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.

Illusion Travels by Streetcar (1954) - Luis Buñuel

Film with which the great Aragonese Luis Buñuel continues to configure his particular sketch of the cinematography, and of the Mexican society completely, in which some relatively fresh news as far as topics are appreciated, and others will get cementing more, reinforcing the style that the director developed in Aztec lands. It is going to be based on this opportunity the great Buñuel in a literary work, novel authored by Mauricio de la Serna, in turn adapted by José Revueltas, and in whose adaptation also participated Luis Alcoriza, usual and memorable collaborator of the filmmaker, in which again will be reflected much of Mexico, its customs, its people, and events that never ceased to move the exiled Buñuel. The Aragonese genius portrays the history of two workers, two individuals who have worked all their lives driving trams, and when progress begins, and their livelihood will be replaced, they despair; during a drunkenness, hijack the vehicle, and undertake an unthinking and unlikely journey through the streets of the Mexican city, where various situations and characters will be parading. The film, very well accomplished, but without being among the best Mexican works of the filmmaker -to cite an example, He- continues with the particular Buñuelian tradition of showing the director's particular focus on the land that housed him, and In one way or another, did not cease to impact him.

                      

It starts all in Mexico, in a city that has a tram station, there are workers' labouring, among them Juan Godínez 'Caireles' (Carlos Navarro), and Tobías Hernández' Tarrajas' (Fernando Soto), who are informed that their tram will be dismantled, they lose their job. The friends are going to drown their sorrows in alcohol, then go to the local festival, where is Lupita (Lilia Prado), sister of the 'Tarrajas', and where the fun continues. Then, in the middle of their drunkenness, they decide to take the tram from the station, to give it a last trip, and without looking for it, they have to transport, in the middle of the night, all the attendants the party, besides many other passengers. It is thus that they transport some slaughterers, old gossips women, religious females, a drunken aristocrat, and even a whole room of school children, who climb the vehicle by hilarious error. The nonsenses do not cease, friends have to avoid a tram inspector, and then appears Papá Pinillos (Agustín Isunza), a former employee, also dismissed from the tram station, who pretends to prove that he still is valuable for the company, and will disclose them. While the people suffer from inflation, and while 'Caireles' is insistently courting Lupita, Papá Pinillos reappears, insists on betraying them, and almost dies of a heart attack. In an unthinking way, finally the tram is taken back to the station, and no one believes Pinillos about the kidnapping, everything is still normal.

In a film’s beginning fully identifiable with Buñuel's, a documentary-style beginning, a narrator off voice presents the geographic space where everything happens, Mexico City, "big city like so many of the world, is theater of the most varied and bewildering events, which are but pulsations of his daily life... ", says the introductory voice; is therefore a fully documental beginning, a film starting very of the style of the Spanish, and that closely resembles Los Olvidados. And as well that serves as a proem sequence, while the rich tradition of documentary flows, praises simplicity, because in that simplicity and everyday simplicity, can be hiding something wonderful, unforgettable, perhaps only for the protagonists, or perhaps for someone else. He also immediately connects the filmmaker with the theme of working people, the working masses who wander and diagram the stories, the bowels of Mexico City, those who climb on that tram every day, is a good connection bridge from a theme to another, a quite versatile beginning of Buñuel, whose efficiency and narrative economy was already well demonstrated. Great prolegomenon to continue the Spanish with his personal outline of Mexico, the diagram of the land and its people, its customs, as when we see the regional celebration of the piñata -where, by the way, the director slides a great traveling, of the few in the film-, popular festivals, because the film is based on a successful story, popular novel by the way. The usual things, everyday life merges with the strange, with the extraordinary, something as daily as discussions in public transport, affronts, insults, fights for higher prices of products, something very daily-life in the middle class or working people, fuse with death (the slaughterers and Papa Pinillos, although this one certainly does not die), elements not so normal. In this tale of agile rhythm, the marvelous reality emerges from the most unexpected situation, individuals change the streetcar sign, mistakenly climbing, and implausibly, a complete classroom of student children; the before empty and silent space, the micro universe, is now extremely crowded, crowded with noisy infants, a sample of the intense mood of Buñuel, delirious humor, almost absurd, but at the same time feasible. Buñuel's sharp edged humor is not absent in any way, and we will also see the American woman go up on the streetcar, la gringa as they call it, who, when going up and getting said that she will not be charged for the trip, suspects that there is communism behind that strange event; a mordant, unexpected and therefore effective humor.

Then of course comes the exquisite sequence of the pastourelle, where finally a vigorous and unusual surrealism is materialized, accentuating a dark onirism, which allows, more extraordinary and palpably than ever, that from the ordinary, the everyday, the real, is extracted very fluidly something extraordinary, something wonderful. Surrealism does not flow, it does not run as resolutely as in other occasions through the obvious resource of a dream, where all the onirism flows with free letter; now, although to a lesser extent, we find it timidly dissipated, finding of course its maximum expression in the said pastourelle. Then, many of the filmmaker's obsession themes flow together, religion, embodied in one of the most memorable, unbridled and delirious ways in the filmmaker, with the carnal Lilia Prado showing his abundant and turgid flesh, and that fun Lucifer, the fallen angel, finished everything with the mordacious phrase "this happens to put as God to anyone". Also, the strength in the script returns to be one of the pillars of the film, with mordacious and eloquent phrases, among which, just to mention a pair, we find "would kill a mule to pinch", or also "everything in excess is bad, even in efficiency "; again, as in many of the Mexican films of Buñuel, dialogues, ingenious and fresh, plagued with casual and corrosive irony, exhale a fluid eloquence that reflects the feeling of those times, are a constant watchword in this stage of the production of Buñuel, and this film will not be the exception, with its great colloquialism. The dialogues between Caireles and Tarrajas constitute the most solid base of this colloquial wealth, the most ingenious and endearing, with its occurrences, drunkenness, jokes, cries, moans and joys, are the heart of the social mass represented, are the nucleus of these humans, with their illusion, their illusion traveling in a tram. We find particularly similarities with Ascent to the sky (1953), and as Buñuel asserted with respect to this picture, in Mexico it was not surprising that a person came up a bus with a live animal, something that printed in the mentioned film; so, if it was a person with a goat on that bus, we now see a woman with a little dog, another echo to the feature with which she is paired. And of course, similarly to Ascent to the sky, we have to the enormous Lilia Prado, no longer in a bus, but in a streetcar, the analogue of the micro universe; are therefore obvious similarities to the mentioned feature, especially the microcosm, but I consider that this is far from forming a trilogy, along with ____, with clearly defined and differentiable norms of the rest of his works, as I have read more than once.

Technically, the first part of the film has a very dark conception, and not gratuitous, although everything happens at night, and dawn; Then, in the second part of the film, already with daylight, and with powerful illumination, the unplanned journey will continue, the picturesque sketch of various representatives of Mexican society, with, although scarce, a good camera-shots work that reinforces certain scenes and their tension. With regard to the topics discussed, we have an interesting sample of Buñuel's political guidelines, starting with the topic of the workers, of the exploited class, but also of inflation, with those drunkards that give us a sensible extract of the political affiliation, the thoughts in the feature by the filmmaker. Other complementary subjects such as impoverishment by currency devaluation, brutalization of the oppressed for the oppressor's luxury go flowing, while the camera performs medium shots during that seemingly trivial description of a drunk, and then move away significantly. Something from Alcoriza can be seen in the repeated allusions to liberal, revolutionary thinking, class clashes, basic concepts of economics, but from the perspective of the worker, the exploited, the adversary to the aristocracy. The sexual element in this case, for a Buñuelian work, is noticed strange and surprisingly parked, but never obviated, in the figure of a known for the Iberian, the carnal Lilia Prado, with those praiseworthy hips, ominous thighs, which Bunuel, in a very grateful gesture, has the right guess to very suggestively show in the aforementioned pastourelle sequence. Special mention aside for the duke of Otranto, devalued aristocrat, drunk, amusingly his participation is testimonial, mute, and the huge pig carcass flies his hat with its swaying. In this realistic and at the same time magical world, our protagonists are a kind of heroes, or antiheroes, people of town, perform any actions, but sometimes bad, like abandoning the entire classroom of students with their teacher. Some hurtful, colloquial phrases and expressions of that time flow, like the orphan's theme, Lorenzana, reflecting certain present prejudices. The vehicle, the journey, is an existential metaphor, of life itself, containing a sketch of vital topics, because we have religion, carnal desire, disappointments, death, aristocrats and workers, classes and class clashes, which forms a film somewhat different from His works conventionally considered, the outsider still shows his personal vision, his portrait of the land that welcomes him. It is a great colophon with which the Aragonese closes his film, tells us the rapporteur voice that everything is articulated around wonderful simplicity, and has been something forgettable for the rest, has been epiphanic for our protagonists though, and the final sequence is also very Buñuelian, always enemy of showing kisses on the screen, shows the only kiss in long shot, away, while the film culminates, and while the narrator off voice comes back, and we are returned to the objective perspective, the documentary. Very remarkable and appreciable feature, often cataloged as a minor picture, like so many Mexican works of the Aragonese, but always an interesting feature, container of the essence of Buñuel.