Neorealist subversions: interrogating the capitalist turn in José Antonio Nieves Conde’s Todos somos necesarios (1956) and El inquilino (1957)

Subject to relatively little scholarly attention, José Antonio Nieves Conde’s films Todos somos necesarios (1956) and El inquilino (1957) demonstrate a pioneering form of cinematic dissidence in 1950s Spain against the Franco regime’s embrace of capitalism. In their premise alone – Todos somos necesarios in its depiction of three recently released prisoners’ reintegration into society on a train journey, and El inquilino with its story of a father’s search for an apartment for his family – both films can be seen as apolitical, melodramatic narratives that conform to the ideological values of the Franco regime. However, this article explores how Todos somos necesarios’s and El inquilino’s commitment to contemporary reality – an essential characteristic of neorealism, as theorized by André Bazin – in their depiction of, respectively, the unjust nature of the legal system and the difficulty of finding a home, draw on the techniques of Italian neorealism. If neorealism is a genre that transforms the viewer’s relation to the screen and deconstructs conventional beliefs, Todos somos necesarios and El inquilino similarly disturb the romanticized and escapist aesthetic of dominant Francoist film to portray the injustice and inequality in their (un)intentionally neorealist denunciation of the Franco regime’s capitalist turn.