Dali
In 1939, the Spanish Civil War ended and the dictator Franco came to power. The film director Louise Buñuel, who was working at the Spanish embassy in France at the time, was on a business trip in the United States and decided to stay in the United States and not return to Spain under the military dictatorship.
He finally found a job in charge of films at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but he lost his job because of a sentence in a book by his middle school classmate and painter Dali. Here's the thing, the painter Salvador Dali revealed in the book "Dali's Mysterious Career" that his old friend Buñuel was an atheist, at that time in the United States, the position of atheists was worse than that of the Communist Party, Buñuel Resigned under pressure. Two years later, in 1946, he went to Mexico and lived there for 36 years.
Buñuel's Mexican Life
Buñuel made a total of 20 films while in Mexico. Most are low-budget, short-run, mixed-actor movies of varying quality. No way, if he wants to make a living, he has to adapt to new themes and environments. Sometimes he didn't have a job for a year or two, so he had to rely on his mother's aid to support the family. But Buñuel has his bottom line, saying[1]: "I have never made a single film that compromised my personal moral beliefs and places.
The preciousness of Buñuel's films during this period is that they analyze various aspects of Mexican society from the perspective of a Spaniard, such as the Mexicans' serious national inferiority complex and their obsession with death. Buñuel's film "River and Death" is a murder story based on real events. When the film was shown in theaters, whenever someone in the film was killed for no reason, the audience always cheered! Later, Buñuel slowly understood: "This phenomenon reflects some cultural spirits in Latin America, especially in Colombia, where they believe that human life is worthless. No matter what the reason, everyone has the possibility of losing their lives at any time. , maybe look at people more when walking on the road, or some people feel 'itchy hands and want to kill', many people lost their lives inexplicably like this. People in Europe are always shocked when they open Mexican newspapers every day, every page It is full of reports of all kinds of violent crimes.”[2] Another example is the death of Mexicans, especially for men who advocate vanity and dignity. reaction, so they worship guns.
In "Subida al cielo" (Subida al cielo), shot in 1952, we see Mexicans who like to pick quarrels and stir up trouble and are inseparable from guns. In the film, the driver has a gun in his waist, and the senator pulls out the gun at every turn to threaten others, and people are used to this scene. According to Buñuel’s recollection, at that time, Mexican directors had to carry guns for filming, musicians had to carry guns when they played music, and they had to carry guns for gatherings of friends.
As early as 1952, when American road films had not yet appeared, the overall structure of "Mexican Bus Adventure" (a personal favorite) was a road film. In a remote seaside town in Mexico, a young couple was about to have a wedding. At this point the groom learns that his mother is about to die and his brothers are calculating their fortunes. The groom then quietly got on the bus to the city to retrieve his mother's will. Along the way, the bus travels through steep, foggy mountains, stopping from time to time for a birthday party, funeral, election parade, etc., and a sexy and beautiful girl who constantly seduces the groom. Finally, when the bus was driving hard to the edge of the cliff, and the lightning was thundering, the anxious young man couldn't help but tempt the girl into his arms, only to find out that he was just the girl's prey. Of course, Buñuel's recognized masterpiece during his Mexican period was Los Olvidados (1950), inspired by De Sica's "Shoeshine Boys", which was released at the 4th Cannes Film Festival in 1952. Won the Best Director Award.
Buñuel in Mexico
The pain of "skinning" caused by "The Forgotten People"
The Forgotten People, which first opened in France, elicited two very different reactions to the film, which Buñuel had not expected. Film historian Sadur told him that his Communist friends asked him not to write any reviews for the film because it was too "middle-class". But when the Soviet director Pudovkin praised the film, the French Communist friends immediately turned the wheel.
It was even more interesting when the film was released in Mexico. Buñuel found that many spectators came out of the cinema with "faces that look like they're coming back from a funeral after their parents have died." Mexicans, including the Mexican ambassador to France, believe the film stigmatizes their country. Some of Buñuel's Mexican friends watched the film, some refused to speak to him, others scolded him, saying he had insulted the country. Attacks and abuse came from all directions, the newspapers and magazines also criticized him, and many organizations, including the Workers' Union, even advocated the deportation of Buñuel. [3] So the film had to be taken offline three days after its release.
The only person who praised the film was the Mexican writer Octavio Paz, who later (1990) won the Nobel Prize for Literature. No wonder Paz would say that Mexicans "live as skinned: everything hurts them, who says what or who doubts who said what". [4] However, when the film was screened again in Mexico after winning the Cannes Film Festival, it was screened for two consecutive months and the venue was full.
When you see this movie, you know that the so-called hunger aesthetics is not a metaphor, but a fact. We saw that Mexico in 1950 was already a metropolis full of high-rise buildings and crowded with traffic, but in the poor streets and slums, the curse of poverty controlled the fate of people. These are the people who see only tomorrow, a life comes quietly, is abandoned at will, and soon there is no tomorrow. Sadly, as the opening credits say, this isn't a story, it's a real thing. To make the film, Buñuel traveled through all the slums in Mexico City and did extensive documentation. Writing in Mexico's Nuevo Cine (New Cinema) magazine, Buñuel said: "My story is based entirely on true events. I want to expose the plight of the poor because I hate films that sweeten the romance of poverty. "
"The gangsters" in Mexico City
When talking about the national character of Mexicans, the Mexican writer Samuel Ramos mentioned that "pelado" is the most basic and complete expression of Mexican national character. He said that the "gangster" has nothing more than the proletariat economically; intellectually, it is a primitive creature; psychologically, it is extremely inferior, so it is aggressive, vulgar, and seemingly masculine. Although Ramos said that the "gangster" is "the most despicable social animal, representing the human scum of the big city" [5]. But when I saw a few punks in the movie "The Forgotten People", I couldn't bear to add words like "despicable" and "scum" to these children. They are just a group of helpless "servant street" teenagers. That's right, Cantonese "servant street" represents all their experiences: poor guy, falling over and over, corpse on the street.
The film begins with a voice-over: "New York, Paris, London, these modern big cities, behind their magnificent high-rise buildings hide many slums, where countless malnourished, underserved, and without schools to go to. the children of the world, a breeding ground for future criminals. The modern metropolis of Mexico City is no exception…”
We saw New York floating like a mirage on the sea, Paris Eiffel Tower soaring, orderly London, and then Mexico City from above, and the National Palace (aka Zocalo) shot through Syntagma Square. The square, which was originally the palace of the Aztec emperor Motezoma II in the 16th century, was later converted into the presidential palace of Mexico) and the largest Catholic church in Latin America - the Catedral Metropolitana. But Buñuel knows very well that the place that represents the truth of a city is not a square, but a garbage dump, not the presidential palace, but a slum. A superimposed painting, and the camera turns to a group of homeless, dirty and hungry children in a poor street, they are the protagonists of the film.
fatherless son
The protagonists of the film are a group of homeless children: the dark-faced bad boy Jabba Wang, the Indian child "Little Eye" who was just abandoned by his father, Pedro, who was kicked out of the house by his mother, and Julian, who was later beaten to death by Jabba. . The person who best fits what Ramos calls "the scumbag" is Jabba. "Bad boy" Jabba has been without parents since he was a child. In order to survive, he cheated and bullied the weak. He killed Julian, ruined Pedro's new life, and finally killed Pedro. But judging by his affection for Pedro's mother, he was desperate for a mother.
Except for Pedro, who has a home, the rest of the children have nothing and no one to take care of. Although Pedro has a family, but only his mother has no father. The mother gave birth to Pedro at the age of 14. Her husband died 5 years ago. She has to support 4 children by herself, so she doesn't care about Pedro. , get angry and drive away.
And when the little Indian boy "Little Eyes" dressed in "poncho" appeared in the movie, he was covered in tears. He had just arrived in Mexico City from the countryside and was sitting in the corner of the street waiting for his father, but his father Never appeared again, and he too became an outcast. The work done by "Little Eyes" includes: pushing the merry-go-round, being an assistant to the Braille singer, etc. He met a father who was mistakenly thought to adopt him - a blind wandering entertainer. In the film, he was a victim, but his irritability with "little eyes" and his indecent assault on girls, let us see his In truth, it turns out that this is a veritable "gangster".
Ironically, the only father on the show, Julian's, is an alcoholic who is not a nurturer, but someone who is looked after by his son. In the film, we see children who go out to work at a young age. They wander the streets, robbing for a bite of food and a cigarette. Children who have been abandoned by their families and society, such as Jabba who is growing up, and wanderers who are about to grow up to be Jabba, their only hope and belief is the amulet made of the dead tooth around their necks.
It is shocking to see the indifference of the children, seeing their own sisters being insulted and indifferent, seeing their friends beat each other and shouting hello. An honest and diligent person, in such an environment, has no way out. Julian was beaten to death, and Pedro, who was an apprentice in a blacksmith shop, was framed for stealing a knife and entered the juvenile correctional center, and was killed by his companions.
a slum dog
Coming to Mexico, Buñuel's surrealism has completely turned into realism, peaceful yet sharp, critical yet empathetic. However, in the dreamland of the film, we see Buñuel's surreal blood again.
After Pedro learned that Julian died, he had a dream. In the high-speed photography, a chicken slowly fell from the sky, Pedro's mother slowly got up, Pedro saw the dead Julian on his bed, head Bleeding and laughing, the mother in the dream changed her past indifference, and was as gentle and loving as the Virgin, hugging him, comforting him, and holding a large piece of raw meat dripping with blood and handing it to the hungry Pedro, at this time, Zhu said. Li An also stretched out a hand from under the bed to snatch the raw meat from him. The longing for love, the savagery of existence, the fear of starvation, and the threat of death are all in this dream. It is no longer the surreal dream of "umbrella and sewing machine meet on the operating table", but the naked reality of the encounter between a corpse and a teenager in a slum.
The tragedies in the slums are repeated over and over again: underage girls give birth to children who do not know who their fathers are, and she cannot support or love her children. Children grow up, poverty leads to hunger, hunger breeds violence, and violence keeps them out of opportunities to go to jail or become powerful bad guys, until they finally die unexpectedly and tragically. "According to the statistics of the Women's Commission of the State of Mexico after 2000, there are about 27,000 "teenage mothers" aged 14-19 in the state. These "teenage mothers" have poor families and are too busy to take care of themselves. They also have to take care of their children, which aggravates poverty. vicious circle." ("Guo Cunhai: The Origin and Transformation of Latin American Slums")
In the dark night at the end of the film, a mother is looking for her child, one child kills another with a stolen knife, a blind man reports to the police, the police kill the escaped murderer Jabba, the kind and timid people put the Pedro's body was thrown into the trash. Jabba's inner monologue before his death was: "I'm falling into a hole, I'm alone, very lonely..." After Jabba's death, the blind man said: One more missing. Just like that, let them all die. I wish they were all killed before they were born! (I hope they'll kill every one of them before they born!)
French film studies expert Georges Sadour pointed out: "This film is a cry of horror, but also a cry of pity, full of tenderness under a cold exterior, it is a heart-wrenching look at the suffering of abandoned children. Shocking testimony."[6]
[1] Buñuel: "My Last Breath, Autobiography of Buñuel", Guangxi Normal University Press, 2003 edition, p. 165.
[2] Bunuel: "My Last Breath, Autobiography of Bunuel", Guangxi Normal University Press, 2003 edition, p. 171.
[3] Bunuel: "My Last Breath, Autobiography of Bunuel", Guangxi Normal University Press, 2003 Edition, pp. 167-168.
[4] Paz: The Lonely Labyrinth, Beijing Yanshan Publishing House, 2014, p. 20.
[5] Samuel Ramos: "Masks and Utopia", Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2020 edition, p. 40.
[6] [French] George Sadur: "World Film History", China Film Publishing House, 1995 edition, p. 523. Mexico
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