Mexican Bus Ride (1952) - Luis Buñuel

We have a Luis Buñuel's unusual film here, as to a certain extent were all his works made in Mexican lands, a film in which he continues to shape many of his distinctive film stamps, but in which also various issues are concretized that continue limiting and hindering the complete and total development of the Aragonese artist. On this occasion, the filmmaker left out those who until shortly before this film were one of his pillars in his shootings, the spouses writers Alcoriza; the story we are focusing on came from Spanish poet Manuel Altolaguirre, with whom a strong friendship was already well forged with Buñuel during his stay in the Student Residence of Madrid, where meetings of prominent artists of the time took place. The aforementioned poet is the origin of the film, married to a very wealthy Cuban woman, when embarking with his wife on a trip by bus, both faced different experiences, experiences of different kinds, and that somehow had to have moved the poet, because he adapted his experiences to a script, with the help of Buñuel and some others. Simple story, tells the experiences of a young man who has just married, and his mother, just about to die, has not prepared his will; fearful that his brothers would take advantage of the situation, undertakes a trip to find a lawyer who would make the will; different adventures will cross the young man on his journey.

             

In a remote town called San Jeronimito, the customs at a wedding include that the bride and groom must spend their honeymoon on a nearby desert island. Oliverio Grajales (Esteban Márquez) and Albina (Carmelita González), newlyweds, are embarking to this island, but the young man finds out that his mother, seriously ill, has relapsed and is close to dying. He immediately returns to see his old mother, Oliverio knows that his brothers, Juan (Roberto Cobo) among them, are waiting for the mother to die to share the goods, and she, who wants to leave everything to the youngest member of the clan, an infant, asks him to please bring an attorney to legalize her last will. Oliverio takes a bus trip in search of the lawyer, on the bus also goes the beautiful Raquel (Lilia Prado), the deputy Eladio González (Manuel Dondé), among others. The trip begins, in which a woman gives birth in the middle of the journey, in which Raquel all along wants to seduce Oliverio, the bus driver, Silvestre (Luis Aceves Castañeda), more than one stop performs, like in the birthday of his mother, despairing the hurried Oliverio. After separating Oliverio from the others, and being alone with Rachel in the bus, finally she manages to seduce him. Oliverio arrives with the counsel, acquires a document that will help fulfill the will of his mother. On returning to San Jeronimito, the brothers already want to distribute the inheritance arbitrarily, but he will not allow it.

So it ends the Spanish film, a film whose beginning has something of documentary -something common in many Buñuelian features of this stage of the artist-, shows us the small town where everything happens, San Jeronimito, whose inhabitants live simply, they apparently suffer poverty, but actually they all have a lot of money; this thanks to the copra palm, whose sowing generates income comparable to having a milch-cow. That short proem serves to enter in that context. The playful and frolicsome music already indicates the character of the film from the beginning, fun, light, subtle, hilarious. The first thing that we see represented is the wedding of Oliverio and Albina, a wedding, an event that always compends customs and much of the folklore of the community of whatever land or village where it develops (a notable master of that is Kusturica). Always showing a narrative economy, in just over ten minutes, Buñuel explained a good part of the movie, the sick mother interrupts the honeymoon of the newlyweds, and requires the obligatory trip of the new husband Oliverio to solve the crisis; in this simple film, that is the motor that originates everything, all the comic actions -or tragic, death of a girl; or lamentable, the siblings almost forcing the dying mother to sign...- are triggered as a result of this. The humor is born of hilarious situations, warm humor that rubs the absurd, like all adults, suffering and enduring to get the jammed bus from a bank, when a child, a girl, playing, guide the oxen and manage to pull the vehicle almost effortlessly. Likewise from the initial moments the omnipresent bus appears, that will become during the film practically in the micro universe where many of the most important events will happen, and the tenants of that transport one by one will populate the vehicle, with their presence and with their occurrences. That bus becomes the environment where the most significant events happen, that micro universe is home to almost everything, as in other filmmakers, and respecting the great distances, we have seen, from the first exercises of Roman Polanski and his cinema of minimal spaces, or the great Fellini in Y la nave va (1983); always an interesting resource in the right hands.

In that bus, everything happens, and everything is opposed, because on the way a woman gives birth, a new life comes to the world, and on the return, a new life is extinguished, the dead girl in the coffin puts funeral share, although Buñuel was in charge of subtracting more significance or fatal relevance to that detail. Simplicity, simple people, people of town, simply what can happen in any day, in any town, with any people, that is the whole movie about. With this pretext, and as in other films, the filmmaker sketches, with the initiative of the poet Altolaguirre, the community, the small society, which in this smallness, summarizes all Mexico, with its significant figures, the deputy who is late to his election and is repudiated, holder of a somewhat forced and barren eloquence, wielding more than once a gun which he never uses; the Porfirian old man who longs for past times and the return of his lands, among other significant figures. As natural and simple as these adventures in the film are narrated, were the vicissitudes in the real life of the filmmaker shooting, with the money of the wealthy Cuban wife of the producing poet, running out and seeing the director forced to change his final, to use shameful scenarios of cardboard for the final descent of the bus. Incredible how he had to finalize the film, because again, due to budget constraints, something not new at all for the giant Iberian director, had to modify the film differently from the original conception of the filmmaker. One of the unmissable features of the Buñuelian cinema is also displayed, the bestiary of the Aragonese, animals that go significantly -and literally- parading in the film, animals and humans living in that bus, goats, sheeps, and of course, the hen, Buñuelian par excellence that so prominently flow not during a film, but throughout the whole oeuvre of Spanish, as, just to give an example, we can remember in The Young and the Damned (1950). Thus, from the simplicity of the experiences of a bus trip of the poet Altolaguirre with his wife emerges everything we appreciate, as he had the impulse to turn his adventures into a film, but he wanted only one person to be the director, his friend Buñuel; like so many artistic works, it was born this one, drinking from the life itself, of supposed littlenesses, since the experiences of the poet, including seeing a children's coffin on his bus, were the ones that inspired this film, in which Buñuel himself collaborated in the adaptation of script.

As always, there is another watchword of Buñuel, we have the dreamlike element, the surreal component, the dream of Oliverio, which begins, of course, in that bus, which we will see oniricaly full of foliage, where the sexual and lustful Raquel tries to seduce him, then the dying mother appears, in an elevated position, and very symbolically connected to her son by an interminable peel of apple, an allegory of the umbilical cord from which Oliverio is finally being liberated. Strange and ambiguous is the figure and relationship of mother and child, for to a certain extent a Oedipus complex is insinuated in Oliverio, who, after his mother's death, exchanges her face for that of longed-for Rachel. Likewise, and following another sequence of the dream, Oliverio first sees Albina, in almost Marian representation, being pushed into the water by her husband; moments later she will arise again, as reborn, emerging renewed from the waters, but with the face changed for the carnal Rachel’s one; that figure, the exchange of faces, is a classic exercise of surrealist artists, and that we have already warmly seen sketched in Susana (1951). Rachel, the primordial one in the film, embodies the sexuality that will never be lacking in a Buñuelian feature, she is carnality and lust, desire, an essential element in the universe of the Aragonese director, and her stubbornness is remarkable, is a continuation of the hermaphrodite being of An Andalusian dog (1929), of Modot in The golden age (1930), or obviously of Susana; she does not stop until she gets what she wants, sex, seduce the young Oliverio at the significantly named cusp "climb to heaven", then, and once achieved her goal, discards him as a worn shoe. The last shot that we see of her is now harassing Eladio the deputy, again with stubbornness... it is quite predictable in that will finish that deal. The dialogues and efficiency of the Alcoriza spouses are missed by some of the connoisseurs, although the dialogues, for the writer, do not resent much, full of adages and village-like rogueries that vertebrate a film that passes quickly and smoothly. The camera, without reaching a high level of performance, shows interesting displays, with some travelings that streamlines the visual aspect, with some locations that recall the camera in hand; what was said, without being unfortunately a more striking development, as in other films of his was appreciated, is set an attractive work. Certainly that ending feels abrupt, sudden, although it is fair to point out that the version to which I have had access, apparently is ten minutes shorter than the "official" version, but it is undeniable however that these factors (budget cut) mortified Buñuel, the budget cut definitely altered the denouement of the picture. Many of his cornerstones are present, the most important, the main ones, but again, external factors hindered the work, which however did not preclude a very appreciable feature of this extraordinary Spanish director, which carries his clear imprint, and from whose realization the author kept pleasant memories.

Daughter of Deceit (1951) - Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel continued developing his Mexican cinematographic facet, the moment of his career after that irrepressible surreal irruption of his beginnings, to generate what many brand as minor works, works that were made to subsist as, even, did the filmmaker with the feature that we are now dealing with. The film is based on a successful play by Carlos Arniches, adapted by the well-known pair of screenwriting fellows,b husband and wife, Luis and Janet Alcoriza, which in turn is based on a previously existing Spanish movie, in which Buñuel also got involved. With the natural transitions and adaptations of a typically Spanish work to Mexican lands and customs, we are introduced to the story of Don Quintin Guzman, a conservative man, who suddenly discovers that his wife deceives him, catches her in adultery, and she, in disgust, tells him that the newly-born daughter of both is actually the product of that adultery; the deceived subject believes her, and gives the baby to some neighbors, but years later, he will learn the truth about the girl, provoking unexpected situations. Almost consensually considered as a minor work, even being almost forgotten by its author, the picture certainly is not among the best of the Aragonese filmmaker, but will serve as much for those who want to study the work of the referential director, in his stage in Aztec lands.

            

In a humble home, appears Quintín Guzmán (Fernando Soler), with his wife, who disowns and scolds him for the desperate lack of money in the house. Quintín, aided by a friend, goes on a journey to earn good money, but the train where he was about to travel suffers a setback, the man returns almost immediately to his home, finding his wife, cheating on him with that friend. Quintín throws the woman out of the house, and she, in a moment, shouts to him that the baby is not actually his daughter, and seeing this, the tormented individual ends up leaving the baby in a neighboring house. Quintín continues his life alone, surrounded only by his bodyguards, Angelito (Fernando Soto) and El Jonrón (Nacho Contla), ignoring the mother's pleas to return the child. Time passes, the girl becomes a woman, her name is Martha (Amparo Garrido), who one day knows the young Paco (Ruben Rojo), among them flows quickly an idyll. Martha lives with Lencho (Roberto Meyer), and his daughter, his adoptive sister Jovita (Alicia Caro); before dying, the biological mother of Martha confesses to Quintín that the girl was indeed her daughter. The man starts searching, and manages to find the house where Jovita lives; initially difficult, finally finds the girl. While Jovita has some success like cabaret singer, and in spite of initial differences of Quintín with Paco, father and daughter, and son-in-law, forget differences and wait for the happy birth of the first-born.

We can nottice a characteristic Buñuelian starting of the picture, when the camera focuses the detail of a light bulb, the same one that soon gets broken, and the camera recedes to show the complete figure, the precarious home of the Guzmán spouses; in this simple figure, the good Aragonese is already slipping the reality of the home, misery, precariousness, light bulb gets burned, the needs press them, the filmmaker always displayed signs of economy and narrative eloquence. From the first moments, we will also see a curious performance of the camera in the beginning of the movie, we can see a singular development of the lens, there are zooms in and zooms out, which add to certain travellings that generate a peculiar and attractive dynamic, which unfortunately dissipates and gets lost promptly. These ephemeral and striking displays of looseness in the camera, are surprisingly the only sample of something different, something different from conventional visual narration, and the minutes go by, we will not appreciate other moments that break that usually conventional tone that permeates the whole feature. In dribs and drabs that singular behavior of the camera will rteturn, a certain trembling, tremulous effect, which in certain moments resurges to engender comedy, or tense moments; but what I said, appears with eyedropper. To return to that point, in a picture in which it is known that the budget is not something that was abundant, Buñuel was forced to appeal to his narrative economy, when in little more than ten minutes the crux of the drama is already raised; without more ornaments -because the financial resources did not allow it-, already established the first part of his conventional narrative structure, the introduction, the drama that the Guzman are experiencing. Thus, within the linear structure of the feature, within its narrative and audiovisual linearity, the most remarkable narrative resource, with distance, comes to be that ellipsis, that great temporal leap that is applied automatically when Martha's adoptive drunk father closes the doors of his cupboard. While the screams and the cries flows, instantly afterwards, when the cupboard is opened, the decades went by, the just-a-moment-ago baby girl instantly is now a young woman of twenty years, the adoptive mother has already died, the adoptive father has aged, and the booze worsen his situation. Within a flat and linear narrative structure, being this one of the director's most conventional pictures, this resource, without being too flashy or extraordinary, is the most technically salient element.

The work is characterized by transparently portraying the town, the charros, the popular customs of the lower class to which the protagonists belong, considering of course that the play, originally Spanish, has been adapted to the Mexican canons. And so, among other figures, in the character of Jonrón we have the typical Mexican macho, somewhat caricatured version, as much of the film. Important figure within the Mexican scope, the stereotype of the virile charro, who wants to solve practically everything with bullets raids. All the Spanish customs have to migrate to Mexico, the famous Alcoriza spouses in this way, change Spanish soil by the Mexican moor in their history (and in their real life also, actually), with all the characteristic and representative figures of Aztec lands. And to a certain extent this is a film that can be considered a remake, in days when the term was still not coined at all, is a feature in which in many sequences the dialogues were simply mexicanized to move the story from one context to another. In that course, in this Mexicanization, Buñuel seems to have got lost, who also claims almost not remembering the production of this film, assures that "nothing came out well", and that it was a alimentary film, made with the purpose of subsisting, to obtain sustenance, situation quite common in this stage of the Iberian filmmaker. This softening of the film, added to the precariousness of the production, the budget shortage, resulted in a feature quite removed from the majority of directives of the Aragonese filmmaker, configuring a picture, although not bad or deficient, yes between the less achieved or more successful of the Spanish director. In this way, much of the film, much of the original Spanish canons, are transmuted to the conventions of Mexican cinematography, the drama is sweetened and softened with comic situations. It gets generated a unique blend of Mexican cinema with even a few doses of western, as caricatured as exemplified in the scene of the discussion of the Jonron with another subject in the bar, an excellent example of the light humor that slides on the movie, a warm mood which is correctly dosed throughout the footage of the work. That American halo will continue to be printed, we see girls, dancers, cabarets, even the young Jovita, wishing to success as a cabaret singer, surrounded by night shows, and charros that warmly remembrance the absent cowboys.

There is also the infallible figure of the drunkard, Martha's adoptive father, perennially drunk, the despicable abuser, first martyring his wife to death, then the young adoptive; always with the bottle of liquor in his hand, and always ready to hit women, is a negative element, but always present in the sketch of Mexican society, and almost in any society actually. It's Angelito, Quentin's bodyguard, from whom it comes a lot of the movie's hilarity, the picardies, the comic moments, in different circumstances will always have the funny dose that serves to finish giving that comical general shade to the film. He continues to collaborate with Fernando Soler, an illustrious Mexican actor with whom he has worked so well, they cinematographically synergized, as it gets attested in the reiterated works they performed together, as well as the repeated mutual praises of the respected artists. Soler fulfills well the role, the solvent Mexican actor demonstrates why he became a pillar of this stage of Buñuel's cinema, the actor who had a lot of director, who was said to direct himself, leaves his stamp of interpretive sufficiency, always serious and distinguished. Buñuel was upset because of the significant changes from one country to another, he denied of the change of the original title, Quintín el Amargao (something like Quintín the bitter), to the Daughter of the deceit, for interests of producers, Buñuel asserted that if the original title had been retained, the concurrence in the premiere and subsequent projections of the film would have been much greater, since the Spanish people would have attended knowing that they would appreciate a work well known and appreciated by them. All this, added to global results that did not satisfy the filmmaker, ends up configuring the poor impression that Buñuel had of this picture of his. It is curious to hear the character, Quintín complaining, "nothing comes out well", feeling almost like an echo, as an alter ego of the director, who probably felt during the shooting that many things did not actually come out, and we see the protagonist, he denies of his bitterness, in the midst of the joy of a party. At the end of the film, the filmmaker almost seems to want to shake off linearity, the behavior of the camera already takes on other outlooks, with an almost deformity of some shots shown, certainly a flashy performance, lukewarm but perennial in that street of singular structures, which, as unreasonable as it may sound, for a moment seemed to me to refer to an echo of expressionism. In that colophon sequence, the protagonist speaks to us, speaks to the camera, almost the filmmaker wants to leave the mold, it is as if, to some extent having lost the drama, when feeling simple the end, too easy, something simple, a slap almost is notticed, like if old Buñuel, the surrealist and uncontrollable, winked at us. Thus ends the so-called Buñuel's alimentary film, for some considered minor, but of course a work worthy of attention on the part of the immortal Aragonese.