The chromatic strategy in 'Arrebato': avant-garde, experimentation and psychological values of the color red in the cinematographic staging

Abstract

The studies published on Arrebato (Iván Zulueta, 1980) focus on the experimental language of the film and on the condition of rara avis that it occupies in the panorama of Spanish cinema of the Transition (1975-1982). This work proposes a formal study of the staging of the film, and, in particular, of a chromatic strategy based on the psychological use of the red color through which the director links the rapturous moods that shake the three protagonists (José, Pedro and Ana) with the central themes of the film’s discourse: vampirism, addictions, childhood and immortality. It is thus established an iconic formal story in which the different red objects and elements that appear in each scene fulfill a narrative and symbolic function that speaks both of the Spanish historical context of the time and of the tendencies of the experimental cinema of the moment.