I've wanted to see this film for years but have missed it several times in the past. This time I picked it up on You Tube of all places so now I've seen all of Bunuel's "Mexican" films.
I suppose I was hoping for more. Some of the earliest Mexican films were pretty standard fare - not much to be detected from "L'Age d'Or" or anything like that. Bunuel had to cooperate with the standard melodramas of the day to get his films made in Mexico. Occasionally his special eccentricities would come out of the woodwork but not often enough for me. This film was released by Columbia Pictures which means Harry Cohn and Cohn was truly a monster for any director to work with. There are some pot shots at the church throughout and "l'amour fou" so close to the director but there was precious little humor in this one.
I felt the film didn't always know where to go. It describes obsession in detail and conveys it extremely well with talented performances. The "Vertigo" stretch was a bit much for me. Both films dealt with obsessive men and had scenes in bell towers but there couldn't be any mistaking Bunuel for Hitchcock or the other way around, nor how the two directors treated it in such vastly different ways.
Curtis Stotlar
.
I suppose I was hoping for more. Some of the earliest Mexican films were pretty standard fare - not much to be detected from "L'Age d'Or" or anything like that. Bunuel had to cooperate with the standard melodramas of the day to get his films made in Mexico. Occasionally his special eccentricities would come out of the woodwork but not often enough for me. This film was released by Columbia Pictures which means Harry Cohn and Cohn was truly a monster for any director to work with. There are some pot shots at the church throughout and "l'amour fou" so close to the director but there was precious little humor in this one.
I felt the film didn't always know where to go. It describes obsession in detail and conveys it extremely well with talented performances. The "Vertigo" stretch was a bit much for me. Both films dealt with obsessive men and had scenes in bell towers but there couldn't be any mistaking Bunuel for Hitchcock or the other way around, nor how the two directors treated it in such vastly different ways.
Curtis Stotlar
.