The River and Death (1954) - Luis Buñuel

As happened with so many other films by Buñuel in Mexican lands, we have in this opportunity a feature very often qualified like minor work, like alimentary film for its author, but that in turn, and always like the mentioned pictures by the Aragonese, stand for much more than those supposed defects for the connoisseur of the Buñuelian oeuvre. It is, despite any prejudice, this movie a very interesting work of its author, and for various reasons, being probably the main one that is the first time -or at least one of the most notticeables- in which the filmmaker folded his artistic interests to stipulations of the original author, of the writer of the story upon which the film is adapted. Associated again with his unconditional scriptwriter, Luis Alcoriza, the Aragonese genius adapts a novel by Miguel Álvarez Acosta, which portrays with rawness the way in which in a remote Mexican wasteland, completely desolated by violence and murders, two families are victims of ancestral hatred, which has claimed many victims of both clans, and now, the last two descendants must have a final confrontation, while one of them recalls a recent antecedent of the old enmity. One of the films that distinguish with greater prominence of the more representative topics of the Iberian, but that precisely for that reason contains much knowledge and novelties on the work of the referential director.

                 

The film begins with a prologue about Santa Bibiana town, there is a party, two godfathers are toasting very nicely, and then one kills the other for a misunderstanding. Far from that town, doctor Gerardo Anguiano (Joaquín Cordero), very ill, is taken care of by Elsa (Silvia Derbez), while in Santa Bibiana, Mercedes (Columba Domínguez), his mother, is humiliated by Rómulo Menchaca (Jaime Fernández); the latter one travels to the city where Gerardo is, and despite finding him crippled, threatens to kill him as soon as he gets better. Gerardo is recovering, and tells Elsa the origin of this animadversion, when many years ago, an ancestor of each family killed each other. And he continues to remember, his father, Felipe Anguiano (Miguel Torruco) courted a young Mercedes, and Polo Menchaca (Victor Alcocer), Romulo's father, had quarrels against the Anguianos. Although the venerable old fellow Don Nemesio (Jose Elias Moreno) preserves a little the peace, Polo kills one member of the rival clan, and nevertheless Felipe leaves to the exile, soon returns for revenge his cousin. Felipe leaves once again, but Nemesio's death causes him to return, Polo has unthinking truce with him, a truce that breaks when a brother of Polo forces a confrontation, in which both Polo and Felipe get killed. Gerardo finishes remembering, and finally comes back to the town, where he will have the confrontation, and final armistice with Rómulo.

The film becomes to a good extent, like so many exercises of Buñuel in the Mexican lands that received him during his exile, in a work that shows a documentary inclination, and is in that way that differs from his more traditional filmic openings, this is, with close-ups of a representative object or individual of the story to be presented. This time, the Iberian shows off his documentary facet with that exemplary proem, which displays the beginning with the moor while the credits flow, as an echo of what we will appreciate. Then he will provide us with the sequences and subsequent shots of that moor, in addition to the narrator voice in off, a precise background of the space where everything will happen, and ends up configuring a movie start that completely lands in the canons of the genre. The visual treatment of documentary that is given to the narrative is broken, sharply, at times with the behavior of the camera, which sometimes moves with some agility, others makes zooms-in to concretize close-ups; however, on other occasions it recovers its documentary behavior, crossing some passages of Santa Bibiana, reinforcing the treatment initially indicated. Eventually, a little, but resurges the narrator voice, which gets recovering the documentary focus when at some point it weakens, which continues to shape the document we appreciate from a Buñuel who was surprised, impacted by Mexican customs, a illustrated Spanish was surprised by seeing a procession carrying a dead man in his coffin throughout the town, and even to the house of his killer, and of course, by the violence as well. Similarly, the spectator, the public, the supposedly educated and civilized European eyes -particularly at the Venice Film Festival where the film premiered- got strongly impacted by the film, although the truth is that more than one Mexican film by Buñuel caused unthinking reactions in the auditorium, since the crude photographs in the form of films that Buñuel made of the land in which he was exiled undoubtedly disturbed them. The curious Buñuel, that great "man who shows" everything that moved him, positively or negatively, forms an interesting anthropological document, of the behavior of human beings, of violence, how irrational people can become over deeply rooted and inherited hatreds, resentments of others which they adopt, and which make all individuals subject to the collective.

As for the technical aspect, visually may be a little missed the photograph of the master Gabriel Figueroa -who shone exultively and gloomily, just to give an example, in Him, to which I refer again-, however you can find some good shots, some good chiaroscuros captured by the camera. The narrative structure has some novelty, although it is not the first time that in a work of Buñuel everything is based on flashbacks (just to give an example, perhaps He (1953) is the most exemplary Buñuelian work in this sense), and certainly, is not the time that the filmmaker makes it better, but it does not stop being attractive the narrative configuration, breaking the linear time plane, and integrating in a good way the different generations, the different time spaces that are united by ancestral hatred. Buñuel was in charge of asserting that the film, despite a certain treatment, is not a humorous picture, but it is impregnated with humor, black humor, as when you hear a character utter "it is not a good Sunday without its dead." Some phrases of the excellent script, courtesy of Maestro Alcoriza, reinforce that very black humor, strong and eloquent phrases, that perfectly describe the psychology of the protagonists, as when Felipe affirms "I am not afraid to the bullets but to the cowardice", or another condemnatory phrase, "we are all mourning in this town", a valid statement, in a place where human life is as little as the life of the rabbit that Felipe kills in a moment. And the efficient Iberian narrator immediately exposes this, when severe and illustrative contrast at the beginning of the film is reflected, with some godfathers who first drink very jolly, celebrate, toast, then for a small discussion, one liquidates his new Compadre, the same one who just a few moments ago kissed his newly baptized son. Obviously astounding the ease with which an individual is killed, the shootings and murders will happen in various places, in a billiard room, in the streets, in a cemetery, and all crowned with a bizarre custom. This has its paroxysm in the sordid procession that carries the coffin around several houses of the town, one by one, where there is some strange atmosphere, drinks, music, a few fireworks, ending in the house of the murderer, where he is required to leave, but following the law of the town, the perpetrator must cross the river immediately and, if he success, leaves the village; and of course we shall see more than one example of this, being, of course, Felipe the most eloquent, for, as his son Gerardo says, he crossed the river in both ways, alive and dead. And that water mass mythifies Santa Bibiana, because that river is a powerful border, beyond its limits, civilization returns relatively, beyond its borders breaks the myth of Santa Bibiana, it dictates the fate of the settlers. The river always has dreamlike music as accompaniment, even if it is only in Gerardo's stories, or when it must be crossed, is inextricable, either alive, swimming, either dead, in the coffin. The timeless river is a boundary element, divides everything, life and death, violence and loneliness, and whenever the river appears, even if it is in stories or references, surreal music flows, granting that halo of superhuman element, and of course, with the river and the dream music serving as great colophon for the picture.

Buñuel felt that, according to him, was working inside a corset for respecting the "thesis" of the novelist, who even corrected the script initially elaborated by Buñuel and Alcoriza, being this an exceptional situation, something that often did not happen to the Iberian; he asserted that he was greatly disturbed by the ending imposed, and Buñuel may not be mistaken, his annoyance may not have been unjustified, when he see that somewhat forced outcome, seeing that such a deep-seated hatred suddenly vanishes, when we see Romulo just completely changing his way of thinking, saying "to hell with the town"... to hell his generational honor... On the other side, it is Gerardo the epitome of the thesis by Alvarez Acosta, the educated individual, the lettered, the scholar who maintains that if everyone were educated, there would be no such behaviors, which disengaged the filmmaker. Promptly the role of Gerardo is defined, he almost cries desperately "I have studied", he does not want to be part of that barbarism, that irrational violence. Gerardo says, they are all sad victims of something bigger than them, an irrational and intergenerational hatred, and to maximize the contrast, the versed Gerardo appears in suits, with a coat and tie to the Candelaria party, where his great duel awaits him, where the appointment with death awaits him, where the "barbarians" look forward him. In this no man's land, the local priest preaches peace, the Lord's word, with a well-kept pistol in his cassock -by the way, he is the same actor who incarnated the priest in He-, in this land where whoever adverse to violence, as the Quiniela, of the few who are absent from the overfall, is of course called coward, chicken (hen) even by women, in the middle of barbarism, only the venerable old man Nemesio brings some peace, something fleeting. We do not find in this film the surrealism that is mistakenly thought to completely impregnate every feature by the director, here we find it in dribs and drabs, but we find it. However, his warm but recognizable winks will be noticed by the connoisseur of the Aragonese work, as a brief image of feet, one of his great fetishes, Felipe's feet, but even more noticeably, in the same sequence, the hen, Buñuelian element as few, appears suddenly -and unrelated, for the unprepared palate- in the middle of Felipe's clandestine encounter with Mercedes. Some critics claim that the film forms a triptych that is completed with Mexican bus ride and Illusion travels by streetcar, in the sense that the customs of Mexico are printed, a statement that I do not fully share, as I do not see such clear and well delineated links, as to consider a well-formed trilogy, a trio that shares common edges. It has been seen on more than one occasion, a strong parallel with the Yankee westerns, the clocks that refer to, for example, Only before the Danger, the horses and the fights to bullets that are reiterated almost to the point of the grotesque, and certainly It feels a halo of mentioned current, if not in excess. It is a film different from Buñuel, the picture that probably prints like no other a Buñuel that had to submit, to sacrifice his creative and artistic impulse to respect the original creator’s idea, to a Buñuel making a thesis film. Like almost all his Mexican films, described as alimentary or minor, but it encloses many interesting elements within the oeuvre of the Aragonese genius.

A Woman without love (1952) - Luis Buñuel

When we talk about films shot in Mexican lands directed by Luis Buñuel, we usually refer to atypical works, to singular pictures, rarities if you want within the filmography of the giant Aragonese director. However, seldom that assertion, an atypical Mexican film by Buñuel, was so true, so veracious in practice, was rarely, with such a certainty, a very unique film within the Buñuelian creations. Buñuel adapts again a literary work, authored by Guy de Maupassant, and again dismisses his collaborators as scriptwriters, the Alcoriza spouses, and it would be Jaime Salvador who was in charge of adapting the literary narrative to the cinematographic language of the script. Buñuel, therefore, fixes his attention on this opportunity in a very strange story coming from him, the drama of a woman, a woman who has married an older man, who has a child with him, and that stem, by making a prank one day, propitiates his mother to meet with an engineer, much younger than her husband; this engineer becomes lover of the woman, and when the two lovers are about to flee, everything is canceled because of the husband's illness, but this clandestine union will bring more of a surprise in the future, altering the family harmony. Despite the poor opinion of the director on this film, it is a very interesting piece of cinematographic art.

               

The story begins in an antique shop, owned by the spouses Rosario (Rosario Granados) and Don Carlos Montero (Julio Villarreal); both have a son, Carlitos, who when one day runs away from home, is found by the engineer Julio Mistral (Tito Junco), who takes him back home, befriends the marriage, and soon begin to frequent them, quickly creating an idyll between the dissatisfied Rosario and the engineer. The couple gather hidden, and the engineer cannot take it anymore, he asks Rosario to flee together, with her son, and she agrees, but being on the verge of leaving, the old antiquarian falls very sick, close to death, and Rosario first postpones everything, out of pity and fear, but then cancels it definitively, finally breaking ties with the disappointed engineer, who leaves for good. Time passes quickly, the infant has grown, now is the respected and recently graduate Doctor Carlos Montero (Joaquín Cordero), and has a younger brother, also doctor, Miguel (Xavier Loyá). Surprisingly, one day the family receive the news that the engineer Mistral is dead, and that left great inheritance for no less than Miguel; he marries Luisa (Elda Peralta), whom Carlos admired sentimentally, and dies soon afterwards the father, before which the truth is revealed, Miguel is actually son of the engineer. The unsustainable situation brings painful moments to brothers and mother, who must deal with it.

As the movie title already indicates, Rosario is the center of everything in the film, the core of the actions to happen, and the language of the camera certifies it, when at the beginning, being Carlitos punished by the alleged robbery, a medium shot frames her to us, shows her to us in the total center of that frame, and then back slightly the camera. In some later opportunities, the camera will again frame Rosario, making her the center of the shot, and of course the of film, within a rather timid, frugal camera display, a behavior that goes according to the general tone of the feature, which is very probably, technically speaking, the more conventional picture of the director, which barely breaks down the linearity, technically and also narratively speaking. The rarity of the film within the universe of the Aragonese is also manifested immediately, and ends up being shaped as the film progresses, because at last something unthinkable happens, there are Buñuelian topics absent in the work, beginning with the almost always sempiternal sexual charge, erotic load on his features. On this occasion there is no uncontrollable and irrepressible libido, leaving that topic room now to the female’s deep drama, the situation of womanly dissatisfaction. After the first twenty minutes of the footage, the most jumping is a beautiful photography work, pleasant frames and lighting game, contrasting the shadows with bright areas in some shots; in fact, assertions of this type, assertions that will be kept throughout the film, make this film a real rarity within the creation of the Spanish. However, one of the causes of the film's solidity, is the quality of the novel on which it is based, a story that feels close to reality, with more than one unexpected twist that helps very efficiently to maintain interest in what is presented, a story well woven, and well adapted in the script. One of the few, scanty, and lukewarm symbolisms of the film, however obvious it may be, is the business of the old deceived man, an antique shop, which is a reflection of the old, worn-out, old-fashioned and vulgar antiquarian, who never awoke genuine love in his young and beautiful wife, the victim of the situation that she had to live, she is a new type of woman in the filmic universe of Buñuel.

In this very interesting Buñuelian feature, an unprecedented and discontinued bifurcation in the cinematographic trajectory of the Iberian filmmaker is opened, since there is a double revolution, both from the technical treatment granted to the picture and by the very topics that are embodied in it, a double novelty, an atypical double situation in Buñuel, that will surprise more than one understood in his cinema certainly. And it is impossible that this film cease to amaze, with such a clear and even brutal split of the indivisible topics of the whole-life of the Buñuelian work, is undoubtedly one of the most different pictures of the entire production of the Aragonese, And perhaps it is indeed the most different, the most striking, his most distinct work, and consequently one of the most interesting ones. There is the thought that in order to know an artist, to know the most intimate nooks of his creation, his creator impulse, and perhaps the most important ones, it is not precisely necessary to look at his highest artistic summits, at the artist's cusps as creator, but rather his atypical works, those considered irregular within the uniform oeuvre. These features, actually, can teach us more about its author than the works consensually celebrated and awarded, and from this perspective, this film is a real jewel to appreciate and to know better the Buñuelian cinema, to know it from another approach. It is of course interesting, naturally, that the directives and cornerstones, the usual guidelines in the Spanish giant cinema, disappear practically completely, give way to new elements, largely unpublished in the previously appreciated work by the director. Now the central themes will be the family, the very human drama of a woman victim and prisoner of circumstances, who has never known true love, who had to form and found a family with a man she never loved, with whom she was united by economic necessity, of her and her parents; now everything is full of secrets, of frustrated and impossible loves, now the capital topics are, besides those afore mentioned, the jealousy between brothers, and the children who judge the mother, as is the title of the film in some regions, a novelty completely within the filmography of Spanish. As it was initially said, the film is a total rarity, which cinematically incarnates and embodies paths not previously seen in the filmmaker, and probably afterwards also in the Spanish artist.

At times the film feels surprisingly close to a brief Mexican novel, well-grounded of course, concise and credible, but feels definitely as implausible, unlikely to think that it is a picture of Buñuel, and makes it frankly almost impossible to recognize, not knowing who the author is, the feature as a work of its creator, identify the movie as the work of its author, before the total absence of its fundamental guidelines, and dominating a drama so unusual in the director. Perhaps, and only perhaps, has been that one of the causes why the filmmaker has so poor impression and memories of the realization and final product of this film. Equally striking is that Buñuel refers to the way in which he made this film more than once, defining it as his worst work, and affirming it with determination not only once, but having declared a contradiction the filmmaker regarding the origin itself of the treatment given to the picture, you may think that there is a factor, an external factor, extra artistic to have printed that impression of the film, something that made the film repulsive, something that displeased the director, perhaps linked to the nature of it, and its topics. Curious, because despite everything the filmmaker has said, we are facing one of the most humane Buñuelian works, severe and profound, representing genuine pain, very human drama, the truth is that the feature has almost no cracks, no flaws; perhaps strictly on the artistic level, does not mean a summit in the creation of the filmmaker, but in aspects of staging, of seriousness in its realization, does not leave a significant stain. In the first adulterous contact of Rosario and Julio, Buñuel still does not show a kiss on screen, something that was common in the filmmaker, but then, in later sequences of the same nature, the kisses are already inevitable and succeed, and within the narrative economy of the director, the participation of the male lover, although capital in the global of the film, is rather brief, leaving room of course to the true core of the drama, Rosario. Women have a crucial role in the film, starting with Rosario, the center of the entire film, and continuing to a lesser extent with Luisa, an object of desire for the older brother, woman who ends up opting for the younger brother, feeding the jealousy of the first-born, who accused her of being interested; but more so with Rita, Carlos' friend, the intriguing nurse who lives on the gossip, and who is responsible for planting that anguished intrigue and uncertainty in Dr. Carlos, she is increasing her anxiety. We have a figure represented with the mother knitting, that figure with which it is shown once, and, more importantly, with which the appearance of Rosario gets closed, as well as the film completely, representing her silence, that in spite of having being broken, does not disappear, her cloister, her interior suffering, the secrets of an introverted and unhappy housewife, and weaving a stocking is as we see her for the last time, the shot that closes the film. To sum up, one of the most striking films by Buñuel, for reasons already explained, absences and surprising, unpublished novelties, and despite being the worst considered by its author, for the right palate, is a very valuable cinematographic work, of a worldwide referential filmmaker.