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.

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.