Music and the subversion of diegetic space-time in the work of Pere Portabella (1967-1976)

This article examines work in the filmography of the Catalan director Pere Portabella (1927-) made between 1967 and 1976, analysing the use of music in these films. Portabella developed a cinematic form that could be placed in the category of modern cinema, with which he sought to subvert the basic premises of the Institutional Mode of Representation. In general, the presence of music in films defines a part of the mechanisms through which cinematic language articulates its diegesis. We focus our theoretical approach on how music can facilitate the subversion of the Institutional Mode of Representation, especially in terms of narration and the definition of space-time. Portabella offers an avant-garde film corpus characterized by its formal and aesthetic subversions, as well as the presence of clearly political themes. His films allow us to focus our study on the aesthetic relations between image and music in the construction of modern cinematic language.