Late-Francoist popular comedy and the reactionary film text

In broad terms, this essay considers the role and impact of popular commercial film comedy in Franco's Spain in the early 1970s, shortly before the dictator's death and the country's relatively bloodless transition to a democratic monarchy. The essay is a companion piece to a previously published article in the same area (Jordan 2003: 16786). The article dealt with the subgenre of the comedia sexy ibrica or comedia de destape (iberian sex/sleazy comedy) and was based on a case study of Ramn Fernndez's No desears al vecino del quinto (1971) (Thou shalt not covet thy 5th floor neighbour) , Spain's biggest-ever grossing popular film under Franco (Losilla 1997: 681; Font 1976: 313) The previous study explored various aspects of the film narrative (structure, point of view, drive and closure) and the interplay between male sexual identities. Here, I propose a return to the same film in order to explore a rather more contentious issue. I ask - rather unfashionably perhaps - whether the film functions as a reactionary film text. In other words, how far does No desears (as I will refer to the film from now on) seek to (re)capture the spectator for the ruling ideology, binding him/her into dominant, traditionalist, patriarchal, Francoist values?