy.3

In the event, Raise Raaens was shown at the CannesFilm Festival in1976 and was awarded the Jury's Spe-cial Prize. Subsequently it proved to be a great criticaland commercial success not only in Europe but also inthe notoriously difficult American market. The contri-butions to the film's success made by the child actress,Ana Torrent, in the central role of Ana, cannot beoveremphasized. Two years earlier she had appearedas another Ana in Victor Erice's outstanding film, Spiritof the Beehiae,at the age of six. Her performance inRaiseRaaens is one of the most brill iant in the history of theSpanish cinema and remains with the viewer long afterthe film has ended.

Raise Raaens begins with photographs in an albummixed in with the titles and accomPanied by pianomusic. The photographs portray initially mother andchild, followed by photographs of other children, of

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mother, father and child, of father in military uniformon a white horse, and of the three children growing upand playing games together. The sequence ends withindividual photographs of the three girls in close-up,looking direct ly at the camera, their eyes open andreceptive, their ages ranging from about five to twelve.What precisely is i ts function here and how do we, theaudience, relate to i t?

Our famil iar i ty with our own family photographsestabl ishes an immediate l ink with these people we aresuddenly made to look at, and creates an interest inthem. Who is this family we have never met? What is i tshistory, the relat ionship of husband and wife, of par-ents and children? What kind of childhood have thesesisters had whose names we do not even know? Whatare they thinking as, in the final close-ups of the se-quence, they look out at us with their wide eyes? Saurahas himself made some interesting observations onfamily photographs which are highly relevant here:

In large groups there is always someone with a sadexpression: that little girl with black hair and largeeyes cannot conceal a complex future. On the otherhand, there are others born with the sign of opti-mism written on their face and a rosy future caneasily be predicted for them. But those who preoc-cupy me most are the faces which changesubstantially in the course of the family album: theface that was huppy yesterday has in the recentpast become sad and sensit ive; that person hasbecome strange and tormented in the present. Inthe future, who knows what disaster is suggestedin the expression?a

The musical accompaniment has a melancholy which

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may possibly relate to the family in the photographs.And what of the film's title: Raise Raaens? The wordsare part of a Spanish proverb which goes: 'Raise ravensand they' l l peck out your eyes'.s Once more there areimplications about chi ldhood and the way in whichchildren are shaped and influenced in the -_c.ourse of it.What might be Called the prologue to the f i lm is thus,for al l i ts simplici ty, wonderful ly evocative and myste-r ious.

The first sequence proper begins to answer some ofour questions but only in part. After moving acrossthe darkened sitting room of a large bourgeois house,the camera reveals the l i t t le gir l we saw in the photo-graphs coming downstairs in her nightdress. Just beforeshe appears, we hear a woman's voice speaking thewords: ' I love you, Anselmo. You are t ickl ing me', andthen, when the child reaches the foot of the stairs, thesequence of events is precisely that which is heard andseen by her. A man's voice is heard gasping: ' I can'tbreathe. I 'm choking'. The woman's voice cal ls out'Anselmo. Anselmo!' After a few moments silence, thedoor of the room from which the sounds have comebursts open and a woman rushes out, attempting tobutton her jacket. In her haste she drops various itemsfrom her handbag, picks them up, sees the child watch-ing her and hurries from the house. The child thenenters the room where the body of a man l ies on thebed, partly covered by rumpled sheets. A close-upreveals his stil l, staring eyes. Kneeling on the bed, thegirl speaks for the first time - 'Papa', then takes aglass from the dressing-table and washes i t in thekitchen.

By the end of the sequence we know some answers:the man's name is Anselmo and he is the girl 's father,already seen in the family photograph. But what of the

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mother, and who is the woman with Anselmo? Asadults we might be able to guess the answers, or someof them, but Saura's purpose here is to make us seethings from the child;s perspective and thus to shareher sense of puzzlement. In actual fact, as we discoverlater, she knows the woman's identity from a previousoccasion, but more important than that is her exposurehere to events which are not merely traumatic but ofwhich she has no understanding. In witnessing them asshe does, we can at least feel something of the bewilder-ment of the child suddenly confronted with strangeand terrible happenings. If, in relation to the initialphotographs, we wondered about the child's formativeexperiences, their nature is here revealed to us in nouncertain fashion.

The two sequences that follow (though the first isreally a continuation of what has been described above)have the effect, f i rst ly, of adding to what we knowalready, and secondly, of taking us deeper into thechi ld's mind. As she opens the fr idge door, a womancomes into view, teasingly scolds her for being up solate, and sends her back to bed. In terms of exposit ion i tis clear, although not stated, that the woman is thechild's mother and that there is great affection betweenthem. Moreover, although the episode is an unbrokencontinuation of the earlier events, the mother's appear-ance at a moment when her husband lies dead in thebedroom after making love with another woman sug-gests that this is not reality but the child's evocation ofher mother, whom she greatly loves, at a moment whenshe needs her to cling to.

In the second of the two sequences the mother appearsagain and begins to comb the child's hair, taking over thetask from an older woman. That this is once more animagined episode is confirmed just afterwards when the

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mother leaves and the older woman, Rosa, continuing tocomb the child's hair, wakes her from her daydream:'Ana . . . Ana . . . What are you thinking about?' Inaddition, Ana's reply (we now know her name for thefirst time) is confirmation that the woman in the vision isher mother, while the past tense indicates that she is noIonger here: 'Is it true that Mama always wore thiscross?' That she is, in fact, dead is indicated a fewmoments later when, in a brief conversation on the stairswith her elder sister, Irene, Ana informs her that whenshe saw that her father was dead, her mother appearedin the kitchen, to which Irene replies: 'Mama is dead,Ana!' The death of the mother clearly preceded that ofthe father, but these are facts which, especially in theearly part of the film, we, as audience, are able to puttogether only slowly, piece by piece. The film's structuresuggests in one way the fluid, shifting nature of Ana'sthoughts, in which past and present, reality and imagi-nation are inextricably interwoven, and in anotherpresents to its audience an intriguing mystery whosetruths are only slowly revealed.

The sequence described above takes place on the dayof the father's funeral. Downstairs, where the coffinlies, are military men in uniform, come to pay their lastrespects, as well as relatives and friends soberly dressed.It is an occasion for formality and ritual, and just beforethis Ana and her sisters have been prepared for it,firstly by Rosa, the family servant, who helps them towash and dress, and secondly by another woman, theirAunt Paulina, who issues str ict instruct ions: ' Irene,come here. When you enter the room, you first kissyour father . . . then you pray that his soul may be inheaven. . . ' Paulina herself, we observe, is very for-mally dressed in a dark suit, her hair tightly drawn: thevery image of the correctness of behaviour demanded

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by the occasion. The stiffness of the mourners, notunlike that of the corpse itself, cannot but bring to mindthe earlier images of the woman running from the deadman's bedroom, her jacket open, and the man himselflying amongst the rumpled sheets. The contrast be-tween the two is the contrast between private andpublic behaviour, which, in turn, points to the hypoc-risy which denies or sweeps the former under thecarpet in favour of the latter, as well as instructing theyoung in certain ways of conduct which have little to dowith the inner person. It is not without significance thatonly Ana refuses to kiss her father in defiance of AuntPaulina's instruction. Because she loved her motherand, as we see later, believes her father to be responsi-ble for her death, Ana acts instinctively, refusing toshow affection or respect for the dead man.

Shortly after the beginning of a new sequence inwhich Ana is seen in the garden of the house, thoseevents which we have so far assumed to be taking placein the present are suddenly revealed as having oc-curred twenty years ago. A new voice is heard, thevoice of an older woman, and the camera moves from aclose-up of the face of Ana the child to the face of Anaat the age of about twenty-eight and remarkably simi-lar in appearance to her dead mother (both roles wereplayed by Geraldine Chaplin). Most of what we haveseen so far consists of memories and recollections bythe older Ana, and what we considered to be the memo-ries of Ana the child are therefore the memories of theolder woman of her memories as a child, the equivalentof a play within a play. Addressing the camera directly,the adult Ana wonders about the traumatic events ofher childhood, and not least about her attitude towardsher father. She recalls in particular how she blamed himfor her mother's death and how, therefore, she had

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attempted to poison him with some white powder,believing, indeed, that this was what had killed him.Twenty years on, the memory of her father's guiltremains: 'The only thing I remember perfectly is thatmy father then seemed to be to blame for the sadnessthat had oppressed *y mother in her last years. I wasconvinced that he and he alone had caused her il lnessand her death.' Other things, however, seem far lessclear-cut than they had seemed then, the answers to thequestions she continues to ask herself are 'too easy and[theyl don't satisfy me'. One effect of this suddentransition in time is to underline further that feeling ofuncertainty we have already experienced in the earlierpart of the film by evoking the shifting, uncertain andmulti-layered nature of memory itself.

If the adult Ana feels less sure about earlier certain-ties, her thoughts point, nevertheless, to her father'sharshness and her mother's lack of freedom, both ofwhich are to do with their respective roles in the societyin which they live.5Indeed, it is this train of thought onAna's part, and in particular her pondering on hermother's 'l iberation' had she become a pianist,T whichleads directly to the following sequences. In the first ofthese Aunt Paulina is seen correcting the children'shabits at the dinner table: 'Don't you know how tobehave at the table?' Paulina has now assumed the roleof head of the family, taking their father's place, and isresolved to impose the same kind of discipline. Asecond sequence takes place in the kitchen lvhere Anais seen with the family servant Rosa and is less to dowith the father's role as paterfamilias than with his roleas a man. Rosa's opening remark, delivered in hercustomary matter-of-fact style, sees all men as con-forming to a stereotyped pattern, as taking on the roleof predators, with women as their prey: 'All men are

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the same. You'll find that out when you're a woman.They all want the same thing. Don't let them fool you.Your father, for one: he was a real skirt-chaser.' Rosa'srole is of crucial importance; as with other servants inso many Spanish literary or cinematic works, she sweepsaside the niceties of bourgeois formality (consider theold servant La Poncia in Lorca's The House of BernardaAIba), as well as shaping and helping to confirm whatAna may so far only half believe. Of key importance inthis sequence is the window which Rosa cleans as shetalks to Ana, together with the shot in close-up of Ana,wide-eyed, looking through it, and listening simulta-neously to the sounds of the city beyond the house.8The image of window and eyes come together verysuggestively to evoke the notion of the child's percep-tion of the world. It is therefore highly significant thatat this very moment, as if conjured up by Rosa's words,she should have a vision of her father stroking Rosa'sbreasts from the other side of the glass and of herselfand her mother surprising him in the act. Earlier in thefilm Ana did, of course, see another woman rush fromhis bedroom, her jacket undone, and witnessed otherexperiences too, as we shall see later. As a child, there-fore, her ideas of what it is to be a man and what it is tobe a woman are already becoming clearly defined: hermother's potential career and freedom abandoned inthe interests of the family; her father free to indulge hissexual desires at his wife's expense and behind herback.

The theme of woman as victim, brought up andeducated to accept a subordinate and often painful role,is developed in various ways in the following sequences.Initially, Ana listens to a pop song whose words -'Why are you going? I wake up every night, thinking ofyou. . . Why are you going?' - reflect the sadness of

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her own life after her mother's death. Just afterwardsshe sits for a while with her grandmother who is con-fined to a wheelchair, unable to speak and whose onlyescape from her pointless life is into the past, repre-sented by a display of photographs and an oldgramophone record. In an earlier sequence Ana pushesher grandmother's wheelchair in the garden; later shesits with her again. Between the child and the oldwoman there is a clear link; a similarity and a differ-ence. The grandmother, cr ippled and speechless,powerless to control her life,e looks back on experi-ences of which we have no knowledge but which, as alater episode suggests, may not have been particularlyhuppy. Ana, in contrast, looks forward, not knowingwhat the future holds but already marked by traumaticevents and conditioned to the roles of men and women.As John Hopewell has observed: 'A Francoist upbring-ing traumatizes; it also represses. Ana's predicamentin Cria Cueraos is very similar to Leopoldo's in E/desencanfo: the struggle to be oneself in a society whichgrooms its members in social roles rather than develop-ing their individual i ty. ' r0

The extent of such grooming is revealed when, withAunt Paulina out of the house, the chi ldren play a gamein which they dress as adults and in which Irene andAna assume the roles of husband and wife. When thehusband arrives home late he is questioned by the wifeabout his lateness, both questions and answers takingthe form of famil iar cl ich6s: 'You're very late. Whathave you been doing unti l eleven o'clock?'. . . 'Pleasedon't start. I 'm worn out. I 've had a heavy day. ' Playedby children the'adult' confrontation is inevitably comic,but the husband's remark, 'Please, Amelia, the chi ld-ren' , suggests how the chi ldren have in the pastoverheard such scenes, lying awake as the bit ter accu-

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sations fly. In f act,later in the film Ana recalls such aconfrontation between her own parents. The point isclearly made that the children in this and other familieswill become adults with preconceived ideas about adultrelationships and the roles of men and women. Theyare indeed traumatized by their past.

For Ana as a child, the most terrible experience of allwas the death of her mother; something which, herfather being away, she was obliged to witness alone.Here, as in other sequences, Ana watches silently, herface almost blank and expressionless, white as a sheetof paper. We are reminded of the young Tristana aboutto be exposed to the bitter experiences of growing up.Ana's experience is that of seeing her mother roll inagony from one side of the bed to the other, of seeingthe bloodstained sheets, of listening to her terriblemoaning and desperate words, 'I 'm afraid. I don't wantto die.' There are some powerful images here: of Ana onthe stairs and in her bedroom, hands over her ears tocut out the sound of her mother's cries; of Ana sittingon a sofa, her arms limp at her sides, eyes lookingstraight ahead, the record on the gramophone evokingemptiness and desolation. Ana's suffering as a child isdifferent from her mother's but in its way equallypainful. Her anguished silence as she observes hermother's death links her once more to her grandmother,mute and paralyzed.It is no surprise that the older Anashould admit, 'There are things you can't forget. Itseems incredible that there are such powerful memo-ries. '

The degree to which the memory of her motherremains with her is vividly evoked when, as she lies inbed, Ana 'sees' her standing outside the open door ofher bedroom. Ana's mother then enters the room to seeif she has gone to sleep and, finding she has not, tells

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Ana the story of Thumbelina.rl Ana quickly falls asleepbut wakes up again a few moments later and, findingher mother gone, calls out to her as if she were stil lalive. Her cries are answered by Aunt Paulina whoattempts to comfort \er, in particular by offering to tellher the story of Thumbelina. Ana's response is imme-diate and direct: ' I want you to die. I want you to die. 'However much Paulina tries to help, she cannot re-place her sister. The scenesbetween Ana and her mothershow that there is a deep love and tenderness whichPaulina can never replace.l2 Furthermore, by takingover the father's role as head of the family, Paulina "therefore becomes the object of Ana's resentment. Herrejection of Paulina here is part of a more generaldefiance and rebellion in the film's concluding scenes.

The f irst protest on Ana's part is against a develop-ing relationship between Paulina and Nicol6s, an oldofficer friend of Ana's father. When Nicolds comes totea one day, Ana enters the room and discovers themkissing while Nicol6s confesses his deep love for Paulina.The scene upon which Ana stumbles unintentionally isan echo of two earlier moments in the film: of seeingher father embracing Amelia, Nicol6s's wife, during avisit to their house in the country; and of seeing Ameliarush from her father's bedroom at the beginning of thefilm. In short, Ana views the relationship of Paulinaand Nicol6s, who is stil l married to Amelia, as a recrea-t ion of ear l ier events which have brought onlyunhappiness. When she points the gun at them -which she has brought to the room for Paulina toconfirm that it was a present from her father - hermotives may well be unclear and unformulated, butthere can be no doubt that somewhere in her mindthere is a deep-seated wish to protest against a repeti-tion in her life of what has happened once already.

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The second protest is against Paulina's authoritari-anism. In a scene in the kitchen where Paulina is usingthe sewing-machine, Rosa begins to talk to Ana abouther mother, telling the child how much like her she isbecoming, how undeservedly her mother suffered, whata saint she was. Rosa's words, uttered in Paulina'spresence, are undoubtedly a deliberate provocation,motivated in part by Rosa's affection for her formermistress whom she attended faithfully during her suf-fering, and by resentment towards her new mistress.r3At all events, Paulina orders Rosa from the room andthen, seeing her authority challenged and possiblyundermined, loses her temper with Ana. It is this thatfinally leads Ana to try to poison her with the sameharmless powder she believes killed her father.

The ending of the film marks both the end of theschool hol idays and a new stage in Ana's l i fe. la Whenmorning comes, she is amazed to discover that Paulinais not dead. Her attempt to destroy her authority andher influence upon her life has failed. Moreover, it isnow time to return to school, where Paulina's bour-geois values of discipline, obedience and submission,of what it is to be a woman in a society which changeslittle in its attitudes, will further chip away at Ana'sindependent spirit.

Raise Raaens is undoubtedly a remarkable film. Muchmore complex structurally than The Hunf, its flash-backs and unexpected leaps in time make it a fascinating,teasing and arresting film to watch. In suggesting theway in which a child is shaped by the events to whichit is exposed, Saura's achievement is of the highestorder.

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Notes

In an interview with Jos6 Oliver, Cambio 16, no.284,Muy 1977, p. 101.

See, in particular, Agustin Siinchez Yidal, El cine deCarlos Saura. . ., pp. 98-99.

See Agustin S6nchezYidal, p. 98.

Saura's observations on the subject of the family albumcan be found in L'Aaant-Scine du Cindma, no. 214, Octo-ber 1978, p. 5, and in an interview in Cuadernos para eIdidlogo, no. 211, May 7977, p.79.The translat ion intoEnglish is my own.

fohn Hopewell, Out of the Past . . ., p.139, suggests that'The most obvious reference in the title is to Ana'srebellion against her upbringing (Paulina calls the sis-ters "crias" - l i terally "young creatures"). ' VirginiaHigginbotham, Spanish FiIm under Franco . . ., p. 92,notes that 'Saura's choice of a proverb for the title ofthis film is an accurate reflection of fascist use of lan-guage. . . The rancorous prediction of this particularproverb is especially typical of a repressive, fearful andconformist myth such as that of the Franco regime.'Central to that regime, of course, was the concept of thefamily and of bringing up one's children to believe inthe 'correct'values.

Virginia Higginbotham, op. cit., p.94, suggests that 'asthe child becomes the mother, her hopes, too, will fadesince women's lives in Spain have not changed forgenerations.'

There is a certain autobiographical element here inas-much as Saura's mother had chosen to bring up afamily rather than pursue a career as a professionalpianist.

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