That is the Dawn (1956) - Luis Buñuel

After having conducted the blackest comedy The criminal life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), the Iberian filmmaker Buñuel would take a new direction in his filmography, a break point would be given, because after a prolonged absence of relations, after almost twenty years of silence, Buñuel once again linked with European producers to concrete his films. And as it was a constant in almost all of his filmography, the filmmaker will make an adaptation of a literary work, a novel by Emmanuel Roblès in which more than one of the eternal Buñuelian topics we will observe, but very attractively disseminated and attenuated in what would be a film to retake contacts between Europe and the exiled Buñuel, the prodigal son who was already near to culminate his Mexican stage, where imperishable seal also knew to leave. It is the tragic story of a doctor in rural areas, whose wife longs to get out of that boring place and head for Nice; but the doctor, unable to abandon his patients, makes her go alone. Labor problems arise for the doctor, who, while getting to meet and fall in love with a beautiful widow, must choose between satisfying the demands of his wife and father-in-law, or remaining and supporting the cause and problems of local workers, particularly one, a friend of his. An academic film of Buñuel, compared to other exercises, in which he knows how to capture many of his figures and obsessions that never left his cinema, is the beginning of the return to Europe.

                  

In French streets, we see Angela (Nelly Borgeaud), wife of Doctor Valerio (Georges Marchal), in whose hospital there are workers injured by negligence of the employer, Gorzone (Jean-Jacques Delbo). Angela tells Valerio that she is tired of that place, that she longs to go with him to Nice, that they would have a better life, and better patients for him. But Valerio can not abandon his humble patients, let alone his wife on a luxurious cruise; back to work, sees Sandro Galli (Giani Esposito), whose wife, Magda (Brigitte Elloy), is seriously ill, and therefore he neglects the crops that Gorzone pays him to care. In another moment, Valerio attends to a girl who was about to be raped, is present the Commissioner Fasaro (Julien Bertheau), and he meets there the beautiful widow Clara (Lucia Bosé). Clara must leave, but instead she starts a clandestine affair with the Doctor. Gorzone suddenly fires Sandro for being unproductive, demanding him to move from the house that includes his former job, generating drama over the state of his wife. In spite of intervening Valerio, Sandro has to leave, and in the trip, Magda dies, and an enraged Sandro liquidates Gorzone shooting him. Valerio hides Sandro in his house, the authorities look for him, with Fasaro at the head; Angela returns, and, upon discovering what Valerio is doing, leaves him; tragic end will have Sandro, who kills himself, and Valerio ends up staying, then leaving with the beautiful Clara.

The first thing we can say about this film is that we are facing a real turning point for the director, in which he discovered European coproductions as something more than a mere alternative, but an imminent source of salvation for his career. This crossroads occurs in the situation of the time in the Mexican scene, where the film industry, despite the positive results both in criticism and in public observed with the evolution of Buñuel, began to close to him more stubbornly the doors. The beginning of the film appears premonitoriously sober, without excesses, with moderation, and thus, from the first images of the film we appreciate that it is a very academic work, a very methodical work, and as the minutes go on, this will end to get corroborated. The camera expresses itself mainly static but with some brief but precise movements and travellings -some moderate traveling will release the camera of a behavior in which calmness prevails, besides an equally sober photograph, to which also collaborates Robert Lefebvre, with harmonious combinations of black and white, lights and shadows, all gathered in compositions of his frames that denote the reached maturity, and a certain technical dedication in the realization. This photograph is effective to capture the dry and arid environment, such as the situations experienced by the protagonists, the exteriors where the film is shot. In fact, the feature is perceived as an assignment, as a well-executed and tenacious work, as if the filmmaker tried to look academic, applied to the eyes of a Europe that wished to repatriate the talented Spanish who was marveling the world from Mexico for already several years. But it is always emphasized that despite this, despite adhering to certain canons and conventional standards, he knew how to whisper his winks, always visible to the connoisseur of his work. Likewise, the bestiary of Buñuel, with young felines, also slides easily, and the donkeys, all with subtle naturalness, populate the first frames of the film. We also have the hen, the animal element of Buñuel par excellence, that after a period of certain absence, flows safely and vigorously in repeated passages of the film. Thus, more than once flows the big-eared donkey, like the hen, two of the best known and referential, as well as traditional elements of the buñuealian bestiary.

It will be observed a high technical mark in the film, and although to the picture some will blame its structure a little flat, without breaking the conventional structure of the story, this should be seen in any case as something coherent to the transcendental conjuncture of the moment the filmmaker was passing through. However, a lukewarm detail of surrealism could almost be noticed in the filmmaker, as perhaps the shots dedicated to the urban artist, mounted on a bicycle playing the violin between the tables of a restaurant, while the camera follows his burlesque movement. Sharper Buñuelian details will not delay in flowing either, and with vigor, as is the singular case of the picture hanging of a Christ plagued by some foci and cables, where bizarrely makes a warm allusion to religion, but above all to his surrealist formation, which never ceases to manifest itself in Mexican production, with more or less intensity and frequency depending on the film and circumstances, but never leaving the filmmaker's creative elan. Another personal detail is the text of Claudel, one of the director's favorite poets, a text on which the Spaniard places handcuffs, in a subtle but decided allusion to a writer that he has always admired. Another important moment is when Valerio meets Clara in her house, and clandestine lovers have a moment of intimacy, with the turtle that serves as an extension image for the loving moment, a personal image of love on the part of the filmmaker, because we know how reluctant the filmmaker was to cast kisses directly on the screen. Instead, we have the chelonian, faced up and turning on his feet, an image without words, as the best filmmakers work, to prolong the situation of secret love and passion that we are witnessing. The hens and the kisses, by the way, parade successively with surprising fluidity. The distance and the beach waves are also another of the figures where it extends, where it prolongs a feeling or circumstance portrayed, in this case the love, or the erotic amorous sequence that portrays, another amorous encounter between Valerio and Clara, where again the language of the director manifests itself. We find, therefore, a warm presence of the representative topics of the director, although this is not considered among the highest Bueñuelian peaks, it is a film that is well established between two of the most defined and important moments for this brilliant filmmaker.

Two-edged moment or work must have been this for Buñuel, because although on the one hand meant his return to work with European producers, even if it was half, still the director did not have the complete freedom to direct, to his total performance, the technical formality and to a certain extent aesthetic and thematic is a general rule to which he still has to stick, the genius still had to accept certain adaptations in his style. We listen to a Buñuelian film in a foreign language, no longer in Spanish from the Mother Country, nor the one from Mexico, we hear it now in French, it is not new if we remember his delusional silent exercises -or semi silent- of surrealistic initials, but this is actually the first time we heard a Buñuelian movie in French. After almost four lustrums, there is a return, although partial, in the form of the co-production with France, a parenthesis before finally ending his phase in Aztec lands and returning to the European arena, where some of his greatest summits would reach. It is one of the films in which his sociological and political affiliation is most evident, the idea of ​​revolution is more strongly portrayed, the class collision is no longer a mean but an end, his central character incarnates everything, grows his commitment to the incidental movement of the workers, grows his motivations, subscribes to thought and activities of workers, facing the oppressive employers, putting this before a wife whom did not love the way he loved the widow. The director portrays adultery, morality is once more on the sidelines, because Buñuel does not judge or condemn in his films, he does not judge his imperfect protagonists but he shows us his dramas, portrays his complex heroes, and Valerio is the center of film, evolves, existentially and socially as well, and significantly in a moment he is asked why he does all this, a question to which only he answers with silence, he discovers that the cause of the workers cares him more even than his own welfare, which is in theory, with his wife. He is the character on which rests the interest, he is the nucleus, with which the public must identify itself, his revolutionary commitment grows without even himself notticing it, it is his moral and social dilemma in which rests the drama of the film. His final gesture to reject Fasaro's hand, a valuable ally in that context from a Machiavellian point of view, finally shows us that he rejects everything the commissar represents, the oppressor, the abuser, the exploiter, and all those involved, direct or indirect, because the policeman only fulfilled his duty. From this feature on, Buñuel would know actors who would be great friends in some cases, and who will be his future frequent support actors, as is the case of the detective Fasaro, Julien Bertheau, to whom more than once we would later appreciate in some of the French summit works of the end of the career of the filmmaker. A film that in fact will not be counted among the most extraordinaries that this great director ever knew to produce, but for the reasons explained above is a film worthy of much attention, which is worth doubly by the circumstantial nature of the moment in the life of the artist, a film necessary for an integral knowledge of his oeuvre.

Wuthering Heights (1953) - Luis Buñuel

Buñuel approaches in the present film a work not often performed by him, and not because he adapts a literary work, but because he adapts a text of international fame, wide recognition, something he had not done before, and that we would only see as a close exercise in the later Robinson Crusoe (1954). Some controversy surrounded this film, mainly by the adapted text, full and plagued by darkness, sordid characters, slaves of their passions, as the first text of the film is indicating us, beings that touch the macabre, death and sex, the powerful obsessions made this book a little less than damned for its time, the end of the first half of the nineteenth century. More than one adaptation had the novel, with different styles and approaches, but the present version remains as one of the most valuable, among the ones that best achieved and best captured the essence and spirit of its tormented protagonists. The film prints a part of everything that happened in the book, as it was known worldwide, the story of a family, of conflictive affectionate relations between one to another, a woman in love with a man of animal character, long gone, but now married to another man, and with whom she has begotten a child; when the initial individual reappears in the life of the family, great emotional storms will arise among all members of the tormented clan.

                 

Eduardo (Ernesto Alonso), his wife Catalina (Irasema Dilian), and his sister Isabel (Lilia Prado) live comfortably on a rainy night, a relaxed existence with no worries. Alejandro (Jorge Mistral) suddenly bursts with violence, breaks into the house, he is the adoptive son of the family who fled years ago, and Catalina immediately becomes uneasy over his unthinking presence, unmindful, professes his feelings for him, before the impotence of her husband. Soon they take walks together, and soon it is well known that Isabel is also in love with him, and Alejandro, after Catalina refuses to flee with him because of her pregnancy, only by spite decides to accept Isabel as his wife, disregard the negatives of the nana María (Hortensia Santoveña). But their feelings have not changed, as Eduardo's impotence and supplications grow, it is then that Catalina, unable to shake off her passion, falls ill in the middle of the unsustainable situation. Alejandro is going to live with Isabel at the house of Ricardo (Luis Aceves Castañeda), a drunk relative who attends impassively to the torments to which she is subjected, he hates Alexander, but is unable to face him. Almost as inevitable inertia, comes the moment of childbirth, and Catalina dies giving birth to the child, bringing great suffering to Alexander, who enters her grave, lies next to the corpse, and finally is killed by Ricardo.

The economy and narrative effectiveness of Buñuel is soon printed in the film, when the first sequence shows the impulsive Alejandro bursting into the aristocratic residence, but more so, the stubborn character undoubtedly breaks the glass of the door, does not accept negative of the nana, his character is from the first moment, wild, uncontainable. In the same way we see his female analogue, Catalina, who without the slightest regard, professes with her words and her actions her almost animal love for him, the characters are quickly and powerfully delineated. Even on the face of her husband, she could not repress professing her love for the prodigal son, her passion is overwhelming, it is a violent, destructive passion, that can only find final consummation in that, in destruction, in death. It is pertinent to indicate that the writer of this article could not read the original work, the novel by Emily Brontë, in which, with great probability, and with the normal distances from literary to cinematographic art, it has been possible to approach with greater detail to the origins, the provenance of the nature of each character. With that in mind, we can only hear briefly how Catalina's strange feelings were born, truncated feelings, being adoptive brothers, she apparently always felt that impulsive and fervent passion for Alejandro, but being adopted, he was humiliated and despised by the aristocratic family, having her to choose marrying Eduardo, seeing the contempt of which Alejandro was prey over his miserable origins. We also have Isabel, the frail sister of Eduardo, who is moved by the suffering of the animals, in love with the fierce Alejandro, unrequited, suffering, but since not being a participant of the passion, she is not condemned. We have right there by the way Lilia Prado, who, after seeing the exercises in Illusion travels by Streetcar (1954), and her carnal interpretive imprint, her turgid physical attributes, is perceived as if she had been the ideal choice for the tormented and fiery character of Catalina, and perhaps with that image in mind, is felt almost lost in the harmless role of the innocent Isabel. Another personage to enrich this bizarre human fauna is Ricardo, the drunkard, a drunken, impotent and useless coward, also part of the sordid ancestry of that house, that reinforces the accumulation of obsessions, of pathologies, in that bizarre ecosystem where everybody is exposed to the wild impulses that dominate them.

The core of the film is the destructive and impossible romance between Alejandro and Catalina, both are renegades, soul mates that reflect each other, and this is concreted more forcefully with the phrases spelled, "our love is not of this world" it is asserted, "I love Alexander more than the salvation of my soul", she says, stern and powerful are the statements, the dialogues, which denote an overflowing passion, and everything happens in the first sequences. Even when Eduardo asked his wife if her passion would cease if he killed Alejandro, she claims that she would continue to love him after death, and so the characters and their complexities are already well-drawn. It is a destructive but seductive love, an unstoppable, irrepressible love that no other human can understand, and these dialogues help us to understand how that love can only lead to death, can only find final fulfillment and be consumed in death, as effectively ends up happening. We are faced with a variety of amour fou, crazy love, a subject that always seduced Buñuel, and the surrealists in general, the love that for one reason or another is truncated, that does not come to happen, to consummate, or in any case is a love that is not consumed as a normal love, which does not have a maximum realization as normal lovers have; there is now a dark solace, it is indeed an enjoyment that will only reach its peak with the extinction, with the death, self-destructive feeling that will consume its unfortunate members, who, as the initial label immediately indicates, are not free individuals, nor are they independent, but they are slaves of their passions, those passions are the ones that move them, manipulate them. And Alejandro is not far behind in the strength of his phrases, when he talks about Isabel, he says "if she did that (biting him), I would tear her teeth one by one", also heard "chase me, drive me crazy, show up", another insane dialogue, the efficiency in the dialogues is something that always characterized the genius of Talanda's films, although in this case did not collaborate with his greatest pillar in that section, the great Luis Alcoriza. Eduardo completes the protagonists, Ernesto Alonso feels close to his other collaboration with Buñuel, the two years later The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), with his characterization fragile and impotent, bordering on cowardice, and curiously shown from the first frames as a entomologist, we see how Buñuel is once again pouring himself immediately into his characters.

As for the staging itself of the film, which is, as I indicated, what I can most comment, Buñuel in a positive way deploys a plastic darkness from the first sequences, shade and rain, the exteriors are invaded by that dark fury of nature, preluding the dark and savage passions that dominate humans. More than once we will see storms, gloomy natural storms, a great resource to exteriorize all the violent savagery that shakes inwardly the characters, prey to their violent passions, and this has its extension in the spectral and ghostly residence of Ricardo, by force converted into the home of the couple Alejandro and Isabel, what also exudes darkness, evil. It is very interesting how Buñuel, who has already acquired filming experience in Aztec lands, has the ability to disseminate, to shed the shadows throughout the environment in which the protagonists perform, powerfully reinforcing the darkness of the characters, the personalities of the characters. If there is something regrettable on the picture, yes, it is the marked abuse of Wagnerian music, Tristan and Isolde. Seldom seen, the way the sublime Wagnerian notes are used in anodyne moments, a touch that can offend some amateur palate of the German master. The excessively arbitrary use of the famous composition is something that Buñuel soon shook responsibility of, asserting that he did not participate in the musical insertion in the assembly room, something that is perceived as very probable. There is a Buñuel's success, although perhaps the merit is not fully for Talanda's genius (the color was about to reach Buñuel's filmography, a year later with Robinson Crusoe, nevertheless the color choice is not completely elucidated), comes to realize the film in black and white, feeding the hermetism and gloom that plagues the environment and the characters, the gothic tone that permeates the film, and the novel itself, which made it worthy of admiration for patriarchs of that artistic stream. In this dark world of torments, traumas, grudges and resentments, happiness shines for its absence, there is a presence of psychological masochism, for the characters seem to find refuge in that torment, in that trembling swirl of suffering, a suffering for which however they have no choice. If something can be blamed on the film is that it finally seems that its characters have more force than the film itself, whose development and outcome finally seems to fade, losing strength. In this case, with the subject treated, and with the indivisible that was the carnality of the topic, Buñuel has no alternative but to show kisses on the screen, one of those details that always avoided, and now, more than one kiss had to portray in his frames, but always concealed, in his own way. There is a certain religious lukewarmness, a detail is the nana who sanctifies herself before the affirmations that listens of Catalina, although in this opportunity the religious subject is eclipsed, since the passions are all that governs personages and history itself. We have a surreal ending, what a denouement, according to the seen sordidness, one death after another, one corpse on the other, the couple is together in death, only then their love is finally consummated, as they always knew, and how they were announcing it, and the director slides a detail of overlay of an image, lukewarm surrealism. Buñuel seems to have not felt too much pleasure or complacency for this work, as it let us glimpse the few words that he dedicates in his memoirs about this film, but nevertheless it configures an appreciable work of the Spanish, interesting adaptation of a referential text, and to the point was already to begin to use the color the Iberian; is a work perhaps not between the best produced by the filmmaker, but definitely necessary as part of all his filmography.