Saura’s early film belongs to a template which was already well established (Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and has continued to thrive (Deliverance, En El Pozo). A group of men head out to the wilderness where they will come face to face with their own savagery. The four men in question are three old friends and one of of their sons, who are going into deep Spain to hunt rabbits. The tensions within the group are soon established with the usual problems of masculinity rearing their head. The hunting sequences are surprisingly brutal. It doesn’t look as though the famous card: No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of this Film could be employed here. Saura presents the hunt as raw in tooth and blood with a strikingly edited sequence that has a percussive violence. Later, another sequence where a ferret is sent down a rabbit hole to join the hunt adds a layer that is almost horror, with the terror of the rabbits captured through sound and edit. Another element that is added is that many of the rabbits are sick with myxomatosis, meaning that the very hunt is both devalued and the rabbits that are caught are diseased. At one point, one of the men, Paco, shows another his secret cave, where the skeleton of a dead soldier lurks, and earlier in the film there is a throwaway remark about how this area was a killing field in the Spanish Civil War. Which is clearly the film’s subliminal agenda. Saura wants to confront the violence that underpins Franco’s civilised Spain. He does it with an unflinching commitment to display this violence, and it is highly effective. The finale as the protagonists finally flip and take each other out, is perhaps predictable, but the bloodied image of Luis is like something straight out of a horror movie - or a civil war.
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