Simon of the Desert (1965) - Luis Buñuel

In his previous film, Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Buñuel had finally been able to return to Europe, finally he could return to shoot in lands that could offer him certain resources that the Aztec film industries and areas could no longer provide. However, the return was not immediately absolute, having for the present film the director to returns shooting in Mexico, and this time under a group of circumstances that are probably the most unlikely among those that ever faced the director; certainly it was not seen, neither before nor later in his filmography, the ruptures between what was planned, and what finally took shape in this very unique medium-length film. In this story, whose script and story is the work of the filmmaker himself, in collaboration with his well-known partner Julio Alejandro, we are tried to be introduced into a group of stories about religion, being the one that concerns us, which should have been the first of them, the story of Simon, a man of faith who seeks to do penance to redeem his spirit, to suffer hunger, thirst and other torments on top of a tower in the middle of the desert, while the devil himself, adapting various forms, tries to seduce him and move him away from God. Very unique film, frustrated project, which is almost a mystery file, for not knowing for sure, completely, the reason for what the project has remained with its final form.

                

In the middle of the desert, there is a group of faithful, religious who in a small procession approach a large column among the aridity, on whose summit lives Simon (Claudio Brook). After rejecting his convalescent mother (Hortensia Santoveña), who wants him to live with her, and a promotion in his religious order, this man who seeks spiritual purification moves to another tower, which the faithful facilitate for his penance. After miraculously returning the hands to a maimed thief, a beautiful young woman (Silvia Pinal) appears, who approaches him, but does not interact. The young monk Matías (Enrique Álvarez Félix) then approaches to offer him food and water, which Simon receives sparingly. After fantasizing about going down to earth again, as well as with his mother, a beautiful young woman appears, who pretending innocence, dressed as a girl, shows her legs to the man. The religious then return with Simon, where one of them is possessed, to whom an improvised exorcism is practiced. Then comes a representation of Christ, but it is Satan, always with the appearance, hidden, of the recurrent woman. Simon continues to do penance, the faithful continue to worship him, until a coffin arrives in the middle of the desert, satan goes out again, the beautiful woman, who takes him to a surreal trip, to an American center of entertainment, where wild dancing they see, and where Simon stays.











With the present film, it will remain for the myth, almost for the legend, as the years progress, the real reason for the vicissitudes experienced in this shooting, incidents that directly affect the final result of the work, and that inevitably become indivisible from the film properly. Gustavo Alatriste, producer, is generally pointed out as responsible for the fact that this is finally an unfinished job, it is said that it was thought as a film of two, or even of three differentiated segments, with one each director in charge, but having finished the financial funds, the producer went bankrupt, and everything was cut short; however, many say that this is not the real version, among them Silvia Pinal, the then wife of the producer. In a special edition of the film, she assures in an interview that they tried Fellini to direct the other part, proposing the italian as protagonist his wife, Giulietta Massina; when Alatriste wanted to do the same with Pinal, she seems to have withdrawn support for the film, thinking naturally that if someone should direct her, it was Buñuel and only him; and so it would end up being, albeit mutilated. More or less plausible the hypothesis, it does not stop being that, a hypothesis, like so many others, among which are counted as possible partners in this film initially thought in episodes the aforementioned Fellini, the great Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, or Orson Welles, a parade of the most select in the world of filmmakers were considered as alternatives to direct the second segment of the feature, discarding all of them for various reasons, not entirely clarified by the way. In addition to the actress, the photographer Gabriel Figueroa also commented naturally, all of them give us different versions, with different names on the possible director, always apparently Fellini taking some lead in the predilection of the other director of the film, a very human situation regarding comments, cross-versions, cover-ups to friends, because Buñuel never spoke badly about Alatriste, despite the fact that more than one considered him as a producer of very little seriousness. All this turns the film ungraspable to analysis, something unheard of, the financial problems were never a novelty in the filming of Spanish, especially in Mexican lands, but here they reach implausible ways, where professional film people, from different areas of the office, have all different versions of why this project was so violently frustrated.

The film is therefore an unfortunate example of how the original ideas for a film are finally turned upside down, with greater severity, this being a sadly famous case, completely altering the real idea that the cinematic artist wants to convey. Only the epistolary relationship with his comrades allows us to follow up a little on what actually happened, but always with results that are not completely reliable, in which we can see that it was a film conceived as a feature film, divided into parts, and naturally there is a script, the original script where the planning was very different. Regarding the plans initially drawn, there are many scenes that had to be modified, and many others that were not even shot, something that, of course, interfered with the unity of the entire film, in its final result, a film that should have been composed of two, of three stories, a collection of possible directors, which was not even fully filmed, being presented at the Venice Film Festival of 1965, despite the expressed opposite desire of the filmmaker -ironically receiving a recognition, including a prize in the competition-, and generating the final negative of the spanish genius to finish the film. The well-known rigor with which the iberian shooted had insufferable budget difficulties here, besides the implacable conditions of the desert zone, we can even appreciate the undeniable difference of a cloudy sky with a blue sky in certain sequences, but that has been arranged, in the laboratory, as well as in the montage of the film itself, causing the story time to have elapsed; in spite of everything, some of these shortcomings are noticed. The severe aridity of the environment where the film was shot is immediately shown, which in turn reflects one of the biggest problems that arose during the filming, the climatic and geological conditions of the space where it was worked. Buñuel told us that although the Mexican studios were of unbeatable conditions, the filming equipment itself was in terrible situation, old equipment, creaking, almost obsolete. Necessary, however, was the use and disposition of a crane, to place the camera in mobile positions, to provide the necessary dynamism to its development, since with Simon all the time at the top of the tower, a developing of this dynamic and deploy in the camera was therefore precise. The game of low-angle shots versus high-angle shots, was something precise and necessary to represent with more forcefulness the figures, the crowd on earth, Simon on top of the cusp of the tower; in spite of the precariousness of the filming equipment of Mexican studies to which Buñuel referred, the crane was available to achieve those shots and framings.














The special effects were necessary for the initially planned, but due to budget problems, many sequences were omitted and were not shot. However, despite the inconceivable difficulties, this is a film very his, fully identifiable, from his figures to his topics, we have religion, we have female legs, we have insects, ants -the entomologist always present- even when it was mutilated the feature, the hand of the filmmaker in the realization of the medium-length film can be notticed, something that a master can achieve. Yes, never, there will never be a Buñuelian film without the presence of female eroticism, specifically in the figure of a female stripping her legs, her thighs, extraordinary and appreciated detail by the filmmaker, ineluctable part of his cinematic language. We also have the dwarf, another previous element of Buñuel in Nazarín (1959) -very close pictures indeed-, who dangerously has a behavior that borders on zoophilia, and he stars with Matías the recidivist phrase "The demons travel through the desert" ... "At night I hear them", they say to each other, inverting roles in the dialogue. In this regard, a religious triptych is completed, by the origins of the human drama, composed by the aforementioned Nazarín, Viridiana (1961), and the present film, although the final form of this closing of the triad, very far from the original idea of director and producers is. According to his sister pictures, the human sacrifice of the protagonist is in vain, in this case, the prodigy is in vain, divine things have no place in the world of vulgar humans, Simon performs the genuine miracle of restoring the hands of a faulty thief, only awakening in people the act of ignoring him, more interested one of them in eating bread than in the miracle they have just witnessed; even the beneficiary, the crippled, has as the first action of his recovered members, beating his daughter for annoying him, implausible. Simon has not a final rupture like Nazario and Viridiana, but again, how to know under these circumstances. The film is framed for moments in comedy, with humorous touches that are said to have been adapted due to the constraints of the shoot, always represented in Simón, and his witty and unexpectedly hilarious phrases that releases at certain moments. Interesting the figures adopted by Satan, a young girl, a girl, a witch, Christ himself, is a temptation in the form of the burning Pinal, always beautiful, discovering her legs -full buñuelism- and even her breasts in a very tempting way, but Simon resists stoically, except at the end. At the end we have the little surreal in the film, that sequence of the coffin wandering alone in the desert, containing the devil, her, a resource that reminds us who is behind the cameras. Also that plane, which in an almost dreamlike way takes both, Simon and the devil, unthinkingly to a nightclub, where unbridled dancing takes place, severe allusion to carnality, where one says it goes retro, and the devil replies, it goes ultra, two-faces opposition. That is the uncertain and violent cut, abruptly ends the film story there, we do not know what will happen with this new buñuelian element, Simón, things of shooting, that sequence had to be the improvised outcome for Buñuel, prey of the difficulties. Bizarre film, award-winning film, film consensually considered as a great work of its author, a film really necessary to enrich the knowledge of the work of this titanic spanish author.

Wuthering Heights (1953) - Luis Buñuel

Buñuel approaches in the present film a work not often performed by him, and not because he adapts a literary work, but because he adapts a text of international fame, wide recognition, something he had not done before, and that we would only see as a close exercise in the later Robinson Crusoe (1954). Some controversy surrounded this film, mainly by the adapted text, full and plagued by darkness, sordid characters, slaves of their passions, as the first text of the film is indicating us, beings that touch the macabre, death and sex, the powerful obsessions made this book a little less than damned for its time, the end of the first half of the nineteenth century. More than one adaptation had the novel, with different styles and approaches, but the present version remains as one of the most valuable, among the ones that best achieved and best captured the essence and spirit of its tormented protagonists. The film prints a part of everything that happened in the book, as it was known worldwide, the story of a family, of conflictive affectionate relations between one to another, a woman in love with a man of animal character, long gone, but now married to another man, and with whom she has begotten a child; when the initial individual reappears in the life of the family, great emotional storms will arise among all members of the tormented clan.

                 

Eduardo (Ernesto Alonso), his wife Catalina (Irasema Dilian), and his sister Isabel (Lilia Prado) live comfortably on a rainy night, a relaxed existence with no worries. Alejandro (Jorge Mistral) suddenly bursts with violence, breaks into the house, he is the adoptive son of the family who fled years ago, and Catalina immediately becomes uneasy over his unthinking presence, unmindful, professes his feelings for him, before the impotence of her husband. Soon they take walks together, and soon it is well known that Isabel is also in love with him, and Alejandro, after Catalina refuses to flee with him because of her pregnancy, only by spite decides to accept Isabel as his wife, disregard the negatives of the nana María (Hortensia Santoveña). But their feelings have not changed, as Eduardo's impotence and supplications grow, it is then that Catalina, unable to shake off her passion, falls ill in the middle of the unsustainable situation. Alejandro is going to live with Isabel at the house of Ricardo (Luis Aceves Castañeda), a drunk relative who attends impassively to the torments to which she is subjected, he hates Alexander, but is unable to face him. Almost as inevitable inertia, comes the moment of childbirth, and Catalina dies giving birth to the child, bringing great suffering to Alexander, who enters her grave, lies next to the corpse, and finally is killed by Ricardo.

The economy and narrative effectiveness of Buñuel is soon printed in the film, when the first sequence shows the impulsive Alejandro bursting into the aristocratic residence, but more so, the stubborn character undoubtedly breaks the glass of the door, does not accept negative of the nana, his character is from the first moment, wild, uncontainable. In the same way we see his female analogue, Catalina, who without the slightest regard, professes with her words and her actions her almost animal love for him, the characters are quickly and powerfully delineated. Even on the face of her husband, she could not repress professing her love for the prodigal son, her passion is overwhelming, it is a violent, destructive passion, that can only find final consummation in that, in destruction, in death. It is pertinent to indicate that the writer of this article could not read the original work, the novel by Emily Brontë, in which, with great probability, and with the normal distances from literary to cinematographic art, it has been possible to approach with greater detail to the origins, the provenance of the nature of each character. With that in mind, we can only hear briefly how Catalina's strange feelings were born, truncated feelings, being adoptive brothers, she apparently always felt that impulsive and fervent passion for Alejandro, but being adopted, he was humiliated and despised by the aristocratic family, having her to choose marrying Eduardo, seeing the contempt of which Alejandro was prey over his miserable origins. We also have Isabel, the frail sister of Eduardo, who is moved by the suffering of the animals, in love with the fierce Alejandro, unrequited, suffering, but since not being a participant of the passion, she is not condemned. We have right there by the way Lilia Prado, who, after seeing the exercises in Illusion travels by Streetcar (1954), and her carnal interpretive imprint, her turgid physical attributes, is perceived as if she had been the ideal choice for the tormented and fiery character of Catalina, and perhaps with that image in mind, is felt almost lost in the harmless role of the innocent Isabel. Another personage to enrich this bizarre human fauna is Ricardo, the drunkard, a drunken, impotent and useless coward, also part of the sordid ancestry of that house, that reinforces the accumulation of obsessions, of pathologies, in that bizarre ecosystem where everybody is exposed to the wild impulses that dominate them.

The core of the film is the destructive and impossible romance between Alejandro and Catalina, both are renegades, soul mates that reflect each other, and this is concreted more forcefully with the phrases spelled, "our love is not of this world" it is asserted, "I love Alexander more than the salvation of my soul", she says, stern and powerful are the statements, the dialogues, which denote an overflowing passion, and everything happens in the first sequences. Even when Eduardo asked his wife if her passion would cease if he killed Alejandro, she claims that she would continue to love him after death, and so the characters and their complexities are already well-drawn. It is a destructive but seductive love, an unstoppable, irrepressible love that no other human can understand, and these dialogues help us to understand how that love can only lead to death, can only find final fulfillment and be consumed in death, as effectively ends up happening. We are faced with a variety of amour fou, crazy love, a subject that always seduced Buñuel, and the surrealists in general, the love that for one reason or another is truncated, that does not come to happen, to consummate, or in any case is a love that is not consumed as a normal love, which does not have a maximum realization as normal lovers have; there is now a dark solace, it is indeed an enjoyment that will only reach its peak with the extinction, with the death, self-destructive feeling that will consume its unfortunate members, who, as the initial label immediately indicates, are not free individuals, nor are they independent, but they are slaves of their passions, those passions are the ones that move them, manipulate them. And Alejandro is not far behind in the strength of his phrases, when he talks about Isabel, he says "if she did that (biting him), I would tear her teeth one by one", also heard "chase me, drive me crazy, show up", another insane dialogue, the efficiency in the dialogues is something that always characterized the genius of Talanda's films, although in this case did not collaborate with his greatest pillar in that section, the great Luis Alcoriza. Eduardo completes the protagonists, Ernesto Alonso feels close to his other collaboration with Buñuel, the two years later The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), with his characterization fragile and impotent, bordering on cowardice, and curiously shown from the first frames as a entomologist, we see how Buñuel is once again pouring himself immediately into his characters.

As for the staging itself of the film, which is, as I indicated, what I can most comment, Buñuel in a positive way deploys a plastic darkness from the first sequences, shade and rain, the exteriors are invaded by that dark fury of nature, preluding the dark and savage passions that dominate humans. More than once we will see storms, gloomy natural storms, a great resource to exteriorize all the violent savagery that shakes inwardly the characters, prey to their violent passions, and this has its extension in the spectral and ghostly residence of Ricardo, by force converted into the home of the couple Alejandro and Isabel, what also exudes darkness, evil. It is very interesting how Buñuel, who has already acquired filming experience in Aztec lands, has the ability to disseminate, to shed the shadows throughout the environment in which the protagonists perform, powerfully reinforcing the darkness of the characters, the personalities of the characters. If there is something regrettable on the picture, yes, it is the marked abuse of Wagnerian music, Tristan and Isolde. Seldom seen, the way the sublime Wagnerian notes are used in anodyne moments, a touch that can offend some amateur palate of the German master. The excessively arbitrary use of the famous composition is something that Buñuel soon shook responsibility of, asserting that he did not participate in the musical insertion in the assembly room, something that is perceived as very probable. There is a Buñuel's success, although perhaps the merit is not fully for Talanda's genius (the color was about to reach Buñuel's filmography, a year later with Robinson Crusoe, nevertheless the color choice is not completely elucidated), comes to realize the film in black and white, feeding the hermetism and gloom that plagues the environment and the characters, the gothic tone that permeates the film, and the novel itself, which made it worthy of admiration for patriarchs of that artistic stream. In this dark world of torments, traumas, grudges and resentments, happiness shines for its absence, there is a presence of psychological masochism, for the characters seem to find refuge in that torment, in that trembling swirl of suffering, a suffering for which however they have no choice. If something can be blamed on the film is that it finally seems that its characters have more force than the film itself, whose development and outcome finally seems to fade, losing strength. In this case, with the subject treated, and with the indivisible that was the carnality of the topic, Buñuel has no alternative but to show kisses on the screen, one of those details that always avoided, and now, more than one kiss had to portray in his frames, but always concealed, in his own way. There is a certain religious lukewarmness, a detail is the nana who sanctifies herself before the affirmations that listens of Catalina, although in this opportunity the religious subject is eclipsed, since the passions are all that governs personages and history itself. We have a surreal ending, what a denouement, according to the seen sordidness, one death after another, one corpse on the other, the couple is together in death, only then their love is finally consummated, as they always knew, and how they were announcing it, and the director slides a detail of overlay of an image, lukewarm surrealism. Buñuel seems to have not felt too much pleasure or complacency for this work, as it let us glimpse the few words that he dedicates in his memoirs about this film, but nevertheless it configures an appreciable work of the Spanish, interesting adaptation of a referential text, and to the point was already to begin to use the color the Iberian; is a work perhaps not between the best produced by the filmmaker, but definitely necessary as part of all his filmography.