Bunuel's Mexico

"Whether he uses the device of dream or poetry or cinematic
narrative, Bunuel the poet penetrates man's profoundest being and
reaches the most unexpressed, deep-lying areas of his inner self.
His hell. And his heaven...."
--Octavio Paz

Luis Bunuel's reputation as an important and daring filmmaker was first established in France with Un Chien Andalou (1928)and L'Age d'Or (1930), as well as the Spanish documentary film Las Hurdes (1932). In these three early works, Bunuel's social and political concerns were already evident along with his surrealist convictions. For Bunuel, the difference between the surrealistic experimentation of Un Chien Andalou and the stark realism of Las Hurdes was only a matter of a slight shift in perception. Often, his surrealism was used to express a scathing sense of social criticism. In turn, his more realistic productions contained a striking sense of the dream-like nature of reality.

This unique quality of Bunuel's cinema is especially evident in the films which he made in Mexico during the 1950s. Virtually all of his Mexican films were made as "commercial" productions, ranging from light comedies to musicals to melodramas. Within the context of the commercial cinema, however, Bunuel was able to interject his own personal vision. With a combination of artistic skill and subversive charm, Bunuel created some of his most provocative films.

Two examples of Bunuel's ability to undermine a film's narrative context can be found in The Illusion Travels by Streetcar (1953) and El Bruto (1952). The Illusion Travels by Streetcar is intended to be a picaresque comedy in which a junked streetcar becomes the central stage for a minor gesture of working class rebellion. The theft of the streetcar results in the creation of an extended feeling of community among the workers who travel on the car, and a sense of disturbance among the wealthy. The slight joke of The Illusion Travels by Streetcar allowed Bunuel to fashion a satiric presentation in which the streetcar becomes a microcosm of class-consciousness and anarchistic impulses.

The melodramatic conventions of El Bruto are subverted by Bunuel into a covert form of political criticism and a very overt expression of destructive sexuality. The principal character in El Bruto is largely incapable of understanding his role within a system of oppression until he himself becomes a murderous agent in the system's employ. His progression from butcher in a slaughter­house to hired assassin for a landlord is presented as a logical step in a brutal social order.

El Bruto's class awareness is raised, marginally, by the love he feels for a rent striker's daughter, but the more chaotic force of sexual desire finally consumes him. While the pure love he feels for one woman causes him to reassess his previous actions, he cannot cope with the seductive gestures of his employer's wife which, literally, reduce him to barking like a dog.

In both El Bruto and Los Olvidados (1950), Bunuel explores the condition of people who live on the lower rungs of the social ladder. The children who live in the slum presented in Los Olvidados exist within an environment in which the moral notions of good and evil have, for all practical purpose, no meaning. The innocence of Pedro, one of the film's main characters, renders him weak as opposed to the stronger, more corrupt figure of Jaibo. The horrific conditions of the slum world depicted by Bunuel essentially negates any and all moral possibilities.

The severe pessimism of Los Olvidados is balanced by the more dialectical structure of The River and Death (1955). The film's narrative is concerned with the irrational force of an ongoing blood feud and the need to overcome such impulses with reason and humanity. The village community of The River and Death is near feudalistic in its customs and behavior and Bunuel is not unduly optimistic. The pattern of reconciliation which forms in The River and Death is achieved only after a protracted process of systematic slaughter.

Bunuel once stated that "In the hands of a free spirit the cinema is a magnificent and dangerous weapon." During his Mexican period, Bunuel worked within the confines of commercial concerns and budgetary limitations. In spite of this, he produced a series of works which are unique in the cinema. He remained, most defiantly, a free spirit.