If we were to compare the Madrilenian Scene to a hospital (like the ones that litter Pedro Almodóvar's melodramas), we would have to acknowledge the power of this cultural movement to cure Spain of the epidemic of Francoism that had gripped it for decades. Administering strong injections of sound and colour, the actors in this subversive movement of the 1970s and 1980s helped the country to rediscover the colour of freedom. But before the shock treatment and shock images, there had to be research into therapeutic treatments and substances. And it is in this creative research that Almodóvar made a name for himself, at the end of the 1970s. Among the alembics littering the laboratory of this mad scientist, alongside all manner of images, the music took pride of place, and he played it himself, in an ephemeral underground group called Almodóvar y McNamara. We can see the duo playing in his works like the 1982 film Labyrinth of Passion, where he plays Suck it to me and Gran Ganga in concert. Between glam rock and punk, these songs give Almodóvar the opportunity to lay the first stone in his work around the relationship between sound and image. For him, music is a vector of emotion, and especially for nostalgia, as we see in the scene where, in the middle of a concert, Sexilia (Cecilia Roth) is plunged into reminiscences of her childhood by the sea, after glancing into a projector that resembles the sun.
Create a free account to keep reading
