The Milky Way (1969) - Luis Buñuel

Buñuel had begun for the sixties what was his final stage, the final stage of his film career, finally had been able to get the long-awaited repatriation to European soil, the filmmaker was back to shot in Europe in a stable and sustained basis, with all the means that this meant, it was time to reach its highest audiovisual heights. Buñuel decided to make this film during a presentation of Belle de jour (1967), and together with his then-habitual Jean-Claude Carrière, he elaborates a work of his own, and with great rigor in its elaboration, usual in the spanish, generating a script based on many illustrious texts and encyclopedias of the subject, theology, diverse heresies to complete this bizarre and surreal story. It is the singular story of two individuals who embark on the traditional road to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, the well-known pilgrimage journey to seek absolution and free the soul from sins, but on that path, a very diverse collection of characters and events will get happening, many even in another space and time. One of the most personal works of the director, addressing one of its traditional topics, religion, Christianity, of course from the singular buñuelian magnifying glass, with the touches of a surrealism that the director had already curdled and evolved.

                 

We see a quick introduction to the history of Santiago de Compostela, traditional site of pilgrimages around the world. We see two vagabonds, Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and Jean (Laurent Terzieff), walk on a highway, receive alms from an individual, then board a car from which they are soon evicted. Two individuals then have heated religious discussion about Eucharist and transubstantiation, the vagabonds attend Rome, they see how Priscillian (Jean-Claude Carrière) was restored in his power, in gnostic meeting. In a hotel, the head waiter, Richard (Julien Bertheau), talks about his Christian beliefs, while the Marquis de Sade (Michel Piccoli) talks to a girl about his heresy. Then we see Jesus (Bernard Verley), his mother Mary (Edith Scob), is the multiplication of bread and wine. Pierre and Jean continue on their way, walk along the highway, attend an unforeseen accident, in whose car they see an Angel of Death (Pierre Clémenti), we see a nun submit to martyrdom, she is crucified as Christ. Later, a Jesuit (Georges Marchal) and a Jansenist (Jean Piat) fight for the concepts of freedom. They attend a preaching of a story about the Virgin, there is another story about despising lust, they find a prostitute on the way, they follow her, and a last sequence with Christ takes place, he heals the blind.

The beginning of the film is correct, where the parallel is drawn and we are told what is Santiago de Compostela, Campo de Estrellas (stars field), the title of the film's Milky Way is justified, the path to seek absolution, pilgrimage; likewise it fuses in a great way, with a great ellipsis, the antiquity, that old map, with the contemporaneity, its cars and highways. It was noticeable that Belle de jour's production was still fresh then, that initial sequence is a good summary, an advance of what the film will be and its temporary jumps, without doubt that narrative freedom, how free it was to chain and structure the story practically to pleasure was something that pleased the director. As in that film, the severe narrative freedom leads to that rapturous liberty to capture and merge different spaces and times, that freedom is certainly what allows infinity, the infinite versatility of possibilities in the film, as it was done in the past, a collection of diverse stories of space and time, just to give an example, and with the obvious distances from one case to another, we have Leaves From Satan's Book (1921) by Dreyer. Thus, we have Priscillian and his faithful, in the fourth century, or the duel between the Jansenist and the Jesuit, discussion that happens in the seventeenth century, also the spanish bishop with his faithful leads us to the sixteenth century. The core of the film is the subtle and serene parade of heresies, a journey that transgresses the temporal space barriers, seen symbolically in the pilgrimage journey undertaken to Santiago de Compostela, the Field of Stars, the Milky Way, unbeatable scenery certainly for the intentions of the iberian. And the filmmaker portrays key figures of Christianity, the Eucharist, the transubstantiation, are captured in the film in the manner of Buñuel of course, and with a naturalness that helps the surrealism to develop just more fluently, naturally, simply, with worldliness. Thus, the initial discussion on transubstantiation, which ends with the priest being imprisoned, is therefore a discussion that unfolds anodynely, in a mundane way, bringing this whatt is portrayed to everyday, common life. But apart from figures, it also raises questions, whether God is a single entity, or is fragmented in the Holy Trinity, to name an example.

In this way, the VI century is fused vigorously, the gnosticism of Prisciliano, it is undoubtedly the Buñuelian style, a questioning as fervent as no other one, to the religion, these questions will flow copiously, and also naturally, in a very similar way to the style of the spanish, simple but harsh questions, almost like Father Lizardi in Death in the Garden (1956), Nazarín (1959) or, of course, in Simon of the Desert (1965). The questions, the inquisitive questions faced by his characters, was something inevitable in almost all the films of the filmmaker, but in this opportunity, the nature, the origin of these questions, is entirely religious, an inescapable subject for the filmmaker, of rigorous Christian formation in his childhood; it is his script, his story, his religious obsessions, a work that is very much his. Again, the protagonist character of Buñuel undertakes a journey that will mean discovery, but in this case, different from Viridiana (1961) and Nazario, there is no fall, now there are diverse adventures, of different times and characters, far away chronologically, but close and united in another aspect: the subject of heresy and Christian questions. However, Buñuel was not known for giving us certainty in his films, on the contrary, many of his most famous endings, such as Belle de jour, responded, in his own words, to his own uncertainty, to his own lack of certainty of the filmmaker regarding the outcome for his characters in what he raises, but also regarding the questions he poses; shares the director, lets us share in his uncertainty, his acid lack of certainty. On this occasion, like the young priest who asks a more experienced one, there are inquisitive questions, which the filmmaker makes to himself, but again, there will be no answers, the debates are shaped, not the solutions; nevertheless, debates are quite well documented, because the master delved into recognized texts, such as History of the Spanish Heterodoxes of Menéndez and Pelayo and Manuscript found in Zaragoza, among others; the director documented a lot on the subject, sometimes it is even said that he transcribed literally many of the dialogues and parliaments of the characters on which he relied. There is a constant reference in the film to the idea that on earth is better than in heaven, a Gnostic thought is postulated, a very buñuelian concept is also prefigured, the fact of a human being meditating not to be the real owner of his actions, that freedom does not exist, that liberty is a ghost. By hating science and technology, will end up approaching God, says a character, the characteristic irony of spanish continues to reinforce the idea of ​​Gnosticism.

It is interesting that, according to the theme portrayed, Christ is shown earthly, without his divine aura, chewing, laughing, doing nonsense, walking awkwardly, in effect, it is a gnostic, trivialized and mundanized story, the path is marked in a way of the picture. Jesus performs final miracle, returns sight to the blind, but says, disturbingly, that he does not bring peace, that he will alienate parents and children, daughters and mothers, he says to those who follow him, like blind. Buñuel can finally portray with his corrosive style the religion, the Christianity, and he does not restrain, there is the powerful figure of the execution to the Pope, the questioning of the church, something nothing strange in Buñuel, it acquires very strong features here, we also have the shot to the rosary of the Virgin, the usual self-confidence of the director to face Christian symbols and figures. Some characters are warmly sketched, insinuated, like the young mute on the road, with scars in the manner of stigmas, recalling Christ; others see Satan in the old man who takes them to ancient Rome, and we have the emergence of another important historical figure in the Buñuel work, Sade, to whom will be possible to see merged with the other stories thanks to another escape of space and time. His winks will never disappear, Jesus Christ, in the scene of the virgin telling him not to shave, adjust the blade, in the manner of An Andalusian Dog (1929), the priests made skeletons, of The Golden Age (1930). While the eternal figures for a moment are absent (incredible but true, in the film we can not find a female with self-confidence showing off their ominous thighs and calves), we have clear the wink of the feet at a certain moment. We will see more than once the image of individuals walking on a highway, a road with a blue and clear sky background, an image that would become repeated in his later exercises, the director had finally reached his final aesthetic. Technically it does not reach the mastery of recent films, such as The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), because the background, rather than the form, is all this time. But that is why the genius in the style of the iberian is not absent, we have the sequence of the priest speaking to a small congregation, among them the vagabonds, speaks to the camera with traveling included, the character looks at us, in a pleasant technical resource rarely seen in the spanish. Another resource, again the priest talking to a couple about how to please the virgin repudiating the lust, the priest is outside but at the same time inside their bedroom, at the foot of their beds. Buñuel, already in the final stage of his career, has a consolidated group of actors, who will accompany him to the end of his filmography, we have Michel Piccoli, Georges Marchal, Delphine Seyrig, Julien Bertheau, all always well directed by the master, and Jean-Claude Carrière, the co-writer, repeats as an actor in a brief foray. The end was perfect to the structuring of the work, finally have reached their destination, Santiago de Compostela, again we take as a reference to Belle de jour, that ending that connects perfectly with the beginning, turns the feature into a capicúa picture, everything ends articulated, like a cycle that repeats itself, after all witnessed, we return to the beginning, the subject who said that they must find a prostitute, the prostitute is finally found, and repeats what the initial subject said, wants to engender children, and call them "you are not my people" and "no more mercy", phrases that continue with what is captured in the film. Buñuel was already in the final phase of his film career, his style is almost finished, his art is powerful, some of his major exercises were close to being done, and this is an exemplary film of the maturity achieved by the master from Calanda.

That is the Dawn (1956) - Luis Buñuel

After having conducted the blackest comedy The criminal life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), the Iberian filmmaker Buñuel would take a new direction in his filmography, a break point would be given, because after a prolonged absence of relations, after almost twenty years of silence, Buñuel once again linked with European producers to concrete his films. And as it was a constant in almost all of his filmography, the filmmaker will make an adaptation of a literary work, a novel by Emmanuel Roblès in which more than one of the eternal Buñuelian topics we will observe, but very attractively disseminated and attenuated in what would be a film to retake contacts between Europe and the exiled Buñuel, the prodigal son who was already near to culminate his Mexican stage, where imperishable seal also knew to leave. It is the tragic story of a doctor in rural areas, whose wife longs to get out of that boring place and head for Nice; but the doctor, unable to abandon his patients, makes her go alone. Labor problems arise for the doctor, who, while getting to meet and fall in love with a beautiful widow, must choose between satisfying the demands of his wife and father-in-law, or remaining and supporting the cause and problems of local workers, particularly one, a friend of his. An academic film of Buñuel, compared to other exercises, in which he knows how to capture many of his figures and obsessions that never left his cinema, is the beginning of the return to Europe.

                  

In French streets, we see Angela (Nelly Borgeaud), wife of Doctor Valerio (Georges Marchal), in whose hospital there are workers injured by negligence of the employer, Gorzone (Jean-Jacques Delbo). Angela tells Valerio that she is tired of that place, that she longs to go with him to Nice, that they would have a better life, and better patients for him. But Valerio can not abandon his humble patients, let alone his wife on a luxurious cruise; back to work, sees Sandro Galli (Giani Esposito), whose wife, Magda (Brigitte Elloy), is seriously ill, and therefore he neglects the crops that Gorzone pays him to care. In another moment, Valerio attends to a girl who was about to be raped, is present the Commissioner Fasaro (Julien Bertheau), and he meets there the beautiful widow Clara (Lucia Bosé). Clara must leave, but instead she starts a clandestine affair with the Doctor. Gorzone suddenly fires Sandro for being unproductive, demanding him to move from the house that includes his former job, generating drama over the state of his wife. In spite of intervening Valerio, Sandro has to leave, and in the trip, Magda dies, and an enraged Sandro liquidates Gorzone shooting him. Valerio hides Sandro in his house, the authorities look for him, with Fasaro at the head; Angela returns, and, upon discovering what Valerio is doing, leaves him; tragic end will have Sandro, who kills himself, and Valerio ends up staying, then leaving with the beautiful Clara.

The first thing we can say about this film is that we are facing a real turning point for the director, in which he discovered European coproductions as something more than a mere alternative, but an imminent source of salvation for his career. This crossroads occurs in the situation of the time in the Mexican scene, where the film industry, despite the positive results both in criticism and in public observed with the evolution of Buñuel, began to close to him more stubbornly the doors. The beginning of the film appears premonitoriously sober, without excesses, with moderation, and thus, from the first images of the film we appreciate that it is a very academic work, a very methodical work, and as the minutes go on, this will end to get corroborated. The camera expresses itself mainly static but with some brief but precise movements and travellings -some moderate traveling will release the camera of a behavior in which calmness prevails, besides an equally sober photograph, to which also collaborates Robert Lefebvre, with harmonious combinations of black and white, lights and shadows, all gathered in compositions of his frames that denote the reached maturity, and a certain technical dedication in the realization. This photograph is effective to capture the dry and arid environment, such as the situations experienced by the protagonists, the exteriors where the film is shot. In fact, the feature is perceived as an assignment, as a well-executed and tenacious work, as if the filmmaker tried to look academic, applied to the eyes of a Europe that wished to repatriate the talented Spanish who was marveling the world from Mexico for already several years. But it is always emphasized that despite this, despite adhering to certain canons and conventional standards, he knew how to whisper his winks, always visible to the connoisseur of his work. Likewise, the bestiary of Buñuel, with young felines, also slides easily, and the donkeys, all with subtle naturalness, populate the first frames of the film. We also have the hen, the animal element of Buñuel par excellence, that after a period of certain absence, flows safely and vigorously in repeated passages of the film. Thus, more than once flows the big-eared donkey, like the hen, two of the best known and referential, as well as traditional elements of the buñuealian bestiary.

It will be observed a high technical mark in the film, and although to the picture some will blame its structure a little flat, without breaking the conventional structure of the story, this should be seen in any case as something coherent to the transcendental conjuncture of the moment the filmmaker was passing through. However, a lukewarm detail of surrealism could almost be noticed in the filmmaker, as perhaps the shots dedicated to the urban artist, mounted on a bicycle playing the violin between the tables of a restaurant, while the camera follows his burlesque movement. Sharper Buñuelian details will not delay in flowing either, and with vigor, as is the singular case of the picture hanging of a Christ plagued by some foci and cables, where bizarrely makes a warm allusion to religion, but above all to his surrealist formation, which never ceases to manifest itself in Mexican production, with more or less intensity and frequency depending on the film and circumstances, but never leaving the filmmaker's creative elan. Another personal detail is the text of Claudel, one of the director's favorite poets, a text on which the Spaniard places handcuffs, in a subtle but decided allusion to a writer that he has always admired. Another important moment is when Valerio meets Clara in her house, and clandestine lovers have a moment of intimacy, with the turtle that serves as an extension image for the loving moment, a personal image of love on the part of the filmmaker, because we know how reluctant the filmmaker was to cast kisses directly on the screen. Instead, we have the chelonian, faced up and turning on his feet, an image without words, as the best filmmakers work, to prolong the situation of secret love and passion that we are witnessing. The hens and the kisses, by the way, parade successively with surprising fluidity. The distance and the beach waves are also another of the figures where it extends, where it prolongs a feeling or circumstance portrayed, in this case the love, or the erotic amorous sequence that portrays, another amorous encounter between Valerio and Clara, where again the language of the director manifests itself. We find, therefore, a warm presence of the representative topics of the director, although this is not considered among the highest Bueñuelian peaks, it is a film that is well established between two of the most defined and important moments for this brilliant filmmaker.

Two-edged moment or work must have been this for Buñuel, because although on the one hand meant his return to work with European producers, even if it was half, still the director did not have the complete freedom to direct, to his total performance, the technical formality and to a certain extent aesthetic and thematic is a general rule to which he still has to stick, the genius still had to accept certain adaptations in his style. We listen to a Buñuelian film in a foreign language, no longer in Spanish from the Mother Country, nor the one from Mexico, we hear it now in French, it is not new if we remember his delusional silent exercises -or semi silent- of surrealistic initials, but this is actually the first time we heard a Buñuelian movie in French. After almost four lustrums, there is a return, although partial, in the form of the co-production with France, a parenthesis before finally ending his phase in Aztec lands and returning to the European arena, where some of his greatest summits would reach. It is one of the films in which his sociological and political affiliation is most evident, the idea of ​​revolution is more strongly portrayed, the class collision is no longer a mean but an end, his central character incarnates everything, grows his commitment to the incidental movement of the workers, grows his motivations, subscribes to thought and activities of workers, facing the oppressive employers, putting this before a wife whom did not love the way he loved the widow. The director portrays adultery, morality is once more on the sidelines, because Buñuel does not judge or condemn in his films, he does not judge his imperfect protagonists but he shows us his dramas, portrays his complex heroes, and Valerio is the center of film, evolves, existentially and socially as well, and significantly in a moment he is asked why he does all this, a question to which only he answers with silence, he discovers that the cause of the workers cares him more even than his own welfare, which is in theory, with his wife. He is the character on which rests the interest, he is the nucleus, with which the public must identify itself, his revolutionary commitment grows without even himself notticing it, it is his moral and social dilemma in which rests the drama of the film. His final gesture to reject Fasaro's hand, a valuable ally in that context from a Machiavellian point of view, finally shows us that he rejects everything the commissar represents, the oppressor, the abuser, the exploiter, and all those involved, direct or indirect, because the policeman only fulfilled his duty. From this feature on, Buñuel would know actors who would be great friends in some cases, and who will be his future frequent support actors, as is the case of the detective Fasaro, Julien Bertheau, to whom more than once we would later appreciate in some of the French summit works of the end of the career of the filmmaker. A film that in fact will not be counted among the most extraordinaries that this great director ever knew to produce, but for the reasons explained above is a film worthy of much attention, which is worth doubly by the circumstantial nature of the moment in the life of the artist, a film necessary for an integral knowledge of his oeuvre.

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.