el (w&d buñuel, w luis alcoriza)

Mexican Buñuel season, Cinemateca 3/6

El is the first of the Mexican films from this season which starts to feel like “Buñuel”. The dialogue-free opening five minutes set the scene. A priest washes the feet of a young member of the congregation. Francisco, a vigorous and wealthy middle aged man, surveys more feet, finally landing on those of the fetching Gloria and from that moment on it is amor fou, with Francisco determined to woo and steal Gloria from under the nose of his friend, which he does. What we don’t realise, and what seems in many ways a most modern approach, is that Francisco is an abuser, perpetrating both psychological and physical abuse on his new wife. The trajectory of this abuse is traced with subtlety, starting out as petty jealousy and then leading to violence and madness. The film is careful not to show Gloria as a victim; as is so often the case in abusive relationships, she is both hopeful that things will get better, and ground down, bit by bit, as they don’t. Buñuel and Alcoriza’s denouement doesn’t occur between Francisco and Gloria. Francisco follows a woman into a church, where he goes completely mad, with the madness conveyed from his point of view as he views the congregation mocking him, in his mind. This set piece scene is edited with comic glee. Other moments, such as when Francisco sits alone on his elaborate stairwell, contemplating killing Gloria with a stair rod, have real menace. There’s a wonderful final touch, when we revisit a supposedly cured Francisco in a monastery. Only the lie of the cure is given by the zig zag walk he adopts, which echoes the walk he made up the stairs when he set off to kill his wife. It’s one of those small details which give the film an added weight, and cleverly undercuts any pretence of a ‘happy ending.’

On imdb, someone claims that the cowled actor in this final sequence is actually Buñuel. It’s also worth noting that there are echoes of Vertigo in the bell tower scene, although this should be the other way round, as Vertigo was made in 5 years after El, and some claim Hitchcock stole/ was inspired by El. 

el gran calavera (d. buñuel, w. janet alcoriza, luis alcoriza, adolfo torrado)

Mexican Buñuel season, Cinemateca 1/6

Buñuel had to leave Spain after Franco’s defeat of the Republican forces. He went to Los Angeles for a bit, then headed to Mexico to direct Gran Casino, which was a flop. According to Wikipedia, he then spent three years surviving on money his mother sent him and was contemplating giving up filmmaking, before he got given a break when he was drafted in to direct El Gran Calavera, featuring the Mexican actor Fernando Soler. There’s nothing particularly surreal or Buñuelesque about El Gran Calavera, a moral comedy about a lazy, wealthy family whose paterfamilias, Ramiro, played by Soler, has turned into a drunk following the death of his wife. His family sponge off him, until he gets so drunk he nearly dies, and as a cure he is tricked into believing that he has lost his fortune and the family has been compelled to move into a poor neighbourhood. The moral fable is given a twist when he learns about the deceit and turns the tables on his family. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this film, over 70 years old, is how funny and engaging it is. The narration is taut, the storytelling is lean and the script is endowed with humour and moral complexity. These are comic characters, but they are also three dimensional. The vision of Mexican society is curious with the class divisions noted, but, the film contends, far from insuperable. It would be interesting to see if a contemporary remake would have any chance of being in any way plausible.