Cast:
Gaston Modot (The Man), Lya Lys (Young Girl), Caridad de Laberdesque (Chambermaid and Little Girl), Max Ernst (Leader of men in cottage), Josep Llorens Artigas (Governor), Lionel Salem (Duke of Blangis), Germaine Noizet (Marquise), Duchange (Conductor), and Valentine Penrose (Spirit) Directed by Luis Buñuel (#1383 - Él and #1723 - Los Olvidados)
Review:
I'm sure you are familiar with Un Chien Andalou (1929), the debut of Luis Bunuel to cinema in a collaboration with Salvador Dali. It was a short movie, lasting under thirty minutes that has endured in its imagery. They had met at the University of Madrid in 1917 while Bunuel was studying philosophy. They had a friendship filled with contentious arguments and creativity, which sprinkled heavily onto filmmaking. The earlier film for example, featured a scene of ants swarming around hands and a sliced eye because each had dreamt it, so as a film of surrealist principles without aiming for rational explanation, this makes considerable sense. One year later, Bunuel would have his feature debut with this film (translates to The Golden Age), albeit one that is just 63 minutes that is presented with title cards to tell elements of the story despite having sound (with French dialogue present). The film had attracted attention that led to a commissioned new project from the de Noailles family (Charles and Marie-Laurie). They owned a private cinema and would end up helping to fund other filmmakers with certain interests such as Man Ray. Bunuel would also serve as editor and co-writer of the music with Georges van Parys; every bit of footage shot by Bunuel made it into the film, which he shot sequentially. The resulting film (which grew from an idea of a short to a feature) damaged a friendship, led to a French far-right group throwing ink on the screen, and a critic calling the film one that dragged "country, family, and religion" into the mud. While there would be private exhibitions in subsequent years, distribution and public exhibition of the feature would not happen again until the late 1970s, since the de Noailles family withdrew it in light of the condemnations.
Dali and Bunuel had a falling out due to growing ideological disagreements - Dali later stated he was always an "anarchist and monarchist" while once angering Bunuel when he called him a "Communist and an atheist" in a book when Bunuel was in America. But hey, each became noted names in certain fields of film and art, things happen. Describing what happens in various moments seems redundant, but let's give it a try: scorpions, people sucking on fingers, an end sequence called "120 days of depraved acts" (referring to a famous work) that features someone with a long beard and white robe that resembles a certain figure, people writhing in the mud, people on fire that no one pays attention to, a blind man getting knocked over...you get the idea, I think. Of the noted five names in the cast, Modot and Lys were the only professional actors, while Penrose was a poet/author, Ernst was a painter/poet, and Artigas was a ceramic artist. The folks in the film generally work well with the flow of images because one doesn't need to say too much to portray hypocrisy and frustration. The film moves like a scorpion with frenzied movements in its vignettes before reaching the end with clear-tipped poison that will strike whoever dares to go in without a clear mind. It strikes the bourgeois hypocrisies that Bunuel saw in his times that still seem apparent now that can really be construed to one sentence: screw the rules. I welcome the boldness to yearn to engage in that primal desire to consummate without the thoughts of the church or society-at-large to act as a supposed moral guardian. Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder, whether one is horny or really, really hates the insanities of modern life. I think it works out pretty well in general interest, one with striking power after many decades without becoming an insult to one's patience. It provokes and examines things without preaching to you, and it is mostly effective in its pacing and presentation of imagery. Bunuel made one further film in the decade with the ethnofiction work Land Without Bread [Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan] before his hiatus, but the best was still to come for him. The fact that one could find this film on the Internet (along with the earlier short) means one could have an interesting time if one is looking for something in the realm of the surreal.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment