Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread) (1933) - Luis Buñuel

By 1933, and with only two short films to his credit, the Iberian Luis Buñuel had already gained a well-deserved place in the cinema world scenario, with the effervescent avant-garde, and surrealism that was very much in vogue in artistic circles at the time. Thus, after the delirious Un Chien Andalou (1929), and the no less oniric and irreverent The golden age (1930), the director embarks in this opportunity in a work that from some points of view takes distances from the above mentioned movies, but still has a certain link with those, as Buñuel himself pointed out in an interview. And not to lose the custom, the director again faces many detractors and critics with his work, this documentary in which he portrays us and shows the deplorable conditions, inhuman circumstances in which the citizens of the Spanish area known as Las Hurdes live, where extreme precariousness prevails. Buñuel brings us closer to that poor world, famine, misery, the paltry life of the inhabitants, a work that over the years has acquired other nuances, especially in the ending. Accused of pamphlet film, of artificial and fake realism, the documentary meant severe opprobrium for the inhabitants of the Hurdes, but has become as time went by a landmark for documentaries, and has good place in the filmography of the Aragonese.

            



The film begins with an appropriate proem, some texts inform us how even the Spaniards did not know Las Hurdes, and we are shown how to get there, first passing through La Alberca; we see its people, and some barbaric local custom. But once in the Hurdes, we finally appreciate its atmosphere, its misery, its lack of food, resources, children drinking dirty water between the stones, living among pigs, pigsties. The camera makes us visit the school, precarious but where teachings are equal to those imparted in any place, like a book of moral teachings. Goiter is the characteristic disease, we see a local girl who dies hopelessly due to the total lack of competent medical attention, dysentery is aggravated when the hurdanos have to eat fruits that are still too immature for human consumption, but hunger tightens too much. Long lines of men who have not been affected by diseases, go to other areas to look for work and money, because seasonal changes take away their already scarce food; but the men return as they went, without money, and without bread. Rudimentary work of tillage, extremely frugal food, harmful larvae, innocuous diseases that become mortal, races degenerated by incest, called cretins, children who die without remedy; after two months, the team withdraws from the Hurdes.











I consider it is correct the way in which the observed is printed, with rawness, without artifices or excessive decorations in their audiovisual language, is shown almost the only thing there is to show in this place: the overwhelming misery. In that sense, the handheld camera appreciated in some sequences is an excellent resource for the intentionality of the film, it brings us closer to what we observe, it is as if we almost walked in that inhospitable place, as if we also entered the arid Hurdes, reinforces the absence of unnecessary artifices. Thus, precarity is well captured by the camera in the sense of the simplicity of its performance, of its development, because there are no colorful movements, elaborate travellings or gadgets completely unnecessary, that would have broken the halo of closeness and realism that was intended to print on the documentary (this aside from other factors, which I will detail later). This closeness, that realism, is cemented from the beginning of the film, with the correct way in which Buñuel introduces us in what he shows us, the tour of the neighboring village of La Alberca is the perfect prolegomenon, we are really with the travelers, really introduces us from the beginning in the situation, shows us how to get to the Hurdes. We will thus see the relatively barbarous customs of La Alberca, with the men in the competition for headlessing roosters, great way of documenting everything, even the way in which the site of interest is reached; this is a pleasant and precise preamble. And soon there is a fateful and frightful omen, the skulls placed on each side of the entrance of a chapel clearly indicate to us the tragic nature of that place, a place where death constantly lurks, as a pervasive presence, perennial threat flies over the surroundings, and these skulls become chilling witnesses, at the same time gloomy heralds of death.

Eloquent ways to show the severe precariousness we will observe, as the way in which leaves are collected to sleep on them, as well as later, after crushing them, will be used like fertilizer; the way in which circumstances compel them to improvise impacts, as well as the ingenuity, to put it in a way, with which they have to use the few and unthoughtful resources that the inhospitable area provides: dead valleys, scarce trees, abundant aridity, that is the environment in which these unfortunates work. And, as the narrator's voice declares, one of the main points of the film, one of its main intentions, is to show what the hurdanos do to build and work the field that will feed them. In the same line, the Aragonese shows us, among those works carried out by the Hurdanos, how the fact that, with that extreme rudiment, they are able to divert the course of a river, although sometimes the enterprise goes wrong and the work of a whole year is lost; in the midst of that nightmarish situation and overwhelming misery, there are still signs of organization, of coordination to subsist, although sometimes nature cruelly defeats these impulses for survival. The film shows extreme poignancy, such as teachers in schools who give children dry and hard bread, which is eaten soaked in dirty water, and those teachers force them to eat the bread at school for fear that parents will take food away at home; desolate picture that the filmmaker paints. Another eloquent image is that of one of the young hurdanos, drinking unclean water among some rocks, the shortage is overwhelming, a land where the extreme scarcity makes the only thing luxurious, we are told, are the churches. There are also details that many found highly shocking, such as degeneration not only mental but physical, with the incestuous relationships that bring as a result the cretins who roam through that arid land, or the industry of pilus, low business where profit is gotten of children without a family; the veracity of the documentary generated not a little controversy, and the repudiation of the inhabitants of Las Hurdes, appearing 80 years later Las Hurdes, earth with soul, by Jesús María Santos, a claimant attempt. Another one of the capital points of the film, tells us the narration, is to document the diseases of the population, being goiter one of the main threats to the health of the settlers. It is also eloquent detail that in some cases the disease is not lethal, are the same hurdanos the ones who, in their ignorance and desire to heal, end up turning those minor diseases into fulminant evils.















We come to another important point, the accusations of false documentary, of exercise that pursues manipulation, that distorts reality, the artificial pamphlet, all criticisms that I consider unfounded. It was accused, for example, of orchestrating the demise of the goat, of generating many situations instead of just showing them, attempting against a genuine documentary. "This ill woman does not suspect our presence" says the narrator about a hurdan, opposing a little to what is so much attributed to the artificiality and lack of spontaneity in everything represented; the narrator tells us of a "collaborator", a hurdan friend who collaborates with them so they could film one of the cretins. Also is criticized the fact of lying even in the declaration of the moment in which everything was filmed, because we see in the text that everything is said to have been filmed in 1932, shortly after the Spanish Republic was established, when in fact it was shot in 1933, which is actually true, and exploited by detractors. But it is ridiculous to consider the film unworthy over it, the whole artistic work necessarily bears the imprint of its author, it is to some extent impossible to print the reality completely, as cinema, like all art, is permeated by the humanity of its creator, its optics; even in a documentary this manifests. The picture is an accusation, an assault, stirs the extreme and total abandonment of this land, the way in which Spain has forgotten Las Hurdes, it is significant that we are told that the lands were unknown even for the Spaniards, who did not know of its existence until 1922, when the first highway was built. And the work fulfills its purpose, it portrays the overwhelming misery, the misery of the land of the director, although there is a lot of shock in how it is transmitted. Buñuel, Pierre Unik and Julio Acín, the film's production team, were based in Las Jurdes, the journal that the French intellectual Maurice Legendre took of his own and previous visit and exploration to Las Hurdes. The film changed over the years, when Buñuel added some variations, such as Brahms' music, which definitively resized all the shocking reality and misery observed, as well as the narrator voice of Francisco Rabal, initially inexistent. But certainly the most significant variation is the final picture, the text that speaks of some of Hitler and Mussolini's most influential totalitarian forces, and takes sides against fascism, the anti-fascist message changes the approach one might have. Harsh and rough history, Buñuel claimed that a certain halo of surrealism floated on the feature, that it was not so far of his two previous short films, and we almost feel the dead donkey like a distant echo of An Andalusian dog. Despite the criticism, the film is a milestone in cinematographic documentaries, really sharp and true portrait, another cornerstone in the filmography of one of the most egregious Iberian filmmakers.

The golden age (1930) - Luis Buñuel

Barely a year after A chien andalou and all the impact that so irreverent work aroused, the most unbridled Buñuel returns to the plató, to continue concretizing the reference films of experimental cinema, the surrealist cinema that with the aforementioned movie had its official acceptance in the intellectual world of then. As in the first film, the Aragonese filmmaker collaborates with his great comrade, friend and surrealist colleague, Salvador Dalí, nevertheless, this time his collaboration is not so recognized by the filmmaker. Although this film extends up to sixty minutes, far exceeding the length of just under twenty minutes of its predecessor, it shares with it its surrealistic guideline, its conception as a work that separates itself from reality, from the plane of real space and time, a world of dreams, subconscious, repression and sexual impulses, but this time more than a novelty we will find. Buñuel structures his story in six segments, in which we will appreciate the story of a couple, a man and a woman who desire each other intensely, a carnal desire that will be repeatedly truncated by various agents of society, their relatives, religious authorities, or bourgeois, while the most unlikely circumstances keep happening. Another reference film of the giant Spanish filmmaker, another cult film in the art cinema, experimental cinema.

          

The film begins with images of the life of scorpions, their solitude and fierceness; after that, hours later, ecclesiastical men are on a riverside, facing this, an evildoer observes them, he will warn other evildoers of the presence of the religious men. They try to go and intercept the ecclesiastics, but they faint on the way. Then a large number of distinguished individuals arrive in boats, they are going to stage the Roman foundation, but are interrupted by a couple, a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lya Lys) are wallowing in the mud, trying to have sex, and everybody, outraged, immediately stop them. Afterwards, the man is arrested and mobilized by police, in his way more than a wrongdoing performs, but is finally released from his custodians. Man and woman can not get out of each other's minds, and already free, having been appointed with high political office, he attends a meeting of bourgeoisie, where she is. There is the host, the Governor (Josep Llorens Artigas), where crazy circumstances occur, lovers are about to consummate their idyll, but again are interrupted, by a call of the Governor, who then commits suicide. After she kisses with an elder, appears the Duke of Blangis (Lionel Salem), of incredible resemblance to Christ, has performed unspeakable orgies in his castle, where he carries a wounded girl. The movie is over.











Inevitable to compare both films, and although it is executed differently as A chien andalou, we observe a prelude sequence that serves as a proem, the scorpions and their existences, solitary, aggressive, lethal, arthropods with organisms divided into six segments, just like the movie. Buñuel does not waste time, his first sequences are already a declaration of intentions, since after the scorpions, the first thing we see are those ecclesiastics, the friars on a bank; but the figure is powerfully completed, for when "good men" go to see them, they find bones, bones under religious robes and mitres, bones that become dust: religion, the church, merges with death, in a powerful and eloquent surrealistic sequence. Religion is still a recurring theme in the filmmaker. Equally powerful and enunciative, equality of power in his statement has the following sequence, in which the lovers are first stopped, they are outlined as a singular couple, wallowing in the dirt, loving each other in the middle of the mud. And Buñuel goes further, when we see the woman, separated from her lover, without being able to remove him from her head, and the next image shown is a toilet, in addition to images of eruptions, apparently volcanic, that can be associated with the explosive and intense interrupted passion, but also resemble eschatological masses. We return with the man, who literally almost savored the filth, the mud on his face; it is thus a presentation as potent as the previous one, in which there is the description of the nature of that love, that passion, a passion unrelated to everything else, the famous amour fou, crazy love, able to develop anywhere, even in unclean scenarios. Like the previous sequence, it is powerful what is portrayed, the paradox of love that develops in the dirt immediately talks to us of an insane love, at least for conventional eyes. From those representations, from those starting points, the rest of the feature is weaving. On a technical level, the film is as economical as its predecessor, or perhaps even more, not observing tricks or visual gadgets, only a few travellings and some dynamic shots when documenting the city of Rome. But nothing more, the overlayed shots and dissolutions of them, scarcely appearing in A chien andalou, disappear now completely. One of the first and obvious differences, besides the most important ones, as we will see later, is that this picture is a talkie, it lags behind the muteness of Buñuel's debut, and we will hear soon dialogues between the evildoers of the beginning.













The film is completely surrealistic, but its surrealism applies in different way to the debut of Buñuel; now, with a film that almost triples the duration, surrealism is distended, is a surrealism a little less delirious, this partly because now comes the sound in the form of dialogues, taking away the mute hermeticism that had the first feature. A chien..., in its 17 minutes, it feels a more violent surrealism, more delusional in what is represented, it is like watching a dream, a 17-minutes-dream, where the reasoning is completely absent; now, with the dialogues, and with other subtle and not so few conventionalisms, naturally the rational appears much more. But be careful, this has a powerful causality. When Buñuel compared his first two films, his two most surrealist works, he tells us how A chien andalou was a glimpse into the interior, full subconscious, without being linked at all with the outside. The most radical change in the present film is precisely the existence of that link, now it is no longer a look inside, it is no longer a total break with the outside, now seeks to denounce society, its failures and repressions, which end up by mutilating and subjugating the individual. And on the way to denouncing these evils, the film is linked to the exterior, the exterior interferes, that mixture of both worlds is what differentiates one feature from another, the famous conjunction of subconscious, Freud, and reality, Marx, liberation of the individual, of the worker from the enslaving society, the road that the surrealists approved. In this respect, the sequence of the meeting with the rotten bourgeoisie is vital, as portrayed in the flies that "live" in the face of the Governor, bourgeoisie at once absurd, with a fire that devours the servitude, but neither with that they get disturbed, in addition to a carriage pulled by an equine, that crosses the meeting without no one even being immutated; pure surrealism. Particularly amusing I found this sequence, with the bourgeois, so happy, so noisy, just like the aristocrats must have been in the house of the viscounts of Noailles, the financiers of the movie. Like the bourgeois of the film, the story tells that equally happy in their meeting were then the guests at the premiere of The Golden Age, only to get outraged and enraged from the palace of Noailles, without uttering a word, after the first viewing of the film. By the way, if in A chien andalou Paris and its context were shaped, now it is Rome the portrayed, the ancient imperial city, not immune to the frivolization, as we see in the detail of the garments and jewels, fashions promoted in the city.

All the main topics of the director continue to be reflected in the film, almost as echoes of A chien...: love, passion, religion, repression, death, all the capital themes that later gradually would be developed and expanded in the later films of Aragonese. Among the symbolisms, the woman, sexually frustrated, finds in her bed a cow, who rests calmly and nonchalantly, representing her forced abstinence, her sexual frustration, cause she is powerless, filing her nails, thinking of her lover and her passion, in her amour fou, a figure and a representation that later we would see in other films of Buñuel. That frustration continues in the following sequence, she looks out of the window at her lover, unattainable, then a quiet sky with clouds appears, contrasting that tranquility and passivity, the forced sexual passivity of her, with her desires. Of course, there is a sharp sexuality, lustful looks, lovers biting their lips, biting each other's fingers, but the erotic image par excellence is that of the girl sucking, sucking the bottom of a statue, a tremendously explicit image, specially for the time. Incredibly, the only time they are not interrupted, their sex drive stops abruptly at the sight of another statue's feet, a detail replete with surrealism. The difficulty of communication is also expressed warmly, the man, after being dragged for a long time by the police, unable to explain in words, shows a letter from the Governor, granting him a high position, he is released from the police. Curiously, the man is the receptacle of everything bad in the picture, the bad guy, kicking a little dog, killing an insect, beating a blind man for nothing, slapping one of the bourgeois women for spilling a drink over him. The protagonist, the supposed individual with whom we must empathize, is the most abject, contrasting with that idea, making it difficult for us to identify with him; but his cause remains "noble": consummate his love, his passion. The other issue, violence, in addition to what is described in previous lines, is crowned with a man who kills his son shoting him for throwing his cigar; also the duke, who commits suicide by throwing himself on the ceiling, an extremely dreamlike image. Another of the prowess of the film is to be one of the earliest French sound films, in addition to being a pioneer with the detail of the voice-over. Wagner will flow again as well, Tristan and Isolde and their impossible love, when in the end the lovers are together, while she, disturbingly cries out "what joy, what joy to have killed our children!", and then we see the face of him, covered with blood; without doubt one of the most disturbing and attractive sequences of the film. Buñuel's bestiary also grows, after seeing his lover kissing with an old man, the man goes mad, again (as in A chien...), while redoubled drums sound, throws out a burning pine, a friar, a plow and a giraffe. Very provocative is that the Duke of Blangis is identical to Jesus Christ, being Blangis the standard bearer of the orgiastic group, and then, after assisting one of the girls of his orgy, appears shaved, perhaps as a false and superficial redemption. Sade was one of the readings that more impacted Buñuel, and adapts with Blangis part of The 120 days of Sodoma. A work of almost endless baggage and background, completes the surrealistic diptych of Buñuel, The golden age is considered a cult film, necessary for the art film connoisseur.