Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Romancero Marroquí, Carlos Velo, Enrique Dominguez Rodiño
(1939). Peasants ploughing a field near Larache. Courtesy of
the Filmoteca Española, Madrid
in Morocco, Colonel Juan Beigbeder, one of the key figures of the
military rebellion in the North of Africa and the senior officer
responsible throughout the war for guaranteeing the support of the
Moroccan nationalists to the Franco cause and, as a result, an
uninterrupted flow of Moorish troops to the Peninsular battle fronts.
By recruiting a qualified team from the film production firm, CEA,
including – for reasons still not clear – the Republican Carlos Velo,
Beigbeder promoted the shooting of a feature film in 1938
“which – in his own words – at the same time as it shows,
in documentary form, all of the beautiful works of art and
nature, regions and customs of the country, it also reflects,
by means of a plot developed in part of the film, the
fervent participation of the Moroccan people in our
glorious Uprising”.
Although the propagandistic intentions are evident at all
times in Romancero marroquí (which was highly acclaimed
by Franco and Serrano Suñer and even premiered in Berlin
in a slightly different version dubbed in German), the fact
is that the film stands out on account of its remarkable
plastic qualities and as one of the major milestones of the
Spanish documentary movement of the thirties. With its
marked ethnographic tone, Romancero marroquí succeeded
in transcending the mere exaltation of the Moorish troops
enlisted in Franco’s army, in order to become a true
testimony of respect towards the idiosyncrasies and
traditions of the Moroccan people, who, in virtue of this
understanding and a supposed community of interests,
were offered a future horizon incomparably better than that
of the French zone. An unaccustomed vision in the
framework of the colonial cinema of the era, which
generally reflected little sensitivity towards the personality
and the way of life of the citizens of the overseas
possessions, the film by Velo and Domínguez Rodiño appeared to
have commenced a new stage in the Spanish cinema’s perspective on
Africa. However, the course of the Civil War itself and the change in
the Franco regime’s policy on Africa, increasingly less permissive with
the Moroccan nationalistic sectors, brought about a fresh inflection
towards the usual military epic themes.
Nevertheless, the idyllic vision of the life in the Protectorate
conveyed by Romancero marroquí had at least one counterpart in its
contemporary La Canción de Aixa (Florián Rey, 1939). Filmed in
studios in Berlin during the war – and with the exteriors shot in
Morocco, precisely at the same time as Velo was concluding his
documentary – La Canción de Aixa belongs to the tradition of the
oriental fantasies, which had been portrayed in paintings and, most
especially, in zarzuelas for some time, but which then acquired a new
and important ideological dimension. In contrast even to the later
cinematographic orientalia of the Franco period (Sucedió en Damasco,
32 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001