16TH BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
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From 2–12 August 2007, the 16th Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF) showcased a varied and exciting program of films in all genres including features, documentaries, shorts, animation, experimental work, children’s films and more. For program details, including screenings at the Australian Cinémathèque, see the 16th Brisbane International Film Festival program. |
Buñuel in Mexico
The 16th Brisbane International Film Festival and the Australian Cinémathèque present Buñuel in Mexico in association with the Embassy of Mexico in Australia. The father of cinematic Surrealism, Luis Buñuel (1900–83) is inextricably linked to the development of cinema in Mexico, where he directed some of his most acclaimed works.
After escaping Fascism in his native Spain, Buñuel struggled in exile in New York. Eventually finding work in the Mexican film industry, Buñuel’s breakthrough came with his crafting of Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) 1950. This brutally candid story of Mexican street urchins attracted international attention and won Buñuel the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Buñuel continued his work in Mexico making some 20 films, many of which are popular in genre yet still evidence Buñuel’s unique mix of Surrealism and satire. Subsequently directing a series of highly regarded Spanish and French co-productions, Buñuel remains one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema.
Films are listed in order of date and time of screening.
Seminar
Buñuel in Mexico
3.00pm Sunday 12 August / Cinema B, free
Francisco Gaytán Fdez, from the Filmoteca de la UNAM, Mexico, will present a seminar on Buñuel's Mexican films.
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The Young and the Damned (Los Olvidados) 1950 Ages 18+ |
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Simon of the Desert (Simón del Desierto) 1965 Ages 18+ 12.30pm Saturday 4 August / Cinema B, ticketed 35MM, 42 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: PRODUCCIONES GUSTAVO ALATRISTE / PRINT SOURCE: SHARMILL FILMS / RIGHTS: MERCURY VIDEO Simon of the Desert starts much as Buñuel's earlier Nazarín 1958, as a comedy of contrasts between the high idealism of the pole-sitting mystic (based on the fourth-century Syrian mystic Simeon the Stylite) and the low moral disinhibition that passes at his feet. Simon is like Nazario (or maybe Fernando Rey's character in That Obscure Object of Desire 1977: he has a clear insight into himself and human nature, and heaven and hell, but is finding that social habits are stronger than human conviction. At least, that might have been Buñuel's point. For, as the devil — in the comely shape of Silvia Pinal — breaks out the arch-surrealist pranks familiar from later Buñuelian cinema, the director almost seems to become bored with Simon and old narrative constraints. With the film truncated after less than an hour (essentially the project ran out of money), Buñuel suddenly uses the devil's frequent flyer points to joyride his protagonist into a 1960s New York beat bar. And perhaps into the next era of his filmography, too. QT |
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Él (This Strange Passion) 1952 Ages 18+ 3.00pm Saturday 4 August / Cinema B, ticketed 35MM, 92 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: PRODUCCIONES TEPEYAC / PRINT SOURCE: MEXICAN MINISTRY / RIGHTS: PELICULAS Y VIDEOS INTERNACIONALES Unlike Archibaldo's namesake, Don Francisco is a good bourgeois — a church warden with no apparent peccadillos. But Él's scandalous opening suggests a subterranean inner life, unleashed by a disturbingly erotic zoom onto the bishop kissing the naked feet of choirboys. From there, Francisco — already slipping into a litigious paranoia — is easily distracted by the shapely ankle of the object of his desire. The naïve Signorina Gloria succumbs to Francisco's public charms. Naturally, everyone is pleased, from her mother to the local priest. But marriage uncorks the infantile and controlling tantrums of a man with an impatient, paranoid, and frustrated id, as the Don becomes increasingly convinced that other men are trying to steal his wife. This is Buñuel's most Hitchcockian film — a tribute to the vulgar Freudianism of Hitchcock's mid-career Hollywood films (such as Suspicion 1941) that escalates through architectonic motifs, baroque staircases, and a 'poetry' of paranoia. QT |
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Illusion Travels by Streetcar (La Ilusión Viaja en Tranvía) 1953 Ages 18+ 12.45pm Sunday 5 August / Cinema A, ticketed 35MM, 82 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: CLASA FILMS / PRINT SOURCE: MEXICAN MINISTRY / RIGHTS: TELEVISA Here, more than anywhere, the richest pleasures of Buñuel's Mexican cinema can be felt. In this Quixotic allegory, two drunken tram workers steal their battered tram and then find that attempts to return to their car are the biggest hangover of all. As always in Buñuel's films, there is no sentiment about the often 'revolting' qualities of the peasants. But there is picaresque delight in their earthy capacity to collectively 'find' the surrealist in the quotidian — most richly when the tram becomes a banquet of offal and a carnival of slaughterhouse labourers, a hanging cow's head tipping off the top hat of a gallant but intoxicated free rider. This is perhaps Buñuel's humblest story, sharing with his slightly earlier Mexican Bus Ride 1951 a delight in the widescreen view of Mexican society. One has the suspicion that the Genesis tableau that Buñuel presents early in the film is the most essential representation of the director's cosmology: a comic–skeptical world view of papier-mâché and Manchurianism. QT |
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Wuthering Heights (Abismos de Pasión) 1953 Ages 18+ 3.00pm Sunday 5 August / Cinema A, ticketed 35MM, 91 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: PRODUCCIONES TEPEYAC / PRINT SOURCE: MILESTONE FILMS / RIGHTS: PELICULAS Y VIDEO INTERNACIONALES Wuthering Heights seems at first to be firmly in Mexican cinema's ranchera genre, like a south of the border genre rebadge of Jezebel 1938 or Gone with the Wind 1939. That is, until its darkly, sadistically handsome hero Alejandro whispers 'Catalina'. Thus, literature's most familiar codeword for romantic yearning suddenly unlocks the film's artistic derivations and Buñuel's intent. Like Robinson Crusoe which Buñuel had previously brought to the screen in 1952 — Emily Brontë's famously death- and sex-infused Gothic novel was a favourite of the surrealist's artistic circle in the 1920s, and its adaptation, a long held ambition of the director. Realised within the constraints of Mexican genre cinema, the film may not have been quite the symbolist romance that Buñuel apparently intended, the director later stating his disappointment with the actors' distracting touches of Mexican cinema star power. But in some ways, it is all the richer, and perhaps more fantastic, for having this Latinised, pop novella undercurrent — all that tabloid desire, sadism and machismo swelling below its historical costume drama surfaces. QT |
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The River and Death (El Río y la Muerte) 1954 Ages 18+ 6.00pm Wednesday 8 August / Cinema A, ticketed 35MM, 93 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: CLASA FILMS / PRINT SOURCE: FILMOTECA DE LA UNAM / RIGHTS: TELEVISA Those familiar with Buñuel's memoir, Mi Último Suspiro (My Last Sigh) 1982, may remember his fascination with Mexico's gun culture. Unsurprisingly, his funniest Mexican film is a mock Western in which, as film critic Raymond Durgnat said, 'the hands of the village clock point eternally to high noon'. The Anguianos and the Menchacas are Mexican Hatfields and McCoys, locked in a mutually assured cycle of destruction in a village where an iron lung is no obstacle to an assassin and even the local priest is packing. The premise is a familiar one from Buñuel's Mexican films: a rational, urbanised descendant of one family is drawn back into quicksand-like irrationality. At first, Buñuel tries to make out that the film is like Los Olvidados 1950, in that 'most of the events that are told in the film are authentic . . . an interesting look at this particular aspect of Mexican customs'. But don't be fooled: here, more than anywhere else in Buñuel's Mexico, all human behaviours are 'realistic'. That is, any stupidity is possible. QT |
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The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de un Crimen) 1955 Ages 18+ |
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Nazarín 1958 Ages 18+ 35MM, 94 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: PRODUCCIONES BARBACHANO PONCE / PRINT SOURCE: FILMOTECA DE LA UNAM / RIGHTS: TELEVISA Father Nazario practises his own brand of liberation theology in a familiar Buñuelian milieu of beggars and prostitutes, venal insight and stupidity. He cheerfully turns the other check and gives away what little he accumulates. This intransigent idealism runs him foul of church and state, forcing him onto the road with his own Martha and Mary — a melancholic ingenue and the bawdy ex-prostitute who got him into trouble in the first place. But his attempts to live the life of Jesus increasingly magnify contradictions of social justice, moral values, and even the point of life over death. Buñuel's second Cannes winner of the 1950s is a cunning theological treatise that contradicted everyone: Buñuel's anti-clerical allies in Surrealism and the left; the Roman Catholic Church, which acclaimed the film; even the Spanish government, fooled into thinking it was a sign of reconciliation with Francoism. Only Nazario makes sense — as a fool and one of the director's most admirable characters. Only Christ knows — and he gets to have the last laugh.QT |
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Fever Mounts at El Pao (La Fièvre Monte à El Pao) 1959 Ages 18+ 35MM, 99 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE–MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANIES: GROUPE DES QUATRES, FILMEX / PRINT SOURCE: PATHÉ PICTURES INTERNATIONAL / RIGHTS: PATHÉ INTERNATIONAL This French–Mexican co-production is a still topical exploration of Fascism and personal ethics, set in a nameless Latin-American republic under military rule. An idealistic young man tries to use his position as head of the political prison to effect reform from within, but through a series of concessions ends up supporting the establishment. The film was criticised for its flaws of construction but Buñuel's uncompromising, radical intelligence reveals itself. William K Everson notes: 'It has an existentialist quality in its writing and construction. The right things happen for the wrong reasons — and vice versa — and there is no escaping one's destiny'. A wan Gérard Philipe in his last screen appearance is fitting for the character of a non-violent reformer who, as critic Ado Kyrou put it, 'does not realize that his idiotic idealism is the dictatorship's strongest guarantee'. María Félix shows why she was known to her fans as 'the man-eater'. Her over-the-top eroticism is Buñuelian by definition. |
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The Young One (La Joven) 1960 Ages 18+ 35MM, 95 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, ENGLISH / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: PRODUCCIONES OLMECA / PRINT SOURCE: MILESTONE FILMS / RIGHTS: MEDIA PRO Buñuel's sole English-language film, made on the eve of his return to Spain, is a peculiar portrait of American Southern racism that at first resembles a Hollywood effort; by the end, it's pure (though not vintage) Buñuel. A black jazzman, Travers (Bernie Hamilton), on the run from a false rape charge, finds himself on a Carolina island, trapped in a hunting refuge run by Miller (Zachary Scott). The outsider warily observes the strange rites of the 'white trash'. Miller's handyman has died, leaving his naïve teenage granddaughter, Evvie, in the care of the lonely, lecherous game warden until the local clergy can take her in. The preacher comes (in the fascinating form of Buñuel regular Claudio Brook), but not soon enough. The Young One is a warm-up for Buñuel's next film, Viridiana 1961, meaning that this passion play of guilt and expiation plies no piety with regard to racism or statutory rape. Harking back to Simon of the Desert 1965, The Young One leaves us scratching our collective head as innocent Evvie clicks her new high heels. |
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The Exterminating Angel (El Ángel Exterminador) 1962 Ages 18+ 35MM, 93 MINS, B. & W., MONO, MEXICO, SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: LUIS BUÑUEL / PRODUCTION COMPANY: PRODUCCIONES GUSTAVO ALATRISTE / PRINT SOURCE: SHARMILL FILMS / RIGHTS: MERCURY VIDEO Buñuel's penultimate Mexican film is a definitive return to the Surrealism of L'Âge d'Or 1929 while also looking forward to his seven collaborations with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, especially to Angel's companion, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 1972. In the later film, the bourgeois ensemble is mysteriously unable to finish the meal for which they have gathered; in Angel, the upper-class guests assembled for a post-opera supper party are overtaken by an inexplicable compulsion and find themselves unable to leave — nor can anyone from outside enter. The difference between the Surrealism of his later films and that of Buñuel's initial collaborations with Salvador Dalí is that Buñuel tantalises the viewer with the thread of a plot even as he denies cause and effect logic with a series of repetitions, non sequiturs and hallucinations. His insistence that there are no symbols to point towards explanation opens the blackly comic events depicted to many meanings. As Buñuel himself insisted, life itself is enigmatic and incongruous.
Anne Démy-Geroe (AD-G), Executive Director, Brisbane International Film Festival |
