Death in the Garden (1956) - Luis Buñuel

Buñuel would continue his development as a filmmaker, and being the particular year of the release of this film, 1956, a cyclical year in his career, a great change was beginning to get shaped in the director, a change that had begun with Thus is the aurora, shortly before released. Continuing with his personal tradition, the Spanish genius adapted a literary work to the cinema, by José-André Lacour, adapted to the script by his famous collaborator, Luis Alcoriza, and with his own participation also in the process, a remarkable tandem very often repeated, usually with success. In the film Buñuel is merging some of his old topics and obsessions, with some new artistic and thematic affiliations, undoubtedly is maturing to reach his fullness in European lands, in later films. The story portrayed shows a group of individuals, living in an undetermined place, where diamonds abound, where an adventurer arrives, finding an environment of rebellion among the diamond workers and military who evict them; in the violent collision between the groups, the adventurer, a priest, an old man and his daughter, as well as a prostitute, will undertake desperate flight through the jungle. Buñuel follows the line of films like Robinson Crusoe (1954), but above of all the aforementioned film, he is already exploring new ways, and sees that the path of European film coproductions is already an inevitable and indefectible way.

                   

In an undetermined country, area of diamonds lands, a group of villagers, diamond-diggers, are informed that they will be evicted by military forces, try to protest, but they are repressed. In there, lives Castin (Charles Vanel), with his deaf-mute daughter Maria (Michèle Girardon), then arrives the stranger Shark (Georges Marchal); in the midst of the turbulent environment, Father Lizardi (Michel Piccoli) tries to persuade everyone not to rebel. Shark meets Djin (Simone Signoret), attractive prostitute who gives him to the military, who accuse him of a robbery. But Shark manages to escape the dungeon, the military kill many of the villagers, Castin is accused of exhorting the people to revolt, he hides in Djin's house and proposes marriage, and she accepts, with the old man's money in mind. They embark on the run, Shark, Djin, Lizardi, Castin and his daughter, also aided by Chenko (Tito Junco). The merciless jungle punishes them, while the soldiers are always following their trail, Djin, and then Castin will get losing strength, since scarces food and rains copiously. Shark then finds food and even jewelry, it seems that salvation has come, they must build a raft and cross a lake. But Castin suddenly falls prey to dementia as they plot to flee, and while Shark and the prostitute fall in love, while others fight for the many jewels found, he takes a rifle and kills Djin and Lizardi. Shark afterwards wipes him out and finally leaves with Maria.

In this film, Buñuel articulates the narrative structure in well differentiated parts, the first, with the supposedly civilized world, but in which at the same time violence and bullets reign; the second in which the jungle will take care of arising the most desperate side of the unfortunate, until they lose their calm, sanity, and eventually even life; and then lucidly returns, but at the same time, and hand in hand with that lucidity in some cases, their ambitions and malice, find salvage, food, and even superfluous well-being, jewels. But with the jewels it returns to them much of the evil in their humanity, an antagonism that seems to be an echo of the caressed in Robinson Crusoe, the return to the most basic of man, the questioning of the most elementary principles of civilization (although it does not get to the extreme of the solitude and total isolation of the aristocratic English adventurer, whose journey to the interior was much deeper). In one of the films where the filmmaker most vigorously portrays one of his affiliations, the political interest and to some extent with revolutionary guidelines, from the beginning of the film, promptly and immediately portrays a crude confrontation, a class confrontation that will become violent. The exploiters, in the form of the oppressive government, the military, against the exploited, the humble and hardworking diamond workers, who see their way of life, their modus vivendi and only source of income, abruptly cut off. Thus, one of the first things we see is violence, the violent shock of the beginning, the military repressing the workers, a clear variety of the traditional class clash, and the figure that immediately shows, after that confrontation, is allegorically a board of Chess. In the aspect of staging, some frames, some shots, although not in abundance, leave evidence of maturity, of the technical mastery that has been acquired by the director, already hardened, and who was already entering to full-color films; but, in the general analysis, this is a film in which surrealism shines by its absence (the only moment this is broken, is when a photo appears, car sounds flow, cars and lights, improbable picture that fades as the focus of the photo moves away), a linear, flat film, in which Buñuel rather explores other topics that draw his attention powerfully. The director recovers in that sense one of the themes that would permeate his guidelines in more than one film those years, the unbelievable created hell that human beings face, in space and situations that become minimal. Now, as in Robinson, there is a slow and gradual ruin and degradation, faced with an extreme situation, a voracious jungle that opens its threatening jaws, the subjects are prey to despair, old Castin being the most useless, the most defenseless.

In future there would be no going back, the new topic certainly fascinated Buñuel, probably started with the aforementioned Robinson, continued with That is the Dawn, and then would take this to its pinnacle, and in different variations, with The Exterminating Angel (1962). Being Buñuel a filmmaker with the temperament and obsessions he has, the entomologist is again notticed, that finds solace in what he shapes, with humans confronting unbelievable circumstances, bordering on the absurd and unreal, with the director leaning like an entomologist, curious and scientific, analyzing his test subjects, as if it was an experiment (being fair, for the filmmaker certainly it was). There was also another great change, Buñuel used after a long time, from his exile in Aztec lands, European actors, French actors after decades of separation, and although the filmmaker talks about the tortuous work with Simone Signoret and her diva poses, he tightened ties with Michel Piccoli, to whom great friendship would unite him. Although the film differs from other works more a la Buñuel, there are noticed anyway his obsession topics, like the never missing death, sempiternal threat in the form of the merciless jungle, although it is finally human dementia that ends with half of the group, it is Castin who is deranged and liquidates everybody; there is the relative newness now, the new obsession, a group of individuals, who over one or another circumstance, more or less realistic, with greater or lesser verisimilitude, are immersed in dementia situations, that will take their humanity to the limit, breaking every convention of life in a civilized world. The circumstances, from one case to another, from one film to another, will vary, and Buñuel now has the tact of separating from having to frame his story in a certain geographical space, he simply slides us that it is a South American country, which shares borders with Brazil. An always inescapable Buñuelian matter, religion of course, is not absent, another of the capital subjects in the filmography of the genius of Talanda, begins to prefigure variations that in later films would deal with much greater detail and freedom. This is based on Father Lizardi, an ambiguous figure, diametrically opposed to priests previously seen in Buñuel, as the father of He (1953), and to a certain extent hinted at the irreverent priest of The River and Death (1954), both so conventional -to put it in a way-, compared to what we could now call an indefinite priest, ambiguous in his attitude, always taking responsibility for others ("I answer for him", or "I take responsibility", we will hear him say), that unconsciously forms part of the oppressive side, which is overcome by circumstances, is already announcing what will be the father in Nazarín (1959).

Father Lizardi, from his first appearance, from his first words, is clearly outlining what character he is about, he wants to quell the revolt, "who kills iron, he dies iron," he says quietly but determinedly. The priest is a key character, who transits in a certain way, from one side to another, in that sense his evolution makes him one of the most interesting characters: although at the beginning he urged Castin to surrender and end with the killings and violence, afterwards collaborates to hide him, does not betray him, helps to hide him from the militia. He renounces his faith, symbolically pulls out the leaves of the bible to light the fire, has sacrificed his faith for the material, for survival, the flesh has prevailed over faith, is certainly the most attractive character, in which Buñuel seems to have poured the most of his curiosity and interest. Deliriously tells an anecdote about hard-boiled eggs, without anyone paying the least attention, an unrelated anecdote with what is lived, and, in my opinion, very probably an anecdote intimately linked to Buñuel himself; in the end significantly tells Shark that his opinion about him has changed. Shark is a kind of heretic, does not believe in God, does not kneel before the image of Christ in a chapel, but until, by force, with a rifle blow on his legs, they make him. And it is complemented at the end, when the boat arrives, saying "it's funny, 60 men had to die for God to save us" (Castin also adds something to this, when he is already a prey of the dementia, he is about to kill everyone, saying "the righteousness of God shall speak"). As always, in his characters, the filmmaker overturns human traits, the innocence of the mute girl, the restrained behavior of the prostitute, the naive old man, and that indecipherable priest, all make up what could be considered the totality of human nuances to the eyes of Buñuel. In the violent ending, after all the lived -and survived- Djin and Lizardi are killed by Castin, the strongest and weakest finally are the survivors, Shark and Maria, her innocence is what saves her, and in regard to that duality of the survivors, Buñuel affirms not knowing why that pair was the one that resisted in the end, "the nature does not act according to the human laws: it is blind", he says to us. The film unfolded at a momentous time in Buñuel, who was already well established in Mexico, who had achieved fame, notoriety and recognition, both public and critical, but to whom the doors of the Mexican film scene began to close. The great change was already beginning, the co-productions with Europe were a more than affordable way, it was becoming the only way forward, and the European producers began to look with longing on the young and promising Spanish filmmaker, who, more than a promise, was then already a reality, sensing that his great explosion was coming soon; it was the right time, the turning point in his career had come. Atypical and conjunctural, very Buñuel but at the same time different from his most traditional exercises, worthy and indispensable for the scholars of his work, a feature not of his better known, and recognized, but necessary for the global understanding of his oeuvre.

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1954) - Luis Buñuel

A new Buñuelian cinematographic exercise in Mexican lands, the time of his exile where he fruitfully continued to cement his career, his style and his reputation at the international field, while of course he continued to shape his indelible imprint on the films he produced. On this occasion, and like so many other times, he will again adapt a novel, now authored by Rodolfo Usigli, whose adaptation to the script did the filmmaker himself with the collaboration of Eduardo Ugarte. It is a project whose birth is affirmed had much to do with the leading actor, Ernesto Alonso, which portrays the unique story of an individual, middle-aged, without too many extraordinary things in his life, who lives convinced that he has power over human life, in the form of a musical box that he had in his childhood; the character thinks and is sure that box allows him, through the thoughts, to decide over the lives of women, and as an adult, even though trying to commit real murders, never consume them, except, according to his judgment, when the box allows him to. A film that continues to develop many of the most recurrent topics in the director's filmography, which had certain drawbacks with the author of the original work, who slowed down the realization, but nevertheless a picture of the most recognized by the filmmaker, who continued to mature artistically.

                

In times of convulsions of the revolution in Mexico, lives the child Archibaldo de la Cruz, conceited son of aristocrats, to whom his mother gives a musical box. That same night, Archibaldo is told a story, that box allows to liquidate the enemies, and shortly after, her governess falls down by a bullet. After remembering the event, an already adult Archibaldo (Alonso) tells everything to a nun, then tries to assassinate her, fails, but the nun falls from the top of a building and dies. Archibaldo goes to the police station, where he claims to have killed the nun, and begins to relate how, in his adulthood, he recovered the gift box from his mother, remember to meet Patricia Terrazas (Rita Macedo), recalls that he admired Carlota Cervantes (Ariadna Welter), lover of the married Alexander (Rodolfo Landa). The coquettish Patricia tries to seduce him, they are both stopped by Willy Corduran (J.M. Linares Rivas), her husband; the next day, Patricia has been murdered, the police is investigating. Archibaldo proposes marriage to Carlota, who says she will think about it, and then he meets the beautiful Lavinia (Miroslava Stern), with whom he has a brief idyll in his studio as a craftsman, and where he has a mannequin, a doll identical to her. Carlota accepts the proposal of marriage, but still sees Alexander, who kills her the very day of the wedding. Archibaldo ends up remembering, and finally leaves with his beautiful and dear Lavinia.

The satirical nature of the film is already defined from the beginning of it, with some decorum graphics in the credits that are flowing, while a sly organ music accompanies these graphics, and that warm contrast is already delineating what will be the picture. In that superb filmic beginning, pleasant and relatively new ways we appreciate, in which everything, past and present suddenly merges, thanks to that narrator voiceover, more than one temporal perspective in that way merges in that start, immediately structuring the double narrative thread that we will see, and structuring a story within the story. At the same time, a couple of Buñuelian topics rarely materialized so quickly in a film, in the initial sequences, and so efficiently, when we see an infant Archibaldo, after his governess's murder, look with wide eyes, with an expression of excitement, to the governess on the floor. His expression is representation, as the same protagonist says, of satisfaction, pleasure and morbidity, the morbone unleashed by the murder, but in turn by the naked thighs discovered of the girl -Buñuelian twinkle par excellence-, we do not know for sure if that look responds to death, the eroticism of the girl's flesh, or probably both. Rarely do we find two of the most recurrent themes of Iberian production, sex and death amalgamated so strongly, eroticism, libidine and death. Soon, others of his affiliations, his personal nuances, politics, are framed, framing everything in the violent context of the revolutionary days in Mexico, a lukewarm but always present directive that the Spanish shows in almost all his films. As stated, one of his main cornerstones, death, is a crucial point of action, because our protagonist is a murderer, a frustrated assassin, a frustrated murderer of women, with truncated deaths, but not for that the desires to kill disappear, with a bizarre irony, because finally the frustrated victims end up by effectively fading (the ardent desire frustrated, another of the Buñuelian subjects par excellence, is not lacking). Curiously and significantly, his desires to kill focus exclusively on women, fueling that aura of pusillanimous, cowardly and sterile killer, is certainly iniquitous, drinking milk instead of liquor glasses, resulting almost absurd his figure, as if something had never disappeared of the child who discovered the music box, and certainly has a childish air the correct interpretation by Ernesto Alonso.

As it could not be otherwise, the filmmaker continues to slide his winks, his personal details, his fetishes, as the well-known foot fetish, and so, shows Patricia her shoe in full betting table, and reiterated comments dedicates to it. And his warm but perceptible -for the connoisseur of the Buñuelian work- winks will continue, as Archibaldo frantically wagging his foot while making his handicrafts; or the leg of the manikin that detaches while being dragged into the boiler; and the shoe of the doll that then looms, when Carlota and her mother announce acceptance of the marriage proposal, as his guilt, as his impulse also looms. Naturally, eroticism never ceases to flow with Buñuel, with details such as Archibaldo examining the thighs of the wrist, almost pathologically, while seeking to ignite the desire of his flesh sister, Lavinia. In that same sequence, he recovers, as warmly as exquisitely, the detail of the exchange of characters, in other films shaped, Archibaldo kisses the icy mannequin's lips, thinking of Lavinia, to arouse jealousy in Lavinia, and succeeds in his work. The surreal part also collaborates with this, in the first fantasy of Archibaldo, we are shown the turgid thighs of the governess stained with blood, lust is literally fused with death, with the dark and sanguine, with the morbid, thanks to those overlayed shots, of the thighs of the girl, invaded by the blood. Religion is also present, with that prayer that Carlota recites fervently. The childhood, another of Buñuel's capital themes, one of the sources from which it drinks his inspiration, becomes present, with that character who, as was said, largely never loses something of childhood, with the symbol of the musical box, and in turn we have in it the leitmotiv with which it relapses again to the childhood of Archibaldo. He is an individual with narcissistic inclinations, "I am a man different from all the others", he cries, a subject with something of a satyr (like the filmmaker...), furtively reviewing female garments. He is defined as an "original artist who does not follow rules", certainly the protagonist has a lot of alter ego of the filmmaker himself, who prints without impudence his own features to shape his character. Archibaldo kills, and enjoys, laughs, even if it is only in fantasies, truncated desires, perhaps a repressed and curious -to call it in a way- dormant instinct of the own director. Something of his own, much in fact, has the artisan character, the potter, yes, to which Buñuel instills his own passions, complexes, obsessions.

Thus, we have a typical Buñuelian protagonist, who can be a villain, for his frustrated attempts at murder, a hero, for his ultimate goodness and desire for redemption, or an anti-hero, so indefinite comes to be the protagonist, which is almost ridiculous trying to perpetrate crimes, murder, and always fail. We are presented with a character, with his appearance and nature certainly innocuous, undoubtedly believing that he has power over human life, that can end an existence simply with desire, but particularly, of women. Buñuel, as always, presents his character without severe moral questions, presents it as it is, almost a reflection of itself. An avid portrayer of the world around him, in this case the Mexico that welcomed him in his exile, the filmmaker loses no opportunity to delineate and criticize the aristocracy, as more than once did. And he does so of course with the resources of his art, with cinematographic resources, with those acute dialogues that are flowing, as the phrase "decent and poor is worse than rogue and rich", severe acidity to express frivolity, how shallow the aristocrats might be, who so often condemned the Aragonese's films. The portraitist Buñuel always gives time to shape Mexico, his Mexico that welcomes him, with certain folk dyes, guitars, and their people, their customs. These dialogues, which with maestro Alcoriza were always a fundamental and vital part of Talanda's genius films, this time, and without his famous collaborator scriptwriter, the dialogues, sharp and witty, diminish their power, but they do not disappear. The film in turn merges with the legend, with the myth, which once again surpasses reality, with maximum morbidity we have the manikin that is cremated, just as Miroslava's corpse would be cremated later, besides the bullfighter swords that appear also as if caressing the future fate, the torero triggering the suicide of the Czech actress; "My little Joan of Arc" calls her Archibald, and by superposition of frames, we see even the flames consuming the beautiful Miroslava, chilling and sordid premonition. The dream aspect is diminished with respect to other exercises of the Spanish, but the dreams or hallucinations are manifested more than once, the fog that looms and the music a little sly as well, and for many passages of the film photography endows the picture of an environment dark, shady, that feeds more the morbid nature of the film, the subject who thinks has power over life and death. In the end, the story ends within the film, in which one ends up wondering if all this has been only a dream in which the director's entomological wink is not missing, of course. It is an interesting film, where intimate desires, passions, fantasies, psychological aspects, where a subject wants to grow, leave behind his traumas, gets rid of the box, a triumphant music flows, and Lavinia appears in formidable end, almost inexplicably together they retire, he already widowed, perhaps he is cured, perhaps he will kill her and finally he will consume his pathology, is something that remains to be defined. Without reaching the mastery of other Mexican works of its author, like He, we have an attractive exercise of the Aragonese, personal, powerful, good example of Buñuelian cinema.