Gran Casino
The first of Luis Bunuel's 20 Mexican films, Gran Casino (1947) is part melodrama, part musical. It is also, of course, total Bunuel. Set in the booming Gulf Coast oil fields of pre-Revolution Mexico, Gran Casino intertwines greed, fate, and desire in a tale hinging on the foreign ownership of Mexican natural resources. Though it was Bunuel's first film in 15 years, it was--in his own words--not half bad. The musical numbers performed by stars Jorge Negrete and Libertad Lamarque are filled with suggestion and surprise (including the hilarious "Trio Calaveras" as Negrete's backing chorus who appear out of nowhere). 
Though missing the usual dream sequence, the layout of the casino in the film's title was utilized as a kind of map of the mind--characters pausing on the stairs between the conscious and subconscious worlds where scheming and dreaming evolve into murder and suspicion. Having fled Franco's Spain, Bunuel edited propaganda films at MOMA in New York and dubbed features into Spanish in Hollywood before his Socialist ties and distaste for life in the U.S. led him, unbeknown to himself at the time, towards a career and citizenship in Mexico. After a long layoff from the three films of his youth, Le Chien Andalou (1929), L'Age D'Or (1930), and Land Without Bread (1933),
Bunuel was asked to direct Gran Casino for producer Oscar Dancigers, who he had known in Paris. Dancigers is thus one of the most important men in film history, resurrecting the career of one of the medium's most innovative and international directors; their collaboration in Mexico included, among other films, Los Olvidados (1950), El (1953), and Abismos de Pasion (aka Wuthering Heights)(1954). Though Bunuel, the master of surrealist cinema, would undoubtedly reject such a simplistic reading, as Negrete claims in Gran Casino to have "won something out of our defeat," it is difficult not to see Bunuel's comments veering toward the defeated Republicans of the Spanish Civil War, toward the oppression of workers everywhere, and toward his own directorial career.
The first of Luis Bunuel's 20 Mexican films, Gran Casino (1947) is part melodrama, part musical. It is also, of course, total Bunuel. Set in the booming Gulf Coast oil fields of pre-Revolution Mexico, Gran Casino intertwines greed, fate, and desire in a tale hinging on the foreign ownership of Mexican natural resources. Though it was Bunuel's first film in 15 years, it was--in his own words--not half bad. The musical numbers performed by stars Jorge Negrete and Libertad Lamarque are filled with suggestion and surprise (including the hilarious "Trio Calaveras" as Negrete's backing chorus who appear out of nowhere). 
Though missing the usual dream sequence, the layout of the casino in the film's title was utilized as a kind of map of the mind--characters pausing on the stairs between the conscious and subconscious worlds where scheming and dreaming evolve into murder and suspicion. Having fled Franco's Spain, Bunuel edited propaganda films at MOMA in New York and dubbed features into Spanish in Hollywood before his Socialist ties and distaste for life in the U.S. led him, unbeknown to himself at the time, towards a career and citizenship in Mexico. After a long layoff from the three films of his youth, Le Chien Andalou (1929), L'Age D'Or (1930), and Land Without Bread (1933), Bunuel was asked to direct Gran Casino for producer Oscar Dancigers, who he had known in Paris. Dancigers is thus one of the most important men in film history, resurrecting the career of one of the medium's most innovative and international directors; their collaboration in Mexico included, among other films, Los Olvidados (1950), El (1953), and Abismos de Pasion (aka Wuthering Heights)(1954). Though Bunuel, the master of surrealist cinema, would undoubtedly reject such a simplistic reading, as Negrete claims in Gran Casino to have "won something out of our defeat," it is difficult not to see Bunuel's comments veering toward the defeated Republicans of the Spanish Civil War, toward the oppression of workers everywhere, and toward his own directorial career.
No comments:
Post a Comment