Simon of the Desert
Simon of the Desert was Luis Bunuel's last film made in Mexico, released in 1965. One of the few movies based on an original story by Bunuel, its source material was the life of Saint Simeon Stylites--a Fourth Century hermit who spent 37 years atop a 60-foot column outside of Aleppo (modern day Syria). In My Last Sigh Bunuel wrote that he was first introduced to Simeon Stylites by Federico Garica Lorca, who had given him a copy of Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Column (written circa 1260-1275), 
a kind of a cult-book lives of the saints that was very popular in Medieval Europe. The book detailed Simeon's diet and excrement, which amused Bunuel and Lorca when they were students in Madrid. The rest of the story was researched at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. Though many scenes of the film were cut (or never shot), the film won 5 awards at the Venice Film Festival including the Special Jury Prize. At 45 minutes long, the film (still rarely shown in movie theaters) stars Claudio Brook as Simon and Sylvia Pinal as the trickster Satan, arriving to tempt Simon in various disguises including a bearded Jesus carrying a lamb, 
in a self-propelled coffin, and as a school-girl in a sailor suit complete with stockings and suspender belt. Pinal, a popular Mexican actress who had starred in Bunuel's other two last Mexican films, the brilliant Viridiana (1961) and The Exterminating Angel (1962), was excellent as the temptress devil, revealing her legs, exposing her breasts, and caressing the beard of the implacable Simon del desierto. Shot by Gabriel Figueroa and edited by Carlos Savage, the film presents the absurdity of Catholicism while at the same time exposing Bunuel's basic belief in a higher ascetic lifestyle. Motifs, of course, abound as well: women's legs, ants, solitude, the dual nature of freedom/enslavement. The most shocking aspect of Simon of the Desert, upon rewatching, 
is how closely the film prefigures many visual and narrative elements of his later work in France (usually viewed as a stylistic break from his Mexican films). The shots are so similar that you could dissolve from Silvia Pinal's legs directly onto Jeanne Moreau's in Diary of a Chambermaid and wind up in another century and country. Of course, that is exactly what happens in Simon of the Desert as well, as Pinal takes Simon (via airplane) to the very bottom depths of hell (for Bunuel): a Greenwich Village disco where the kids dance the last dance aka the "Radioactive Flesh." Simon, his beard closley trimmed, idly smokes a pipe as he sits alone amongst the pre-hippy crowd. The overhead shots of the East River and Manhattan skyline were perhaps Bunuel's only filmed of New York (I cannot think of any others). Simon of the Desert's disjointed narrative/fantasy structure (which he had not used in this way before) also foreshadowed both Belle de Jour (1967) and The Milky Way (1969). The column used for Simon was too heavy to move and remains today in the field in Mexico where they filmed the movie.
Simon of the Desert was Luis Bunuel's last film made in Mexico, released in 1965. One of the few movies based on an original story by Bunuel, its source material was the life of Saint Simeon Stylites--a Fourth Century hermit who spent 37 years atop a 60-foot column outside of Aleppo (modern day Syria). In My Last Sigh Bunuel wrote that he was first introduced to Simeon Stylites by Federico Garica Lorca, who had given him a copy of Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Column (written circa 1260-1275), 
a kind of a cult-book lives of the saints that was very popular in Medieval Europe. The book detailed Simeon's diet and excrement, which amused Bunuel and Lorca when they were students in Madrid. The rest of the story was researched at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. Though many scenes of the film were cut (or never shot), the film won 5 awards at the Venice Film Festival including the Special Jury Prize. At 45 minutes long, the film (still rarely shown in movie theaters) stars Claudio Brook as Simon and Sylvia Pinal as the trickster Satan, arriving to tempt Simon in various disguises including a bearded Jesus carrying a lamb, 
in a self-propelled coffin, and as a school-girl in a sailor suit complete with stockings and suspender belt. Pinal, a popular Mexican actress who had starred in Bunuel's other two last Mexican films, the brilliant Viridiana (1961) and The Exterminating Angel (1962), was excellent as the temptress devil, revealing her legs, exposing her breasts, and caressing the beard of the implacable Simon del desierto. Shot by Gabriel Figueroa and edited by Carlos Savage, the film presents the absurdity of Catholicism while at the same time exposing Bunuel's basic belief in a higher ascetic lifestyle. Motifs, of course, abound as well: women's legs, ants, solitude, the dual nature of freedom/enslavement. The most shocking aspect of Simon of the Desert, upon rewatching, 
is how closely the film prefigures many visual and narrative elements of his later work in France (usually viewed as a stylistic break from his Mexican films). The shots are so similar that you could dissolve from Silvia Pinal's legs directly onto Jeanne Moreau's in Diary of a Chambermaid and wind up in another century and country. Of course, that is exactly what happens in Simon of the Desert as well, as Pinal takes Simon (via airplane) to the very bottom depths of hell (for Bunuel): a Greenwich Village disco where the kids dance the last dance aka the "Radioactive Flesh." Simon, his beard closley trimmed, idly smokes a pipe as he sits alone amongst the pre-hippy crowd. The overhead shots of the East River and Manhattan skyline were perhaps Bunuel's only filmed of New York (I cannot think of any others). Simon of the Desert's disjointed narrative/fantasy structure (which he had not used in this way before) also foreshadowed both Belle de Jour (1967) and The Milky Way (1969). The column used for Simon was too heavy to move and remains today in the field in Mexico where they filmed the movie.
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