Inspired by the eponymous classic zarzuela (a sort of Spanish operetta), Rafael Azcona and Jose Luis García Sánchez’s script for La corte de Faraón draws upon the play-within-the play convention to build a spoof working at different levels. The original “biblical operetta” from 1910 (written by Guillermo Perrín and Miguel de Palacios, with musical composition by Vicent Lleó) belonged to a set of theatrical pieces produced in Spain around the early 20th century as parodic offshoots of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida (the paradigmatic example of the operas set in ancient Egypt). The plot of La corte de Faraón revolves around the misfortunes of “Chaste Joseph” (the Hebrew figure, son of Jacob, from The Book of Genesis) during his years as a captive in Egypt. Instead of relying on the usual narrative tropes of epic and morality tales, the zarzuela, as well as its cinematic derivative, presents a subversive, sexual farce around the biblical story of Joseph at the Pharaoh’s court in Memphis. García Sánchez and Azcona’s transcoding of the operetta participates of the same exotic stereotypes informing Perrín and Palacio’s libretto, in which ancient Egypt is staged, in decor and costume, following orientalist clichés. But, as it was the case with the musical play, the movie uses this burlesque, fantasy setting as a backdrop for a criticism on political conservatism and Catholic morals. In this, La corte de Faraón (the film) aligns itself with a noticeable trend of Spanish cinema of the Transition and early democratic years (from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, approximately); a trend that demanded a critical-historical reassessment of Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship in Spain.

Author: Samuel Fernández-Pichel