This Strange Passion (1953) - Luis Buñuel

This is one of the most remarkable Mexican productions by the enormous filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who had already acquired filming and experience in Aztec lands, who had already assimilated the way of making films in that country, having produced features of different natures, obtaining In turn dissimilar results between public and critic. The Spanish filmmaker works again with his right hand as a screenwriter, the great Luis Alcoriza, and as well works with another great collaborator, the famous photographer Gabriel Figueroa to configure one of his most recognized and successful pictures of his stage in Mexico. With these solid pillars in collaboration, the Aragonese adapts one of his most personal stories, in the sense that its protagonist is one of the characters that most contain the essence of the author himself, the filmmaker; is a novel by Mercedes Pinto, in whose adaptation worked the own Buñuel, with Alcoriza. It is the tragic and pathetic story of a conservative individual, a model to follow for society and the church, a chaste individual who sees his existence change radically when he falls in love with a young and attractive woman; that love will be transformed into obsessive jealousy, sickly obsession that will cause man to descend and be lost in madness. One of the author's most memorable films, contains many of the director's main cornerstones, and much more than that even, a real gem.

             

In a Mexican church, the foot washing ceremony is being held on Holy Thursday, during which Francisco Galván de Montemayor (Arturo de Córdova) is taken aback by a beautiful woman, but he cannot speak to her. Francisco is then at home, where he lives with his servant Pablo (Manuel Dondé), receives a lawyer, because he is in litigation for a land that he claims belong to him, the case is complicated. Francisco finally gets to know the woman, in the church, she is Gloria Vilalta (Delia Garcés), but she is reluctant to speak to him; then Francisco visits an old friend of his, who is engaged, invites him to dine at his house with his bride, resulting the bride being Gloria, and that night he seduces her. The time has passed, one day Raul Conde (Luis Beristáin), the initial groom of Gloria, runs into her in the street, and Gloria cannot help telling him her torments, now married to Francisco, remember ever since their honeymoon, his sickly jealousy outcropped. Then, on vacation in Guanajuato, she meets a friend of hers, Francisco goes mad with jealousy, and ends up being beaten; and when his new lawyer gets too close to Gloria at a party, everything gets worse, his irrational jealousy grows larger as his litigation gets complicated. Francisco ends up going crazy, even attacks his friend, Father Velasco (Carlos Martinez Baena), and at the end we will see him alone, confined and turned into a lonely monk.

Ends up in this way a film that Buñuel defines as his favorite, the movie that had more of him, more of his person, as his wife herself confirmed in the book Memories of a woman without a piano, the filmmaker was very jealous; probably without reaching the extreme sickness of Francisco, but has definitely shaped the protagonist as a sort of alter ego of his. The character combines the great obsessions and topics of the director himself, the rigid church, the deep Catholicism in which Buñuel was raised, of course sex (all the most important and representative topics of the filmmaker manifest here), and in this case jealousy, which is what ends up disrupting the poor individual; is the perfect Buñuel, so to speak, is probably the protagonist of his films that comes closest to the creator, and again, art will be more potent and powerful than ever when it is nurtured, when it breathes life itself, as in this case. Thus, and without words, as Buñuel has so often done, from the initial sequences it has been already exposed a peculiarity of our protagonist, who observes the feet of Gloria in the church, and is entranced, almost caught by them; there is no doubt, it is our director, it is Buñuel w we are seeing reflected in Francisco, in his fetishes. The first part of the film, where he seduces Gloria, has a somewhat subjective treatment, by Francisco, from the perspective of him, but mostly impartial, objective. That subjectivity, that subjective perspective will be broken later, to give an example, when the great traveling ends up wandering around the church room where the liturgy is taking place. The second part already changes, from the narrative to the focus, the perspective, narrating everything from the perspective of her, and reinforcing that approach with some travellings and zooms, reinforcing the narration within the narration with the flashbacks, the memories of Gloria. The film is the story of the collapse, the descent of a social icon, of an exemplary and chaste individual, his journey to madness. We are facing a great documentation of male degradation, almost like a binnacle, step by step, of how a man in love, is severely overcome by jealousy, asking his wife for her past, for her prior sentimental partners, pretending to be told that past, pathetic and sickly jealousy, certainly understandable for the person who knows the subject. It is noticed that someone has produced this knowing what he portrays, knowing the subject he tackles, hence the represented is so strong and solid, an efficient portrait, although the first projections rather unleashed laughter from the public, it is said, something that did not irritate Buñuel too much.

Technically Buñuel in many ways evolves in this film, he uses resources that he had not recurred to before, the most notable being that great ellipsis -almost unheard of in him- that great temporary leap that occurs just after the kiss of Francisco and Gloria, a loud noise interrupts us, the construction of the dam in which Raul worked, and then the time has passed, Francisco fulfilled his dream of marrying Gloria. This great resource makes possible the other great novelty, the novelty in the narrative plane, splicing the story in present time with the memories of Gloria, the second part of the film, the flashbacks through which the second segment is built, where the mental and physical decadence of Francisco occurs. Thus we have a new narrative structure in Buñuel, the structure of narration that is structured in the second part with flashbacks, memories, to finish again in the present, with the ruined Francisco in the monastery. Buñuel, with small but significant details, clearly delineates his character, details such as when he orders Pablo "fix that picture that is crooked", or when he perfectly orders Gloria's shoes, another wink to his fetish, and another detail to delineate the character as someone meticulous, obsessed, that was always his personality, prone to passion, to obsession. We will also find interesting shots, the photography of the film, with frames in which the lighting reinforces the foregrounds of the characters, enhancing the perspective, presence and attributes of each one, the predominance of Francisco, and Gloria's submission. Master Figueroa's picture becomes evident, with praiseworthy and expressive frames, light and much darkness games, powerful backlighting, expressive contrasts, frames of that infested main room, plagued with shadows, darkness, the umbrage reigns in that fateful house. The film becomes at times darkly surreal, the stairs and the room flooded with shadows exteriorize his gradual mental deterioration, his disquiet. In that sense, there are repeated approaches to the stairs of the house, a significant detail if we take into consideration that that house, and those stairs specifically, were chosen for reliably reproducing the Spanish house in which the filmmaker grew; we see that the work is impregnated with personal details, like the protagonist himself, a reflection of Buñuel, the cloister in which Francisco decomposes has something of the real life of the artist. He unfolds in the midst of those shadows, those minimal and gloomy spaces.

This has its climax in the powerful, surreal sequence of him on those stairs, alone, sitting on a step, making a frenzied banging of an object, completely surrounded by the shadows, which spill through the room more threateningly than ever, in the more surreal and darker sequence of the whole feature. From the beginning the director skillfully personalizes his film, with that Buñuelian parade of fetishes, a frenzy of one of his fetish objects par excellence, the feet, formidably fused with the religious theme. The mandatum allows the freedom to explore multiple pairs of feet, leading to the feet of hers, when his perdition begins, in that opening sequence that shows us the seriousness of the liturgy, solemnity, chants. A religiosity that continues to insinuate itself and become present with some frames, of Francisco and a religious element completing the frame, and it is not lacking who has seen something of antireligious in the film, the church is almost the site where all the facts of decadence take place. There he meets her, and finally there he attacks the priest, consuming his madness when he sees them all laughing at him, for his paranoia grew geometrically, thinking that everybody is against him, the powerful enemies he claims to have, conspiring against him and his litigation for the land, a natural portrait in which the filmmaker pours himself. Of course, we see that the church subtly delays the subject, represented in Father Velasco, who, when asked, replies "I think, about love, that this turkey is very good". Completely pathological, Francisco suddenly experiences a violent change of mood when he sees his wife's feet under the table, he changes his fury and indifference for passion, unbridled passion, and passionately he kisses her, an anomaly that reinforces his obsessions, which is accentuating his madness. As for her, she is fully servile and submissive, she is the perfect Sadistic victim, she completely folds to all the excesses of her husband, even to be fired with fake bullets, is the typical case of the woman who stays with the man who worse treats and torture her, she is sadistic since her first gesture, which is already submissive, lowering his sight before the eyes of Francisco. Irremediably the film parades at times in the field of melodrama, something that generally mortified Buñuel, and it is inevitable to observe it in the atmosphere of light flirtation, the approach of Francisco with Gloria, she exclaiming "I do not know why I have done it", the first part fully complies with these codes, so that in the second part, they acquire quite more ambitious characters. The music also contributes to this sweet and melodramatic environment, a music that contributes to generate the innocuous atmosphere of that first part of the footage, and which the director would later dispense, to leave room for the passion of man, the capital theme. The film is a vigorous and well-shaped complaint, it builds the perfect model of Mexican society, although the portrait could be represented anywhere, because the core engine, the passion, the jealousy, is something common to every human being. Admired, loved and respected by society, by the church, he is the perfect model, he manages to persuade the priest, symbol of the church, and Gloria's mother, symbol of society, but that perfect model cracks in incredible way, until getting lost in his spiral of jealousy. In the end, wandering away, that zigzagging pace of the final shot was funny to the filmmaker, black humor in the end, Francisco walks tottering, as his mind, as his life, is lost, and remains a dark, ambiguous and undefined detail, for it is implied that the infant is his son. Outstanding film, in fact a small masterpiece, among the best of the Mexican production of Buñuel.