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.
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