When we talk about films shot in Mexican lands
directed by Luis Buñuel, we usually refer to atypical works, to singular pictures,
rarities if you want within the filmography of the giant Aragonese director.
However, seldom that assertion, an atypical Mexican film by Buñuel, was so
true, so veracious in practice, was rarely, with such a certainty, a very
unique film within the Buñuelian creations. Buñuel adapts again a literary
work, authored by Guy de Maupassant, and again dismisses his collaborators as
scriptwriters, the Alcoriza spouses, and it would be Jaime Salvador who was in
charge of adapting the literary narrative to the cinematographic language of the
script. Buñuel, therefore, fixes his attention on this opportunity in a very
strange story coming from him, the drama of a woman, a woman who has married an
older man, who has a child with him, and that stem, by making a prank one day,
propitiates his mother to meet with an engineer, much younger than her husband;
this engineer becomes lover of the woman, and when the two lovers are about to
flee, everything is canceled because of the husband's illness, but this
clandestine union will bring more of a surprise in the future, altering the
family harmony. Despite the poor opinion of the director on this film, it is a
very interesting piece of cinematographic art.
The story begins in an antique shop, owned by
the spouses Rosario (Rosario Granados) and Don Carlos Montero (Julio
Villarreal); both have a son, Carlitos, who when one day runs away from home,
is found by the engineer Julio Mistral (Tito Junco), who takes him back home,
befriends the marriage, and soon begin to frequent them, quickly creating an
idyll between the dissatisfied Rosario and the engineer. The couple gather
hidden, and the engineer cannot take it anymore, he asks Rosario to flee
together, with her son, and she agrees, but being on the verge of leaving, the
old antiquarian falls very sick, close to death, and Rosario first postpones
everything, out of pity and fear, but then cancels it definitively, finally
breaking ties with the disappointed engineer, who leaves for good. Time passes
quickly, the infant has grown, now is the respected and recently graduate
Doctor Carlos Montero (Joaquín Cordero), and has a younger brother, also
doctor, Miguel (Xavier Loyá). Surprisingly, one day the family receive the news
that the engineer Mistral is dead, and that left great inheritance for no less
than Miguel; he marries Luisa (Elda Peralta), whom Carlos admired
sentimentally, and dies soon afterwards the father, before which the truth is
revealed, Miguel is actually son of the engineer. The unsustainable situation
brings painful moments to brothers and mother, who must deal with it.
As the movie title already indicates, Rosario
is the center of everything in the film, the core of the actions to happen, and
the language of the camera certifies it, when at the beginning, being Carlitos
punished by the alleged robbery, a medium shot frames her to us, shows her to us
in the total center of that frame, and then back slightly the camera. In some
later opportunities, the camera will again frame Rosario, making her the center
of the shot, and of course the of film, within a rather timid, frugal camera
display, a behavior that goes according to the general tone of the feature,
which is very probably, technically speaking, the more conventional picture of
the director, which barely breaks down the linearity, technically and also
narratively speaking. The rarity of the film within the universe of the
Aragonese is also manifested immediately, and ends up being shaped as the film
progresses, because at last something unthinkable happens, there are Buñuelian
topics absent in the work, beginning with the almost always sempiternal sexual
charge, erotic load on his features. On this occasion there is no
uncontrollable and irrepressible libido, leaving that topic room now to the female’s
deep drama, the situation of womanly dissatisfaction. After the first twenty
minutes of the footage, the most jumping is a beautiful photography work,
pleasant frames and lighting game, contrasting the shadows with bright areas in
some shots; in fact, assertions of this type, assertions that will be kept
throughout the film, make this film a real rarity within the creation of the Spanish.
However, one of the causes of the film's solidity, is the quality of the novel
on which it is based, a story that feels close to reality, with more than one
unexpected twist that helps very efficiently to maintain interest in what is
presented, a story well woven, and well adapted in the script. One of the few,
scanty, and lukewarm symbolisms of the film, however obvious it may be, is the
business of the old deceived man, an antique shop, which is a reflection of the
old, worn-out, old-fashioned and vulgar antiquarian, who never awoke genuine
love in his young and beautiful wife, the victim of the situation that she had
to live, she is a new type of woman in the filmic universe of Buñuel.
In this very interesting Buñuelian feature, an
unprecedented and discontinued bifurcation in the cinematographic trajectory of
the Iberian filmmaker is opened, since there is a double revolution, both from
the technical treatment granted to the picture and by the very topics that are
embodied in it, a double novelty, an atypical double situation in Buñuel, that
will surprise more than one understood in his cinema certainly. And it is
impossible that this film cease to amaze, with such a clear and even brutal
split of the indivisible topics of the whole-life of the Buñuelian work, is
undoubtedly one of the most different pictures of the entire production of the
Aragonese, And perhaps it is indeed the most different, the most striking, his
most distinct work, and consequently one of the
most interesting ones. There is the thought that in order to know an artist, to
know the most intimate nooks of his creation, his creator impulse, and perhaps
the most important ones, it is not precisely necessary to look at his highest
artistic summits, at the artist's cusps as creator, but rather his atypical
works, those considered irregular within the uniform oeuvre. These features, actually,
can teach us more about its author than the works consensually celebrated and
awarded, and from this perspective, this film is a real jewel to appreciate and
to know better the Buñuelian cinema, to know it from another approach. It is of
course interesting, naturally, that the directives and cornerstones, the usual guidelines
in the Spanish giant cinema, disappear practically completely, give way to new
elements, largely unpublished in the previously appreciated work by the
director. Now the central themes will be the family, the very human drama of a
woman victim and prisoner of circumstances, who has never known true love, who
had to form and found a family with a man she never loved, with whom she was
united by economic necessity, of her and her parents; now everything is full of
secrets, of frustrated and impossible loves, now the capital topics are,
besides those afore mentioned, the jealousy between brothers, and the children
who judge the mother, as is the title of the film in some regions, a novelty
completely within the filmography of Spanish. As it was initially said, the
film is a total rarity, which cinematically
incarnates and embodies paths not previously seen in the filmmaker, and
probably afterwards also in the Spanish artist.
At times the film feels surprisingly close to a
brief Mexican novel, well-grounded of course, concise and credible, but feels
definitely as implausible, unlikely to think that it is a picture of Buñuel,
and makes it frankly almost impossible to recognize, not knowing who the author
is, the feature as a work of its creator, identify the movie as the work of its
author, before the total absence of its fundamental guidelines, and dominating
a drama so unusual in the director. Perhaps, and only perhaps, has been that
one of the causes why the filmmaker has so poor impression and memories of the
realization and final product of this film. Equally striking is that Buñuel
refers to the way in which he made this film more than once, defining it as his
worst work, and affirming it with determination not only once, but having
declared a contradiction the filmmaker regarding the origin itself of the
treatment given to the picture, you may think that there is a factor, an
external factor, extra artistic to have printed that impression of the film,
something that made the film repulsive, something that displeased the director,
perhaps linked to the nature of it, and its topics. Curious, because despite
everything the filmmaker has said, we are facing one of the most humane
Buñuelian works, severe and profound, representing genuine pain, very human drama,
the truth is that the feature has almost no cracks, no flaws; perhaps strictly
on the artistic level, does not mean a summit in the creation of the filmmaker,
but in aspects of staging, of seriousness in its realization, does not leave a
significant stain. In the first adulterous contact of Rosario and Julio, Buñuel
still does not show a kiss on screen, something that was common in the
filmmaker, but then, in later sequences of the same nature, the kisses are
already inevitable and succeed, and within the narrative economy of the
director, the participation of the male lover, although capital in the global
of the film, is rather brief, leaving room of course to the true core of the
drama, Rosario. Women have a crucial role in the film, starting with Rosario,
the center of the entire film, and continuing to a lesser extent with Luisa, an
object of desire for the older brother, woman who ends up opting for the
younger brother, feeding the jealousy of the first-born, who accused her of
being interested; but more so with Rita, Carlos' friend, the intriguing nurse
who lives on the gossip, and who is responsible for planting that anguished
intrigue and uncertainty in Dr. Carlos, she is increasing her anxiety. We have
a figure represented with the mother knitting, that figure with which it is
shown once, and, more importantly, with which the appearance of Rosario gets closed,
as well as the film completely, representing her silence, that in spite of
having being broken, does not disappear, her cloister, her interior suffering,
the secrets of an introverted and unhappy housewife, and weaving a stocking is
as we see her for the last time, the shot that closes the film. To sum up, one
of the most striking films by Buñuel, for reasons already explained, absences
and surprising, unpublished novelties, and despite being the worst considered
by its author, for the right palate, is a very valuable cinematographic work,
of a worldwide referential filmmaker.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario