Les Aventures de Robinson Crusoé

As someone who is not a great admirer of surrealism in any of its forms, and who found works like Le Chien Andalou or The Obscure Object of Desire gratuitously disturbing or pretensious respectively, I was delighted to come across this beautifully sensitive telling of the Robinson Crusoe story. A story not only of survival but also of friendship it is told with great feeling and warmth.

A fine adaptation about a man struggles to survive after being shipwrecked on a deserted island . Stars Daniel O'Hearlihy : Robinson Crusoe who travels from Great Britain on a ship and subsequently stranded on a far island , telling the well-known story of how a Brit becomes stranded on a desert location . As Robinson journeys from England aboard a ship, then wreckage happens and Crusoe washes at a mysterious island . Left to fend for himself, Crusoe seeks out a tentative survival on the island , until he meets a native who nicknames as Friday (Jaime Fernández) , he is a cannibal tribesman whom Robinson saves from being killed . Initially, Crusoe is thrilled to finally have a friend , but he has to defend himself against the tribe who uses the island to sacrifice by cannibaling practices to their gods . Over time, their relationship changes from master-slave to a mutual respected friendship despite their difference in culture and religion . Robinson Crusoe Lives!

Attractive recounting about the classy castaway novel with the loner Robinson who but after months sailing , a storm wrecks his ship . Based on the novel written in 1719, this is said to be an interesting period drama about loneliness , set in the 18th century in which the loner Robinson ends up as only survivor on a desolate island , then he meets his pal Friday , retelling their adventures and misfortunes . While sticking some incidents close to original tale , others are utterly fictious . Being narrated under his point of view . The picture has nothing to do with the classic original by Daniel Defoe , taking freely parts here and there . The movie relies heavily on the relationship between Robinson and Friday , charting the peculiar treatment the native receives of the civilized man ; as Robinson teaches English language to the escaped native until some invader pirates spoil the fun . Starring Dan O'Herlihy gives a decent acting as the distressed castaway who after a fierce ocean storm wrecks his ship he is stranded and living by himself on an uncharted island while tries to civilize the proud native Friday well played by Jaime Fernandez .

The picture was compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This is a Buñuel's strange film to his ordinary works , that's why it doesn't contains surrealist scenes , nor dreaming images , but a simple and classic narration , as it belongs to his second period developed in Mexico . Born in Calanda , Aragon (1900) , Buñuel subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there , where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca . After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí , he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) , and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and abstract plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons , he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930) , which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes , themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War , where he made ¨Las Hurdes Tierra sin pan¨, as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . After that, he went on his Mexican period in which he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950) , winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival . But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz" , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . Most of them being produced by Oscar Dancigers who also financed him Robinson Crusoe . After returning his native country, Spain, by making ¨Viridiana¨ this film was prohibited on the grounds of blasphemy as well as ¨The milky way¨ or ¨Via Lactea¨ , both of them were strongly prohibited by Spanish censorship . This French-Spanish final period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films such as ¨Viridiana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and ¨Belle De Jour¨. His last one was the notorious ¨That obscure object of desire¨ (1977) .

Other retellings of this prestigious novel ¨Robinson Crusoe¨are the following ones : silent version 1927 narrated by Don Carney . Mr Robinson Crusoe 1932 with Douglas Fairbanks . Robinson Crusoe of mystery island 1936 by Max Wright .Sci-fi interpretation of Defoe classic titled Robinson Crusoe on Mars , 1964 , by Byron Haskin with Adam West . Robinson Crusoe 1970 by director: René Cardona Jr. with Hugo Stigliz . British rendition titled Man Friday 1975 by Jack Gold with Peter 0'Toole , Richard Roundtree . Robinson Crusoe and the Tiger 1972 by Rene Cardona with Hugo Stiglitz . Castaway by Nicolas Roeg with Oliver Reed . Robinson Crusoe TV series (2008-2009) with Philip Winchester as Crusoe , Tongayi Chirisa as Friday and Sam Neill.

For viewers who might be most familiar with Luis Bunuel's work in surreal films such as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, his approach here might be surprising. It's a mostly straightforward retelling of the Defoe story, although with a few dream-like touches. Bunuel was in exile from Spain and facing McCarthyism in the U.S. when he made this film (his first in English and his first in color), making the Crusoe metaphor a very personal one. So it's his personal reinterpretation, and has lots to offer regarding man's relationship with God, and his views on morality.

This film has been almost impossible to see for a very long time, but in May 2004, VCI Entertainment announced a deal to distribute it. It's well worth your time, whether you're a student of Bunuel or Defoe, or just a student of the important questions of life.

On 30 September 1659, the ship of the aristocratic British Robinson Crusoe (Daniel O'Herlihy) sinks and he miraculously survives in a deserted island somewhere in South America. He retrieves the dog Rex and the cat Sam, together with some supplies, weapons, clothes and tools from the shipwreck; builds a shelter; and learns how to survive, cooking, farming, harvesting the crop and gathering a cattle. Then the loneliness disturbs him, especially after the loss of Rex. When he sees a group of cannibals in the island, tension and fear become part of his life. Later he saves the life of a savage that was going to be eaten by the cannibals; he names him Friday (Jaime Fernández) and they become friends. When Robinson Crusoe sees Caucasians in the island, he finds that Captain Oberzo (Felipe de Alba) was the victim of a mutiny and he helps him to retrieve his ship. After twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days, Robinson Crusoe leaves the island to return to the civilization.

"Robinson Crusoe" was my favorite novel in my childhood and I do not know how many times I have read this book. Luis Buñuel, who is one of my favorite directors, makes a faithful transposition of this timeless story of survival, loneliness, fear and friendship to the cinema. This is probably the first conventional movie of Buñuel that I have ever seen and his usual surrealism is limited to the sickness and daydream of Robinson Crusoe. Daniel O'Herlihy is a perfect Robinson Crusoe and this movie is recommended for the whole family. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Robinson Crusoé" ("Robinson Crusoe")

In maybe his only time of giving into a commercial project, Luis Bunuel, deliciously notorious surrealist and satirist, took off his usual run of Mexican-produced films of the decade and adapted The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. On the surface, if one weren't familiar with the director's works at all, it has the seeming quality of being an average B-movie adventure of a man in solitude who is saved by his man Friday and his own resourcefulness. The story of the cast away has ended up having better days, specifically in Zemeckis's Cast Away, as far as with how the actual details of the story unfurl. It boils down to this: Crusoe gets shipwrecked on an island, takes what he can from the ship (some supplies, actually lots, a few animals), builds a camp, and little by little after the novelty of a deserted island wears off he goes near mad in loneliness. That is until the cannibals arrive, dropping off a man whom Robinson names Friday and quasi-domesticates as his servant-cum-friend. This is a story that even school-children know, and has even appeared as a goof on a Peabody & Sherman cartoon.

But the fun in watching this rendition of Crusoe is for fans of the director to see what he does with the material. It's not a perfect affair, truth be told, as Bunuel isn't the greatest director of suspense, particularly in the climax. But what is essential for a film with as basic a plot as this to have is an understanding of what can be subverted, lightly and slightly twisted into personal expression. This is nothing new for many of today's famous filmmakers ala Spielberg or Scorsese, but for Bunuel he approaches it in ways that his best fans will be keen to look for and get in nice quantities. For example, as he is known more often than not as a director of dreams (his best film, Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, has dreams within dreams in savagely playful fashion), we see Crusoe having a dream early on where there's soft gel on the sides of the screen (maybe to appease the producers, who knows), and in it Crusoe dreams of his father pouring sauce or other on a pig, and images of Crusoe in water, cut together and acted in truly classic style. It's probably even one of his better dream sequences, followed up by another later on that features a pretty funny image to boot.

Actually, part of what makes Bunuel's Robinson Crusoe so enjoyable is spotting the references to past films- his palm covered with some bugs speaks right away cheerfully to Un Chien Andalou- as well as just mildly absurd usages of animals on screen (how did the cat have kittens?), and even Christian imagery in simply showing Crusoe with his huge beard, which Dan O'Hearlihy sports proudly for most of the film, and even carrying what looks like a cross (!) but turns out to be the stand for a scarecrow. Then there's also the aspect to the bond between Crusoe and Friday, which is almost a pop-art form of one of Bunuel's own treatises on the division of the classes in many of his films (i.e. Viridiana and Exterminating Angel). In a way it works just as well as a simple story anyway, because Bunuel is able to have his cake and eat it, by having a tale that as stilted it might be in its not-quite-high-or-low budget and form of writing/narration at times is fairly gripping in an 'old-school' way, as well as enough room to bring out his flashes of brilliant imagery and jabs of surrealism, and even absurdism.