Il grande teschio

This Mexican film from Bu-uel's low profile commercial period is a comedy of manners, Those expecting the more caustic or iconoclastic subtexts of his famous films may be disappointed. I found it well made and quite enjoyable. Part of its value is in its conventionality. Seeing that he was capable of creating well crafted "popular" entertainments is a plus in his favor. Perhaps he was only working to pay the bills, but I think he may have actually enjoyed making this film.

A gem among comedies. Based on a play by Alfredo Torrado. Again an example of collaboration between Bunuel and scriptwriter/director/novelist Alcoriza and Alcoriza's wife Janet. The female touch is evident in the father-daughter relationship.

The film belongs to the lead actor Fernando Soler. Bunuel's touch in this film is not in the last shot as is often the case--here it is the opening sequence of Ramiro (actor Soler) in the jail sleeping with other poorer members of Mexican society as equals.

A well-made feel-good comedy from Bunuel.

Don Luis Buñuel made some movies because he needed the cash. Maybe this is one of them, because if he didn't like the result, he ignored them and pretended he didn't make them. The movie is very good though, and has several underlines. I like them all. Starting with Don Ramiro, hard worker and bon vivant who hates his relatives, because they live off him without working. He tries to reason with them, but the relatives, realizing they're about to kill the hen with the golden eggs, plot against him, making him believe he is bankrupt. Don Ramiro won't take this easily and tries to commit suicide (better dead than poor) but is rescued by an angel, Pablo, his neighbor, who not knowing what the family has planned, tells Don Ramiro what he knows, and Don Ramiro, now very upset and at the edge of the roof, literally, makes another plot to make his relatives reason, even if he has to kill them while trying! So they say I am bankrupt? I will make them work and pay for everything they eat! Pablo helps bringing food and getting little tasks for them to do, and Don Ramiro pretends he is also working, but he is actually enjoying seeing them work while he enjoys life to the fullest. Of course all this will make Pablo fall for Don Ramiro's daughter (Granados) who is also falling for him. This is one rare occasion to see together the Rojo brothers, Gustavo and Raúl. Andrés Soler also stars along with Maruja Grifell (Doña Prudencia's daughter), and even Luis Alcoriza shows up with a mother that looks more like a father to me!

Enjoyable knockabout movie that is ultimately more complex than the simple plot outline would suggest. There is not much of the Bunuel we have come to expect but then this is his first effort for almost twenty years and he must have been keen to get back into cinema. Clearly a pragmatic man he must have been aware he could soon enough get back to making what he wanted, once he had satisfied the money men he was bankable. Nevertheless there is plenty to enjoy here as much fun is had with the notion of being rich and lazy making you ill and poor and hardworking the opposite. Then there is the love interest and whether you can marry above/beneath yourself. There is a marvellous line towards the end when the said young lady is justifying going with the rich scoundrel instead of the poor, honest boy. She tells of how one may love her for her money but then the other hates her for it. As would be the case in subsequent Mexican efforts Bunuel paints an affectionate picture of the locals and is clearly happy in his surroundings.

The first film I caught (on the very same night of my arrival in London) from the Luis Bunuel retrospective - held in January 2007 at the National Film Theatre - was this modest but pleasant character comedy, his second film in Mexico and his (official) fifth overall. The humorous opening shot - of a burly man looking for his itching foot among a pile of limbs belonging to a bunch of closely confined sleeping jailbirds - is a memorable one and immediately plunges you into the hedonistic life of the protagonist. Fernando Soler - later also the star of Bunuel's SUSANA and DAUGHTER OF DECEIT (both 1951) - is a wealthy patriarch in constant alcoholic reverie: a state which his loafing, leeching relatives (daughter, son, an older brother and his wife) have no qualms with since it allows them to effortlessly cajole him on a daily basis into financing their every whim. However, the man's younger psychiatrist brother and his attorney decide to drastically put a stop to this shameful lifestyle that is speedily sending the man's business affairs careening towards bankruptcy. To this end, they devise a shrewd charade which, however, works only too well for all concerned

As a matter of fact, while the original intention was to scare Soler into sobriety by making him believe that his relatives had been driven into abject poverty by his reckless ways (a realization which almost costs the man his life!), subsequently he decides to keep up (or rather down) the appearances so that he teaches them all a lesson in recognizing the worth of having a useful occupation in life. Therefore, the son (reduced to polishing shoes) is gleefully announcing his intention to enroll at the University by the end of the film; the cantankerous older brother - after much grumbling and role-playing - not only takes a real liking to his new job as a carpenter but even goes so far as to ask that his brother finance a furniture factory for him; and his hypochondriac, pill-popping wife becomes a proper cookbesides washing tonnes of dirty laundry! On the other hand, the lovely daughter (played by a blonde Rosario Granados, later of 1952's A WOMAN WITHOUT LOVE), who was always the most decent of the lot to begin with, falls for her handsome 'traveling salesman' of a new neighbor (Ruben Rojo, who was also in DAUGHTER OF DECEIT). But even this one bright spot in their miserable lives is fraught with bumpy rides as her former intended (played by Bunuel's frequent screen writing collaborator on his Mexican films, Luis Alcoriza), seemingly distraught by their unfortunate predicament, comes to reclaim her. But saner minds prevail at the climactic wedding which is, first disturbed by the still hopeful salesman plying his trade on the loudspeaker of his van parked right outside the church and, finally, by the father's outburst inside at the mother-in-law's whiskers (an amusing running gag)!!

While the director's previous movie, GRAN CASINO (1947), was a largely impersonal (and highly atypical) work within the Musical genre, Bunuel still inserted some unheralded and jarringly surreal elements into the mix which did not go do well with audiences and prompted another two year hiatus for him (who was already coming from fifteen years of fruitless exile)! Consequently, in the film under review, he readily submitted to the conventions of Mexican comedy and to the specific expectations of Soler's considerable fan base. Even so, it still emerges as a recognizably Bunuelian effort: the finale, in particular, with the aforementioned church disturbances, the fleeing bride - chronologically, the film falls approximately in between the Oscar-winning Hollywood classics IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) and THE GRADUATE (1967) - and, in its very last shot of Soler's family walking triumphantly hand-in-hand with their back to the camera, it clear prefigures the virtually identical one that closes Bunuel's own Oscar-winning chef d'oeuvre THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972). Having said that. Bunuel's recurring stylistic staples of foot fetishism and dream states had already been touched upon much earlier: respectively, in the very opening shot and Soler's incredulous awakening into his new impoverished existence; indeed, the latter might well be the most sympathetic bourgeois character the director ever depicted. Ultimately, it seems that we owe Bunuel's increasingly burgeoning career and the future cinematic milestones it spawned to the box office success of THE GREAT MADCAP - which might explain the film's availability on DVD in the U. K.