It began with this film a new stage in the cinematographic path for the master Luis Buñuel, the genius of Talanda opened a new moment, in every sense of the word for a creator, after his enduring surrealist exercises. After a few hesitant steps for Hollywood studios, Buñuel arrives to Mexico to get into exile, an unthinking course in his career as a filmmaker, where unexplored situations will have to face the director, who did not exactly have a placid debut in Aztec lands. He began his collaboration with his famous producer Óscar Dancigers, with whom so many immortal exercises would produce in successive years, but still would not have contact with Luis Alcoriza, his most important scriptwriter. Buñuel from the beginning practiced the cinematographic adaptations, of the literature to the big screen, and to initiate what would be a practically religious custom in his cinema, adapts the work of Michel Veber, adapted and transferred to Mexican terrain by Mauricio Magdaleno, collaborating the own director as well. The Iberian tells the story of Mexican oil workers, who are immersed in a mystery when the master disappears mysteriously, and his beautiful sister comes from Argentina to visit him, and everyone begins to look for him, while a romance is born between her and the main worker, nor more or less than Jorge Negrete and Libertad Lamarque.
The action begins in a prison, Gerardo Ramírez (Negrete) and Demetrio García (Julio Villarreal) are there, but they manage to escape, they meet Heriberto (Agustín Isunza), who gets them a job in the oil plantation run by José Enrique Irigoyen (Francisco Jambrina), who suffers from a shortage of workers. Irigoyen is pressured by Fabio (José Baviera), who threatens to close his plantations for not having work; but they all start to work, then relax in the casino of the locality, where dances and sings Camelia (Mercedes Barba), in addition to Nanette (Fernanda Albany). Once the work began, Fabio continues to press Irigoyen, who suddenly disappears mysteriously, and shortly after arrives from Argentina his attractive sister, Mercedes (Lamarque), surprised over the disappearance of her brother. She does not reveal her identity as Irigoyen's sister, and almost unwittingly, gets a job in the casino, singing, where everyone notices her beauty, promptly calling the attention of Gerardo, who tries to woo her. But seeing the situation, she confesses to Gerardo that she is sister of the employer, and together they begin to investigate, while some thugs sent by Fabio try to liquidate the worker. Finally they discover Fabio, assassinated José Enrique, face him, and is eliminated, leaving the couple in love, Mercedes and Gerardo, together.
In this picture, a turning point in the Buñuelian filmography, the opening sequence in prison is the return of the Spanish genius behind the cameras after years of absence, the master oils the gears of his creative circuit, those first sequences, frames and shots mean his return and forced metamorphosis, forced adaptation to new canons. In those moments in which the filmmaker resumed to the profession, the objectivity of the approaches gets warmly broken with that subjective frame at the time of already escaping the cloister, with the bars then destroyed. Likewise, we will observe different exercises in similar scenes, somewhat timid, as the director returned after years of silence, for example in the bar, some sweep scans take our attention from one character to another, there are zooms in and out to distances from the camera, the filmmaker goes returning to the way. There is also the ellipsis he obtains with the melting of the suitcases of Mercedes, newcomer to Tampico, to give the temporary jump to another moment and space of the film, are technical resources with which the Iberian acclimated to the office again; and so, twists and turns of the camera, and some frames show that the genius, although for a few years in the drydock, still retained the talent, which should simply be re-polished. The feature soon manifests itself as a shining excercise for its starring, for from the first sequence we see the immortal charro, Jorge Negrete, singing to deceive his captors, and to escape from prison; they did not wait nor even five minutes for one of the film's distinctive features to manifest, its stars looking for an international showcase for their careers. It is a bit exaggerated how Negrete is "promoted" in the film, inserting sequences of his song in a practically gratuitous way, without any nexus or connection with the scene shooted, suddenly we hear him releasing some notes, as in the casino, it is shown a little excessive that eagerness of being lucid, to exhibit the charro. Similar case with Libertad, beautiful and young, although her participation in general lines seems to have been rather innocuous for the filming, also with more than a sequence of singing. But Buñuel himself made very good friends with Negrete, however, with this film was born what would be known as alimentary films in the filmmaker, films made by necessity, to survive, or to become known in a new scene, the cinematographic Mexican scenario, which at that moment, with skeptical eyes, had him for a complete stranger.
After the first third of the film, it is more than evident the new filmic nature that Buñuel adopts, a linear, flat picture, astonishingly antagonistic to his previous An Andalusian Dog (1929) and The Golden Age (1930), now a film whose argument never liked the director very much. In this sort of comedy with vodevilescos, musical dyes, a light village history, the director is almost felt drowning in what is the feature, an exercise of shining of its protagonists stars, a romantic musical in which does not flow one single kiss. Heriberto and the French Nanette are the ones who put in a good measure the hilarious touch, the funny and witty phases of the film, a humor that is distended in the feature, and between that humor, how to forget a personage when it is said to him that could spend more days in prison, to which he responds "Better, where does one is given to eat without doing anything?". It is also the famous trio Calavera, which as well flows in different moments of the film, each more delirious and fun, more unexpected than the previous one. In this romance story, with certain adventurous tones, in which the musical sequences are noticed for moments quite disjointed with the whole, the filmmaker is felt like a little out of place, as in effect some testimony of a visitor to the shooting would assert. The movie at its time should have disconcert the connoisseurs of the director's work, so there aren't many of his capital topics, only a few, such as the sequence where the character of Camelia is introduced, with that well-shaped leg of hers that becomes the core of the frame, a detail certainly notorious as a creation of the filmmaker, whose weakness for the flesh and sex is one of the watchwords of all his oeuvre. One of the best moments is when Gerardo talks to Nanette, she talks without stopping, while Negrete, without paying attention, observes a jug of beer. Certainly the scarcity of surrealism in the film is almost total, something understandable, given the conjuncture of the moment for the director, but it is touching to see Buñuel, in that context, sliding timidly but with determination, his sonship, his inclination by surrealism. Continuing, one of the most famous scenes in the cortege of Jorge Negrete to Libertad Lamarque, and Buñuel, well-known enemy of showing kisses on screen, uses the resource of showing Negrete suggestively playing with a stick, a branch that introduces in the oil sludge, introduces and removes the mass while falling in love both individuals. A sequence that seemed a warm wink to another sequence of The Golden Age, a brief sequence, fleeting, but full of meaning, and that carries in its simplicity much of the essence of the Spanish.
Also, within the few details that breaks the audiovisual linearity of the story, we have the sequence in which Negrete liquidates a subject who was furtively behind a curtain, and while he hits him with a small replica of the statue of Liberty (detail by the way well specified by the director), the image of a shattering glass is superimposed. This detail, once again brief, fleeting, is one more detail of the filmmaker, who reinforces the violence of the performed act, and incidentally shows us, reminds us, though lightly, which director is behind the cameras.... continues to beat the surrealist feel. This was one of the most complicated and rugged filming for Spanish, whose difficulty extended even to postproduction. Well known is the great difficulty that Buñuel went through working with Lamarque, anxious to build a reputation in Mexican industry, his diva attitudes and intrusions really hampered Buñuel's performance. On the other hand, and of another nature, are the difficulties brought by Negrete, leader of union of actors whose affiliations antagonized him with the Mexican industry, that boycotted his films; it is even said that in the projection rooms, his films were projected defectively, intentionally with bad image or sound, certainly a handicap that struck Buñuel, who suffered collateral damages to work with the referential Mexican actor. Buñuel could not stand Lamarque -apparently something he had in common with Negrete-, he affirmed that he would not work with the Argentine actress again, and he did it not, we appreciated her in the long sequences of her singing, because, like Negrete, stars demanded much notoriety in the movie, for calvary of the Spanish director. Also, according to Amparo Martínez Herranz, a great scholar of the Buñuelian work, this is the film in which no doubt more corrections or modifications on the march were made, changes applied at the time of filming; in this way, she encloses bits of the technical script that show the handwritten corrections, deletions or additions of some dialogues, some plans, although it is asserted that it had no real impact on the final result. Buñuel himself declared that the script of the film seemed mediocre, but by the time the filmmaker was there, it was undoubtedly a work, a film that had to be accepted to reinsert in the cinema world, the passage tax to assume. It was a forced and dramatic change, after its surrealist beginnings, and as some of the students of the Buñuelian work affirm, it is a picture of the type in which the spectators look every time some wink or distinctive sign of the director, thus of conjunctural was the moment. However, camera management and sometimes the play of light and shadows give us a pleasant surprise, that the director, despite being long time without work, had not lost touch and had all the technical talent that years later he would finish perfecting. Is a little-cinematographic work, compared to other masterpieces of his, something normal because it is the work of re-hooking of the director, a necessary film, fundamental in his filmography.
Ramiro de la Mata (Fernando Soler), is in a prison house, drunken, next to other men of equal condition. He leaves prison, goes home, where successively his brother Ladislao (Andrés Soler), his butler Juan (Antonio Monsell), his sister-in-law Milagros (Maruja Grifell), his son Eduardo (Gustavo Rojo), all ask him for money to pay for his trivialities, and Ramiro without problem finances those excesses. The daughter of Ramiro, Virginia (Rosario Granados), is engaged, that night is the party to ask for her hand, but he does not approve his future son-in-law. Ramiro overdoes himself, gets completely drunk again, to the extent of arriving at the party of commitment of his daughter totally boozy, frightening the boyfriend and his family, canceling the commitment over the scandal. Gregorio (Francisco Jambrina), another brother of Ramiro, warns the poor situation of the widower, and organizes with the family, taking advantage of a strong fainting of Ramiro, that all pretend economic ruin, they even move to a precarious neighborhood, he intends Ramiro to learn to value money, to change his life. But Ramiro, first frightened, discovers the truth and ends up turning the farce back to his family, he gets everybody to think that bankruptcy is actually real, and are they the ones killing themselves by working to survive. Finally the family benefits from the farce, change all their ways of life, work now, and Virginia finds new love in Pablo (Ruben Rojo).
The film has a very humorous beginning, with the bunch of drunks lying on top of each other as a single mass, without distinguishing the legs of anyone, and then sliding one of the Buñuelianos fetishes: the feet, because the first thing we see of the protagonist, and of all the prisoners of the first sequence, is his feet, a very eloquent and funny presentation of the film. Buñuel continues, with equal efficiency as hilarity, continues diagraming the protagonist, still drunk, at home, attending to all his relatives, even his butler lives of the money that wastes the boss. And Ramiro gets satisfied all of them by sending one by one to his office for a check to pay their frivolities, without even losing his drunkenness, and is from that drunkenness where much of the hilarity of those first sequences is born. The sequence of Ramiro's drunkenness on Virginia's engagement night was vital for Buñuel, finishing drawing that character, and although the actor's interpretation of the script was sublimated, it is the definitive sequence of the pathetic ruin in which was found the character, is the turning-point situation. Once again, the fetish of the feet, Ramiro's shoe, will open up, an image that opens a new narrative moment of the film, because if before it presented the drunkard in jail, now it portrays him with changed status, he has gone from being a rich and carefree drunk, to be a supposed ruined, without money and in misery; the pierced shoe is a silent image representative of this. Then we appreciate another Buñuelian trait, and it is his well-known aversion to kisses, being this markedly striking when Virginia frustrates attempts to kiss from her initial fiance; not even a couple about-to-get-married, on the night of their engagement party, is enough for Buñuel to show a kiss on camera. Then Virginia again represses the kiss, now with Pablo, but Buñuel uses an ingenious and funny contraption, because the kiss happens in offscreen space, out of frame, we do not see it, we hear it by the loudspeaker he left on his car; it is repeated again at the end, and shows that detail so typical of filmmaker. Another Buñuelian element par excellence, sex, the sexual impulse, is now printed in a very suggestive way, with Virginia and Pablo talking, he declaring his love to her, while they suck their ice cream, feeling almost an echo of the suggestive sequence of Jorge Negrete and Libertad Lamarque in Gran Casino, moving a stick in the oil mud. Also Virginia, when Pablo finally declared, responds "already must have cooled", playing the double meaning of the engine, and of the erotic impetus of Pablo, repressed, as so often in the films of Buñuel; this acquires other nuances with the moments of kisses that are heard in loudspeaker, a very curious resource in the cinema of Buñuel.
Probably the reason for the disparate result of this film with respect to Gran Casino rests on several factors, for instance there is no more the sabotage of the industry to Jorge Negrete, nor the meddling of Libertad Lamarque looking for hew a name in the Mexican cinematographic industry with this film; the actors were no longer negative influence, diametrically opposed situation with Soler and his formidable contribution, generating firm mutual respect with Buñuel, something proven in the future collaborations between both, in addition to which Buñuel repeatedly in the future professed praise to the Mexican acting referent. In addition to this, Buñuel was already more knowledgeable, knowing the Mexican industry, having lost some of the pressure of his first Mexican film, there is a greater freshness and freedom in the filmmaker that is translated to the film. Fernando Soler has therefore had an undeniable weight in the film, not only being the main actor and producer (he even initially was going to be the director, a possibility that Soler dismissed as he considered it too exhausting, suggested a "practical" filmmaker, and the choice fell on Buñuel), because the technical script of the film is in Spain, in which numerous handwritten annotations that came from the actor can be appreciated; but that ended up being positive, because those welcomed intrusions freed the Aragonese director enough, allowing him to focus his attention on other filmic needs. This situation is unprecedented and unheard of in a Buñuelian film, the filmmaker working in such a changing way, allowing so many changes on the march, during the filming, because these entries are numerous, many of them from the director's own hand. These annotations modified both dialogues and some shots, the final assembly differed from what was initially planned in many sequences, although the modifications were not substantial, and in this regard the book of the student of Buñuel's work, Professor Amparo Martínez Herranz, throws vital lights. Extremely comical details will be distributed during the film, many of them product, with a high probability, of those spontaneous modifications during the shooting. It is an alimentary film, a work in which Buñuel probably felt that he should not seek greater pleasures or gratifications at the level of artistic achievement, it was an exercise to recover the credit, to try again to gain a place in the Mexican scene, since he even considered leaving Aztec lands. And the film fulfills its mission, and without marveling, again elevates Buñuel as an efficient, economic filmmaker, shows new virtues of the filmmaker, which in turn serves to pave the way to his genuine artistic interest, Los Olvidados. The versatility of Buñuel is undoubtedly shaped, after the surrealist beginnings, after Las Hurdes, after the Hollywood dubbing, now the director "normalizes", proves that he is able to make more conventional cinema, commercial cinema, as he considered, works in a location as unthinking as Mexico, and not only works there, but generates masterpieces. Buñuel had succeeded in proving that he was a total master of cinema.
