70 years of This Strange Passion
On July 9, 1953, Luis Buñuel's film "Él (This Strange Passion)" was released in cinemas in Mexico. Shortly before that, in April of the same year, this film was presented at the Cannes International Film Festival, where its demonstration caused a scandal.
Let me remind you that Luis Buñuel, who adhered to leftist views and, perhaps, even was a member of the Communist Party, was forced to leave Spain after the defeat of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. For about ten years he wandered between France and the United States in search of the most favorable conditions for his work. Finally, in 1946, he settled in Mexico, where at that time there was a real cinematic boom. During the period from 1947 to 1953 he made 9 films. Basically, these films belonged to the so-called "light genres": comedies, romances, adventures. But the money that Buñuel earned by making these films allowed him to create such masterpieces as, for example, "Los Olvidados". In 1953, he finished shooting the film "Robinson Crusoe" based on the famous novel by Daniel Defoe. But with the release of this picture on the screens, there was a delay for an indefinite period. And at that moment he was asked to make a film adaptation of the novel by Mercedes Pinto "Él".
Mercedes Pinto, born into a noble and wealthy family in the Canary Islands in 1899, became famous very early as a poetess and activist in the feminist movement. After in 1923 she gave a lecture on "Divorce as a hygienic measure" at the Central University of Madrid, Primo De Rivera, who had recently carried out a coup d'état and established a dictatorial regime in Spain, expelled the young feminist from the country. Pinto moved to Uruguay, where she published her novel Él in 1926.
Along with literary work, Mercedes Pinto carried out active social and political activities in almost all countries of Latin America, from Chile to Cuba. The main directions of this activity were the protection of the rights of women, the working class and the modernization of education. In 1943, Pinto settled in Mexico with her three children. The Pinto children very quickly found themselves in Mexican cinema. And they not only found themselves, but reached significant heights in Mexican cinema. It was they, who being well acquainted with Buñuel due to their professional activities, who offered Buñuel to film their mother's novel.
The plot of the novel Mercedes Pinto was inspired by the story of her first marriage. At age 20, Pinto married Navy Captain Juan de Foronda y Cubillas, who was later revealed to be suffering from mental illness. Only 10 years later, Mercedes Pinto was able to place her husband in a psychiatric clinic and divorce on this basis. The story of the protagonist of the Pinto's novel attracted Luis Buñuel because he noted signs of paranoid jealousy in himself and in the husband of his sister Conchita.
The film was shot in three weeks. However, the duration of filming in 2-3 weeks for the Mexican cinema of that period was quite common. The premiere of the film, as mentioned above, took place at the Cannes Film Festival. It's hard to say whether it was a coincidence or some malicious intent, but the audience in the hall at the premiere of Buñuel's film was mostly war veterans who came to see some kind of military-patriotic film. They greeted the picture "This Strange Passion" with whistling and hooting. (In passing, I note that the winner at that Cannes Film Festival was Henri-Georges Clouzot's film "Le salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear)".) But even later, during normal screenings in Mexican cinemas, the demonstration of the film was accompanied by laughter and whistling. In short, the film failed both in the press and at the box office. However, this did not prevent Alfred Hitchcock from declaring himself a fan of Buñuel after watching the film "This Strange Passion" and actually borrowing some scenes from this picture in his movie "Vertigo".
Gradually, the attitude of viewers and film critics to Buñuel's film "This Strange Passion" changed. In the late 60s, the picture was re-released on the screens. Most film critics have come to understand that the main message of this film, as, for example, the famous American critic Jonathan Rosenbaum believes, is
"a parody of machismo, full of anticlerical thrusts", that "the irreverence—consisting in part of such ghoulish, Sade-inspired notions as the hero wanting to sew up his wife’s vagina—tends to be almost parenthetical rather than the main focus".
Argentine film critic Emiliano Fernandez calls the film "This Strange Passion"
"no sólo es una de las mayores obras maestras de Buñuel sino un trabajo que se conecta con sus primeros días como realizador y que anticipa muchas de sus temáticas predilectas de la etapa francesa posterior, como por ejemplo el cristianismo descocado, la represión sexual, las apariencias, las matufias del capitalismo urbano, la mojigatería religiosa/ social, el fetichismo, la pretensión de posesión amatoria y en general el surgimiento de monstruos occidentales adeptos al control total y “santificados” por el mercado, la comunidad y la Iglesia Católica."
According to the general opinion of most film critics, the film "This Strange Passion", along with the film "Los Olvidados", represents the pinnacle of the Mexican period of Luis Buñuel's work.
The modern moviegoer appreciates the film "This Strange Passion" much higher than the viewer of the 50s of the last century. 64% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Luis Buñuel's film "Él (This Strange Passion)" according to FilmGourmand version was 7.81, which allowed it to enter the Golden Thousand and take 967th Rank in it. And - yes - the film was not shown in the Soviet Union. Like most of Buñuel's masterpieces.
