Susana

This is a slight comedy-drama from Bunuel's Mexican phase, though the seductive, curvy and funny Rosita Quintana is certainly well-cast as an unscrupulous home-wrecker. The only ironic Bunuel touch I could spot was making the most Christian character also the most hateful and nasty; maybe viewers more experienced in the director's work will find more! **1/2 out of 4.

Susana (1951)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Bunuel's remake of the 1929 American film The Squall centers on Susana (Rosita Quintana), a mentally unstable woman, who escaped from a reformatory and gets shelter from a kind and caring family. Pretty soon Susana is turning on the sexuality and starts to make the family turn against one another. The original movie is perhaps the worst Hollywood film I've seen from that era so it didn't take too much for this movie to pace it up. With that said, I think overall this is a pretty disappointing film from the director but I'm really not sure if he could have done anything different to make it better. To me, this story just doesn't work because it's just so over dramatic that you can't help but role you eyes at all the "tragedy" that befalls the people around Susana. The only thing this movie tells you that men are dumb and can be changed due to a woman's sexuality. This really isn't too dramatic and in the end the movie begins to drag. Another problem I had with the film is that the characters were all pretty annoying and that includes the old aunt who is constantly screaming religious sayings. I'm not sure if Bunuel made her so over the top for laughs or if this was just his way to go against Christians. Even with all that said this is still a beautiful film to look at with some great cinematography. The performances are also good but I was expecting better considering the director. Quintana is great and really steals the film as she plays the innocent virgin to trick the family very well and on the blink of a dime she can turn into the slut. Fernando Soler is also very good as the head man of the home.

Susana is a fallen girl. At the beginning we see her in a reformatory, but the reasons that brought her there remain in the dark. We just find out that she has learned nothing new in the two years she has spent there and that she behaves in the same unruly and rebellious way like when she was first admitted to the place.

She is brought into a dark and sinister cave which is teeming with rats and spiders. We know nothing about the reasons for this punishment and we can't avoid feeling sorry for her: Whatever she might have done, it does not justify an inhuman treatment such as this.

Susana is religious, and the god she calls on is kind and generous. So the miracle happens, the bars of the prison cell at which she is rattling suddenly give way and she succeeds in escaping into a night full of darkness and relentless rain.

She even can make it into paradise: A landowner's family takes her in, after she has told them a pack of lies. She is allowed to work as a maid and gains the confidence and the affection of the mother, while the father at first has a disapproving attitude towards her.

But the family's son and the steward live on the estate, too, and they don't fail to notice Susana's outstanding physical attraction. As the girl also knows how to place her charms, they both fall victim to her.

Susana, however, does not seem capable of developing any true feelings. Life is just a villainous game for her in which the rules are set by herself. The aim is to destroy the well established order. When finally even the landowner succumbs to the lure of love the initial situation becomes reversed and nothing stays the same: the mother turns into an enraged enemy, while father and son become rivals and the steward is dismissed.

It is then the latter who sets the decisive ball rolling which leads once more to a reversal of the circumstances: He finally makes use of his knowledge of Susana's escape from the reformatory, which up to now he kept to himself in order to increase his chances of winning Susana's favor, and Susana, however fiercely she may be defending herself, cannot avoid being arrested.

The game is lost, and, as it often happens in a melodrama, it is the refused lover, who makes it break down. In the end, the episode with Susana means nothing more than the memory of a nightmare for the landowner's family. And, after the re-establishment of the initial situation, the characters cannot help asking themselves if everything has really happened.

The attentive spectator will come to a different conclusion. He will notice the fundamental fragility of an order that is well established only in appearance. And he will not be able to avoid drawing a frightful parallel to his own life, in which nothing is secure and reliable either.

Buñuel's fifth feature, a small-budgeted moral parable made in Mexico, almost exclusively confined in the hacienda of a middle-class rancher owner Don Guadalupe (Soler). In an unusual tempest night, a sultry young woman Susana (Quintana) escapes from a reformatory and winds up at his doorstep, she is taken in by the kind-hearted matriarch Doña Carmen (Palou), Guadalupe's wife, as a domestic help. But soon the seemingly perfect family will disintegrate from inside when Don Guadalupe, his adolescent son Alberto (Somoza) and the masculine ranch helper Jesús (Mendoza) are all attracted to Susana's sex appeal, only the God-fearing maid Felisa (Arcos) sees through her innocuous front, but who can save the family from the ultimate rupture in the climax? Only Buñuel's deus ex machina.

In fact, the movie itself is grounded on a surreal precondition, in the opening scenes, Susana is locked up in a solitary cell, she entreats God in front of a cross materialised by the shadows of the metal bars, to give her a way out since she can not change her nature, which is made by God himself, so God grants her wish, as if he wants to cast a prank on us, releases the snake into the Garden of Eden. The script runs formulaic-ally where three different types of men all become the victims of Susana's seduction, Rosita Quintana successful captures her carnal allure with crude histrionics, for the spunky Jesús, she is the unattainable wench who promises him something sweet but refuses his pushing courtship; for the bookish Alberto, she is a proactive seductress from whom he is too green to resist, and for the patrician Guadalupe, she becomes a damsel in distress, who inadvertently rekindles his sexual urge which a married middle-age man can no longer obtain from his wife. While men are succumbing to their primitive lust, after seeing through her veiled pretence, Carmen and Felisa strike up, only that would be too late if Buñuel had opted for a more sinister finale.

The happy ending is a policy of appeasement, even the mare miraculously regains its vitality, but the re-gained conformity and harmony appear so ironic thanks to Buñuel's poker-faced mockery - how simple a weed in the field can bring about moral corruption to a conventional middle-class family. SUSANA is a fetching microcosm of Buñuel's views on human frailties, unambitious, simple but integral and surprisingly gratifying.

In a stormy night, the sexy Susana (Rosita Quintana) escapes from the reformatory and reaches the ranch of Don Guadalupe (Fernando Soler), a family man that lives with his wife Dona Carmen (Matilde Palou) and their beloved son Alberto (Luis López Somoza). When they see Susana, Dona Carmen, who is Christian and Good Samaritan, gives shelter to the youngster that lies to them, but the old maid Felisa (María Gentil Arcos) is not convinced that she is telling the truth. The seductive Susana uses her beauty and sensuality to seduce Don Guadalupe, Alberto and the henchman Jesus (Víctor Manuel Mendoza) and destabilizing the family.

"Susana" is a melodramatic film by Buñuel with a simple story of a sexy woman that uses her body to seduce man and gets what she wants. The conclusion is moralist and conventional, but the film is good and Rosita Quintana is perfect for the role of Susana. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Susana"