Buñuel continues with his cinematic evolution, technique, style, obsessions, everything that makes the cinema of the spaniard so differentiated and appreciable continues there, some of those elements are already taking the final form that the artist will wear in his final films, when the return to European industry finally occurs. Buñuel, as he had been doing in recent films in the early sixties, does not adapt literary stories to the cinema, but he himself elaborates the script, in collaboration with an old acquaintance, the great Luis Alcoriza returns to form again the famous duo of director and screenwriter. In this film can be noticed, as usual, the main winks and seals of his cinema, particularly you can notice echoes of his previous films, almost as a compendium of some of those elements of his audiovisual language. Calanda's genius introduces us to the singular and delirious story of a group of bourgeois, well-off individuals who after going to the opera, go to the house of one of them for dinner, finding themselves with the surprise that without major reasons, they simply can not leave from the living room of that house, they are unable to left, having to coexist in situations that are already challenging the socially permissible, until they find the way out of the singular cloister. Film one hundred percent Buñuel, one of his best known works, no doubt.
In a residence, the servants retire, an elegant bourgeois meeting is about to take place, remaining, as servant, only Julio, the steward (Claudio Brook). Then the lords of the house arrive, Edmundo Nobile (Enrique Rambal), and Lucía (Lucy Gallardo), accompanied by a copious group, all dined with a bit of improvisation, being among the guests Leticia 'La Valkiria' (Silvia Pinal), and the brothers Francisco Avila (Xavier Loyá) and Ana Maynar (Nadia Haro Oliva). Without noticing, the dinner is over, no one retires, they stay for the night, the next morning arrives, they still do not leave, they have breakfast, being the first to suspect that something strange is happening the Doctor Carlos Conde (Augusto Benedico), nobody is capable of leaving the hall of the mansion. The locked ones are desperate, outside, people know that something is happening but they are also unable to enter the residence; water and food are scarce, some get sick, calm is lost and expletives begin to abound, fights, blows, dementia appears. When they are even thinking about liquidating each other, finally Leticia tries to recreate exactly the circumstances and positions of everybody before everything happened, and indeed, then they can finally leave the residence. Already outside, the bourgeois go to a mass, and where no one can leave the church now, while there are shootings in the street.
Coherently the director continues his cinematography, we will see many references to his previous representations, which are already approaching his final form, the refined and sophisticated surrealism of the final stage of his career. We have, among other images, the man grabbing the woman's buttocks, as in
The Golden Age (1930), the dead hand we saw in
A Chien Andalou (1929), just to mention some examples of his figures from previous films; as happened in the immediately previous
Viridiana (1961), we find an abundant compendium that covers many of his famous recreations, the filmmaker, already mature, seems to look back on his work, reflect a bit on what was done previously. Even some curious image we will see of the traditional hen of the director, in the form of chicken legs in a bag, a detail that for the one who writes recalled some segment of his colleague, the great Carlos Saura. In that respect, certainly, as the director himself said, this film is almost like a continuation, or extension of
The Golden Age, with delirium and dreamlike dementia in the middle of a lavish bourgeois meeting, a character even sums it up: "life is funny, and strange", strange as the circumstances of the film, but fun if you simply live without thinking about explanations. The traditional Buñuelian bestiary will add two new members in this work, a bear cub and lambs, who will surreally walk through the elegant rooms of the bourgeois mansion. And of course, the quintessential element of almost every Buñuelian film flows, total surrealism, which gives freedom, it is absurd the crux of the matter, humans unable to leave a room, ridiculous, the dementia is emerging, because everyone would have preferred go "to his house or a brothel" instead of being in that situation, it is unlikely the mishap, or perhaps too normal, affirms another character, playing with the unreality we witness. It is a micro universe, another space and time seem to have been generated there, and strikingly, outside people cross a similar situation, they are not able to enter the mansion, concreting the Spanish a cinema in minimum spaces, similar to what Hitchcock did in
Lifeboat (1944), or the first Polanski exercises, with the natural distances from one artist to another, a relatively new topic in the director.
He leaves aside his more traditional topics the director, now he is interested in something a little more sophisticated, his already wielded topic of the human facing extreme situations, like the father Nazario in
Nazarín (1959), as the nun Viridiana in
Viridiana, we see it here but led to a more violent rupture with society, with the civilization, instead of a rupture of religious origin, like those, with the freedom that the dreamlike tints of the film allow. While the journey, however, is different, the destination is simile for all of them, extreme experiences that violently break their inner principles, which will destroy them, although the guests of
The Exterminating Angel have final rescue, just as implausible as the way they arrived to the cloister; again, the freedom of surrealism allows it. In the unthinkable confinement the social conventions are lost, the film is a singular social, psychological experiment, a study, the masks that every human being learns when it comes to being inserted into civilization fall, the socially acceptable habits disappear, the human beings are stripping their interiors to the most basic instincts and actions, which will lead to destruction. The civilized things disappear, the death threatens, murder, a descent to the most primitive, dignity vanishes, what emerges then is destruction, human social conventions are erased, the filmmaker asserted that this was a work of rather historical-social nature, his versatility is shown. The topic is brutal, without major reasons, and perhaps that is why the result is more powerful, humans are faced with an extreme situation that will gradually bring them closer to madness. Little by little the frivolities, the gossips, the vulgar romances appear, the ill-conceived defects of the bourgeoisie appear, the indiscretions, somewhat disturbing details, like the brothers who have a relationship that dangerously borders on incest. Even the way someone combs her hair upsets someone else, the conflict is imminent, in this film which prefigures what we would later see in
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), the surrealist delirium surrounded by bourgeois, their divertissement turns into a nightmare here, though, all strongly sprinkled of the very nourished gallery of visual, thematic and stylistic resources in the filmmaker's language, at this point already quite fine-tuned.
Buñuel claimed that he regretted certain circumstances of this shooting, he said that he would have liked to shoot the film with more elegant actors, said this in turn that he admired Visconti and the overwhelming simplicity and visual beauty in his films; Buñuel wished he could try to film something as beautiful as the Italian, but he needed resources that the Aztec film industry and land could no longer provide, Buñuel missed Europe, and in fact, the moment was getting closer, the refinement of the Europeans was something that was not too far away to be given. He also claimed that he wanted to take the picture to much more extreme levels, he thought that the bounded ones reach the final resort of cannibalism to ensure survival, something that unfortunately (or maybe not so much), he did not manage to realize, he missed the full freedom of other exercises, probably the one of the then recently made
Viridiana, whose shooting said the Aragonese that was probably in which he felt with the greatest of liberties. Technically the filmmaker already has expertise with the camera, gained with the not few years of work in Mexican land, that camera, as in the other films of the late fifties and early sixties, behaves with subtlety, serenity, precision, with elegance introduces us and approaches both the characters and their actions, but in turn will also make use of close-ups, detail plans to generate closeness, hermeticism. Likewise, music is dispensed with, total absence of musical accompaniment, only diegetic sounds flow, which certainly helps to increase that suffocating sensation of hermeticism, in which Buñuel is curiously allowed to perform some repetition, literally repeats some sequence in the final assembly, like the toast a character makes at the beginning, as an extension of that site, that house where there seems to be another dimension. In the same way, the black and white of the film positively collaborates to generate a feeling of confinement, of cloister, and this, coupled with the diegetic sounds as the only auditory accompaniment, ends up giving shape to that hermeticism that oozes the movie. The most visually surreal of the film we see in diners losing sanity, their inner demons emerge, and dream, appreciating overlayed frames. In the film, and as in almost all spaniard movies, we see people and their frustrations, their unfulfilled desires, the lovers of
The Golden Age and their frustrated carnal idyll, the bourgeois of
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and their lunch that can not be given, desires that can not be concreted, another Buñuelian constant here is given in another variant, again bourgeois, who want to leave a room and can not, you do not need more in the film. Symbolically, it is the doctor, representative of the rational, reason, who first suspects what is happening, then always calls for calm, trying to make logic prevail. And finally, as this simple circumstance was engendered, so simple comes the long-awaited solution, without major complications or explanations, just as surreal as the situation lived, and we have that ending, with religious light-wink, the nightmare will repeat, now the lambs are in the street while uniformed men make shots, sequence and symbolism to outcome. One of the most recognized works of the filmmaker, simplicity and surrealism, a film that carries almost all the guidelines of its author, and abounds in details of his cinematographic language, a very Buñuel picture, a very enjoyable and appreciable feature, while looming the top moment of his filmography.
Buñuel continues with his cinematic evolution, technique, style, obsessions, everything that makes the cinema of the spaniard so differentiated and appreciable continues there, some of those elements are already taking the final form that the artist will wear in his final films, when the return to European industry finally occurs. Buñuel, as he had been doing in recent films in the early sixties, does not adapt literary stories to the cinema, but he himself elaborates the script, in collaboration with an old acquaintance, the great Luis Alcoriza returns to form again the famous duo of director and screenwriter. In this film can be noticed, as usual, the main winks and seals of his cinema, particularly you can notice echoes of his previous films, almost as a compendium of some of those elements of his audiovisual language. Calanda's genius introduces us to the singular and delirious story of a group of bourgeois, well-off individuals who after going to the opera, go to the house of one of them for dinner, finding themselves with the surprise that without major reasons, they simply can not leave from the living room of that house, they are unable to left, having to coexist in situations that are already challenging the socially permissible, until they find the way out of the singular cloister. Film one hundred percent Buñuel, one of his best known works, no doubt.
In a residence, the servants retire, an elegant bourgeois meeting is about to take place, remaining, as servant, only Julio, the steward (Claudio Brook). Then the lords of the house arrive, Edmundo Nobile (Enrique Rambal), and Lucía (Lucy Gallardo), accompanied by a copious group, all dined with a bit of improvisation, being among the guests Leticia 'La Valkiria' (Silvia Pinal), and the brothers Francisco Avila (Xavier Loyá) and Ana Maynar (Nadia Haro Oliva). Without noticing, the dinner is over, no one retires, they stay for the night, the next morning arrives, they still do not leave, they have breakfast, being the first to suspect that something strange is happening the Doctor Carlos Conde (Augusto Benedico), nobody is capable of leaving the hall of the mansion. The locked ones are desperate, outside, people know that something is happening but they are also unable to enter the residence; water and food are scarce, some get sick, calm is lost and expletives begin to abound, fights, blows, dementia appears. When they are even thinking about liquidating each other, finally Leticia tries to recreate exactly the circumstances and positions of everybody before everything happened, and indeed, then they can finally leave the residence. Already outside, the bourgeois go to a mass, and where no one can leave the church now, while there are shootings in the street.
Coherently the director continues his cinematography, we will see many references to his previous representations, which are already approaching his final form, the refined and sophisticated surrealism of the final stage of his career. We have, among other images, the man grabbing the woman's buttocks, as in The Golden Age (1930), the dead hand we saw in A Chien Andalou (1929), just to mention some examples of his figures from previous films; as happened in the immediately previous Viridiana (1961), we find an abundant compendium that covers many of his famous recreations, the filmmaker, already mature, seems to look back on his work, reflect a bit on what was done previously. Even some curious image we will see of the traditional hen of the director, in the form of chicken legs in a bag, a detail that for the one who writes recalled some segment of his colleague, the great Carlos Saura. In that respect, certainly, as the director himself said, this film is almost like a continuation, or extension of The Golden Age, with delirium and dreamlike dementia in the middle of a lavish bourgeois meeting, a character even sums it up: "life is funny, and strange", strange as the circumstances of the film, but fun if you simply live without thinking about explanations. The traditional Buñuelian bestiary will add two new members in this work, a bear cub and lambs, who will surreally walk through the elegant rooms of the bourgeois mansion. And of course, the quintessential element of almost every Buñuelian film flows, total surrealism, which gives freedom, it is absurd the crux of the matter, humans unable to leave a room, ridiculous, the dementia is emerging, because everyone would have preferred go "to his house or a brothel" instead of being in that situation, it is unlikely the mishap, or perhaps too normal, affirms another character, playing with the unreality we witness. It is a micro universe, another space and time seem to have been generated there, and strikingly, outside people cross a similar situation, they are not able to enter the mansion, concreting the Spanish a cinema in minimum spaces, similar to what Hitchcock did in Lifeboat (1944), or the first Polanski exercises, with the natural distances from one artist to another, a relatively new topic in the director.
He leaves aside his more traditional topics the director, now he is interested in something a little more sophisticated, his already wielded topic of the human facing extreme situations, like the father Nazario in Nazarín (1959), as the nun Viridiana in Viridiana, we see it here but led to a more violent rupture with society, with the civilization, instead of a rupture of religious origin, like those, with the freedom that the dreamlike tints of the film allow. While the journey, however, is different, the destination is simile for all of them, extreme experiences that violently break their inner principles, which will destroy them, although the guests of The Exterminating Angel have final rescue, just as implausible as the way they arrived to the cloister; again, the freedom of surrealism allows it. In the unthinkable confinement the social conventions are lost, the film is a singular social, psychological experiment, a study, the masks that every human being learns when it comes to being inserted into civilization fall, the socially acceptable habits disappear, the human beings are stripping their interiors to the most basic instincts and actions, which will lead to destruction. The civilized things disappear, the death threatens, murder, a descent to the most primitive, dignity vanishes, what emerges then is destruction, human social conventions are erased, the filmmaker asserted that this was a work of rather historical-social nature, his versatility is shown. The topic is brutal, without major reasons, and perhaps that is why the result is more powerful, humans are faced with an extreme situation that will gradually bring them closer to madness. Little by little the frivolities, the gossips, the vulgar romances appear, the ill-conceived defects of the bourgeoisie appear, the indiscretions, somewhat disturbing details, like the brothers who have a relationship that dangerously borders on incest. Even the way someone combs her hair upsets someone else, the conflict is imminent, in this film which prefigures what we would later see in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), the surrealist delirium surrounded by bourgeois, their divertissement turns into a nightmare here, though, all strongly sprinkled of the very nourished gallery of visual, thematic and stylistic resources in the filmmaker's language, at this point already quite fine-tuned.
Buñuel claimed that he regretted certain circumstances of this shooting, he said that he would have liked to shoot the film with more elegant actors, said this in turn that he admired Visconti and the overwhelming simplicity and visual beauty in his films; Buñuel wished he could try to film something as beautiful as the Italian, but he needed resources that the Aztec film industry and land could no longer provide, Buñuel missed Europe, and in fact, the moment was getting closer, the refinement of the Europeans was something that was not too far away to be given. He also claimed that he wanted to take the picture to much more extreme levels, he thought that the bounded ones reach the final resort of cannibalism to ensure survival, something that unfortunately (or maybe not so much), he did not manage to realize, he missed the full freedom of other exercises, probably the one of the then recently made Viridiana, whose shooting said the Aragonese that was probably in which he felt with the greatest of liberties. Technically the filmmaker already has expertise with the camera, gained with the not few years of work in Mexican land, that camera, as in the other films of the late fifties and early sixties, behaves with subtlety, serenity, precision, with elegance introduces us and approaches both the characters and their actions, but in turn will also make use of close-ups, detail plans to generate closeness, hermeticism. Likewise, music is dispensed with, total absence of musical accompaniment, only diegetic sounds flow, which certainly helps to increase that suffocating sensation of hermeticism, in which Buñuel is curiously allowed to perform some repetition, literally repeats some sequence in the final assembly, like the toast a character makes at the beginning, as an extension of that site, that house where there seems to be another dimension. In the same way, the black and white of the film positively collaborates to generate a feeling of confinement, of cloister, and this, coupled with the diegetic sounds as the only auditory accompaniment, ends up giving shape to that hermeticism that oozes the movie. The most visually surreal of the film we see in diners losing sanity, their inner demons emerge, and dream, appreciating overlayed frames. In the film, and as in almost all spaniard movies, we see people and their frustrations, their unfulfilled desires, the lovers of The Golden Age and their frustrated carnal idyll, the bourgeois of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and their lunch that can not be given, desires that can not be concreted, another Buñuelian constant here is given in another variant, again bourgeois, who want to leave a room and can not, you do not need more in the film. Symbolically, it is the doctor, representative of the rational, reason, who first suspects what is happening, then always calls for calm, trying to make logic prevail. And finally, as this simple circumstance was engendered, so simple comes the long-awaited solution, without major complications or explanations, just as surreal as the situation lived, and we have that ending, with religious light-wink, the nightmare will repeat, now the lambs are in the street while uniformed men make shots, sequence and symbolism to outcome. One of the most recognized works of the filmmaker, simplicity and surrealism, a film that carries almost all the guidelines of its author, and abounds in details of his cinematographic language, a very Buñuel picture, a very enjoyable and appreciable feature, while looming the top moment of his filmography.
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