STEVEN MARSH teaches Film and Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of South Carolina, USA. Previously he lived in Madrid for 16 years. He is joint editor of Gender and Spanish Cinema (2004), an author on the international collaborative project An Oral History of Cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain, and is currently writing a book on the cultural politics of everyday life in the city of Madrid since 1975. He is co-editor of the journal Studies in Hispanic Cinemas.

'Steven Marsh offers a thoughtful analysis of Spanish comedy during Francoism that makes us better understand the role of resistance played by popular culture...This is a stimulating book that paves the way for further research on comedy in the ideological arena.' - David Rodr?guez-Solas, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

• List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Comedy and the Weakening of the State Tactics and Thresholds in Edgar Neville's Life on a Thread (1945) Metropolitan Masquerades: The Destabilization of Madrid in the Neville Trilogy Populism, the National-Popular and the Politics of Luis García Berlanga: Welcome Mister Marshall! (1952) Humor and Hegemony: Berlanga, the State and the Family in Plácido (1961) and The Executioner (1963) 'Making Do' or the Logic of the Ersatz Economy in the Spanish Films of Marco Ferreri The Pueblo Travestied in Fernando Fernán Gómez's The Strange Journey (1964) Conclusion: Gila's Telephone Notes Bibliography Filmography Index