Daughter of Deceit (1951) - Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel continued developing his Mexican cinematographic facet, the moment of his career after that irrepressible surreal irruption of his beginnings, to generate what many brand as minor works, works that were made to subsist as, even, did the filmmaker with the feature that we are now dealing with. The film is based on a successful play by Carlos Arniches, adapted by the well-known pair of screenwriting fellows,b husband and wife, Luis and Janet Alcoriza, which in turn is based on a previously existing Spanish movie, in which Buñuel also got involved. With the natural transitions and adaptations of a typically Spanish work to Mexican lands and customs, we are introduced to the story of Don Quintin Guzman, a conservative man, who suddenly discovers that his wife deceives him, catches her in adultery, and she, in disgust, tells him that the newly-born daughter of both is actually the product of that adultery; the deceived subject believes her, and gives the baby to some neighbors, but years later, he will learn the truth about the girl, provoking unexpected situations. Almost consensually considered as a minor work, even being almost forgotten by its author, the picture certainly is not among the best of the Aragonese filmmaker, but will serve as much for those who want to study the work of the referential director, in his stage in Aztec lands.

            

In a humble home, appears Quintín Guzmán (Fernando Soler), with his wife, who disowns and scolds him for the desperate lack of money in the house. Quintín, aided by a friend, goes on a journey to earn good money, but the train where he was about to travel suffers a setback, the man returns almost immediately to his home, finding his wife, cheating on him with that friend. Quintín throws the woman out of the house, and she, in a moment, shouts to him that the baby is not actually his daughter, and seeing this, the tormented individual ends up leaving the baby in a neighboring house. Quintín continues his life alone, surrounded only by his bodyguards, Angelito (Fernando Soto) and El Jonrón (Nacho Contla), ignoring the mother's pleas to return the child. Time passes, the girl becomes a woman, her name is Martha (Amparo Garrido), who one day knows the young Paco (Ruben Rojo), among them flows quickly an idyll. Martha lives with Lencho (Roberto Meyer), and his daughter, his adoptive sister Jovita (Alicia Caro); before dying, the biological mother of Martha confesses to Quintín that the girl was indeed her daughter. The man starts searching, and manages to find the house where Jovita lives; initially difficult, finally finds the girl. While Jovita has some success like cabaret singer, and in spite of initial differences of Quintín with Paco, father and daughter, and son-in-law, forget differences and wait for the happy birth of the first-born.

We can nottice a characteristic Buñuelian starting of the picture, when the camera focuses the detail of a light bulb, the same one that soon gets broken, and the camera recedes to show the complete figure, the precarious home of the Guzmán spouses; in this simple figure, the good Aragonese is already slipping the reality of the home, misery, precariousness, light bulb gets burned, the needs press them, the filmmaker always displayed signs of economy and narrative eloquence. From the first moments, we will also see a curious performance of the camera in the beginning of the movie, we can see a singular development of the lens, there are zooms in and zooms out, which add to certain travellings that generate a peculiar and attractive dynamic, which unfortunately dissipates and gets lost promptly. These ephemeral and striking displays of looseness in the camera, are surprisingly the only sample of something different, something different from conventional visual narration, and the minutes go by, we will not appreciate other moments that break that usually conventional tone that permeates the whole feature. In dribs and drabs that singular behavior of the camera will rteturn, a certain trembling, tremulous effect, which in certain moments resurges to engender comedy, or tense moments; but what I said, appears with eyedropper. To return to that point, in a picture in which it is known that the budget is not something that was abundant, Buñuel was forced to appeal to his narrative economy, when in little more than ten minutes the crux of the drama is already raised; without more ornaments -because the financial resources did not allow it-, already established the first part of his conventional narrative structure, the introduction, the drama that the Guzman are experiencing. Thus, within the linear structure of the feature, within its narrative and audiovisual linearity, the most remarkable narrative resource, with distance, comes to be that ellipsis, that great temporal leap that is applied automatically when Martha's adoptive drunk father closes the doors of his cupboard. While the screams and the cries flows, instantly afterwards, when the cupboard is opened, the decades went by, the just-a-moment-ago baby girl instantly is now a young woman of twenty years, the adoptive mother has already died, the adoptive father has aged, and the booze worsen his situation. Within a flat and linear narrative structure, being this one of the director's most conventional pictures, this resource, without being too flashy or extraordinary, is the most technically salient element.

The work is characterized by transparently portraying the town, the charros, the popular customs of the lower class to which the protagonists belong, considering of course that the play, originally Spanish, has been adapted to the Mexican canons. And so, among other figures, in the character of Jonrón we have the typical Mexican macho, somewhat caricatured version, as much of the film. Important figure within the Mexican scope, the stereotype of the virile charro, who wants to solve practically everything with bullets raids. All the Spanish customs have to migrate to Mexico, the famous Alcoriza spouses in this way, change Spanish soil by the Mexican moor in their history (and in their real life also, actually), with all the characteristic and representative figures of Aztec lands. And to a certain extent this is a film that can be considered a remake, in days when the term was still not coined at all, is a feature in which in many sequences the dialogues were simply mexicanized to move the story from one context to another. In that course, in this Mexicanization, Buñuel seems to have got lost, who also claims almost not remembering the production of this film, assures that "nothing came out well", and that it was a alimentary film, made with the purpose of subsisting, to obtain sustenance, situation quite common in this stage of the Iberian filmmaker. This softening of the film, added to the precariousness of the production, the budget shortage, resulted in a feature quite removed from the majority of directives of the Aragonese filmmaker, configuring a picture, although not bad or deficient, yes between the less achieved or more successful of the Spanish director. In this way, much of the film, much of the original Spanish canons, are transmuted to the conventions of Mexican cinematography, the drama is sweetened and softened with comic situations. It gets generated a unique blend of Mexican cinema with even a few doses of western, as caricatured as exemplified in the scene of the discussion of the Jonron with another subject in the bar, an excellent example of the light humor that slides on the movie, a warm mood which is correctly dosed throughout the footage of the work. That American halo will continue to be printed, we see girls, dancers, cabarets, even the young Jovita, wishing to success as a cabaret singer, surrounded by night shows, and charros that warmly remembrance the absent cowboys.

There is also the infallible figure of the drunkard, Martha's adoptive father, perennially drunk, the despicable abuser, first martyring his wife to death, then the young adoptive; always with the bottle of liquor in his hand, and always ready to hit women, is a negative element, but always present in the sketch of Mexican society, and almost in any society actually. It's Angelito, Quentin's bodyguard, from whom it comes a lot of the movie's hilarity, the picardies, the comic moments, in different circumstances will always have the funny dose that serves to finish giving that comical general shade to the film. He continues to collaborate with Fernando Soler, an illustrious Mexican actor with whom he has worked so well, they cinematographically synergized, as it gets attested in the reiterated works they performed together, as well as the repeated mutual praises of the respected artists. Soler fulfills well the role, the solvent Mexican actor demonstrates why he became a pillar of this stage of Buñuel's cinema, the actor who had a lot of director, who was said to direct himself, leaves his stamp of interpretive sufficiency, always serious and distinguished. Buñuel was upset because of the significant changes from one country to another, he denied of the change of the original title, Quintín el Amargao (something like Quintín the bitter), to the Daughter of the deceit, for interests of producers, Buñuel asserted that if the original title had been retained, the concurrence in the premiere and subsequent projections of the film would have been much greater, since the Spanish people would have attended knowing that they would appreciate a work well known and appreciated by them. All this, added to global results that did not satisfy the filmmaker, ends up configuring the poor impression that Buñuel had of this picture of his. It is curious to hear the character, Quintín complaining, "nothing comes out well", feeling almost like an echo, as an alter ego of the director, who probably felt during the shooting that many things did not actually come out, and we see the protagonist, he denies of his bitterness, in the midst of the joy of a party. At the end of the film, the filmmaker almost seems to want to shake off linearity, the behavior of the camera already takes on other outlooks, with an almost deformity of some shots shown, certainly a flashy performance, lukewarm but perennial in that street of singular structures, which, as unreasonable as it may sound, for a moment seemed to me to refer to an echo of expressionism. In that colophon sequence, the protagonist speaks to us, speaks to the camera, almost the filmmaker wants to leave the mold, it is as if, to some extent having lost the drama, when feeling simple the end, too easy, something simple, a slap almost is notticed, like if old Buñuel, the surrealist and uncontrollable, winked at us. Thus ends the so-called Buñuel's alimentary film, for some considered minor, but of course a work worthy of attention on the part of the immortal Aragonese.