Metalanguage, metafiction and metaseries: Brechtian poetics in ¡Silencio… se rueda! (TVE, 1961-1962), by Adolfo Marsillach

Abstract

Between October 1961 and April 1962, Adolfo Marsillach produced, wrote, directed and performed for Televisión Española the 27-episode series ¡Silencio… se rueda!, broadcast on Saturdays at 10 p.m. on the first channel. The article uses the theoretical framework of dramaturgy and the methodology of textual analysis to support as a hypothesis that it is a quasi-Marxist meta-series. Firstly because, as in metafiction, a man of the profession talks about Spanish cinema to criticize its “vices” and ask for another cinema, another way of filming that anticipates the Nuevo Cine Español. Furthermore, within the possibilism that Francoism allows, he criticises with a freedom, sincerity and, sometimes, brutality that puts him in a tough personal situation, since he receives protests, insults, boycotts, threats... This generates, secondly, that Marsillach makes continuous references in the series to the series itself. That is, the episodes adopt a self-referential, self-reflexive, self-conscious and self-critical discourse that has to do with that social pressure, but also with the so-called open dramaturgies, whether they are the prologues of Greco-Roman comedies, L'Impromtu de Versailles (1663) or the Brechtian aesthetics of alienation.