|
Ojeda Island, capital El Pao, such an isolated spot that even tourists avoid it, Luis Buñuel gives it a sharp-toothed study with unmistakable traces of Huston, Clouzot, and Franco's Spain. "Honor y Libertad" is the slogan of the unseen ruler represented by the brute in generalissimo cap (Miguel Ángel Ferriz), his stormy wife (María Félix) is at her most tantalizing sprawled on a couch post-scuffle, with hiked gown and bloodied lip. The assassin's bullet comes mid-speech, the townspeople's first action is to seize the slabs of beef that had been promised. One tyrant replaces another—the reactionary (Jean Servais) takes over the governor's throne and sets out to crush the idealist (Gérard Philipe), his rival for the widow's affections. A luxuriant touch of Robbe-Grillet suffuses Servais' office, with its foliage, birds, shutters and revolving shadows, a private jungle into which the heroine ventures to barter for her lover's life. "Had I been less brutal, I'd have never seen the woman you are," confides the debonair despot. "Is that a declaration of love?" (In the corrida behind them, the matador is gored but the bull is ultimately toppled.) Un Chien Andalou was a call to arms, three decades later Buñuel is more aware of the difficulties of revolution. Prisoners in the plantation, denial of water and breaks ("They rest, they think, they talk, then the trouble begins"), a professor in chains to remind the hero of original principles. The uprising is as inevitable as it is doomed, a matter of compromise in the grinding political machinery. Reversals of power in unchanging regimes, "we were all in this together, and we were killers." Rocha's overhaul in Terra em Transe leaves no stone unturned. With Victor Junco, Raúl Dantés, Roberto Cañedo, Luis Aceves Castañeda, and Andrés Soler. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |