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.
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.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario