The River and Death (1954) User Reviews

More surreal than surrealistic

[birthdaynoodle · 8/10 · 22 August 2007]

A small town by the shore of a deep, dark river is ruled by death. Its people live by a code of honor that encourages them to take revenge for any form of insult, no matter how insignificant. A seemingly never ending blood feud ravages the town, as the men, one by one, kill each other proudly, embracing their acts of murder with a sense of mission. Vengeance is considered not so much a crime as an act of courage. However, if a murderer manages to escape without being killed in return, he's banished from the town and left with no option but to cross the river and to live on the desolate, opposite shore. The dead are also taken across the river, inside their coffin, and buried in a distant cemetery. Few are those who oppose this violent way of life and little is what they can do about it. Gerardo, a young man of modern thought who studied medicine in the nearest big city, must return to his hometown and try to put an end to this delirious, anachronistic, macho gun culture.

The story and the dialogues are great, and so is the acting! Like in much of Buñuel's other work, a terrible, dreamlike beauty emerges as man's passions and ignorant values devour virtue. In this case, sin appears not so much in the form of lust but of a ferocious sense of vanity (disguised as "honor").

Though quite surreal in essence, the film feels more mainstream than the director's work from later decades. The humor here, though clearly present in the absurdity of the situation, is relatively restrained, and the music is at times a little bit campy. The story itself is linear and fairly straight-forward. The ending is perhaps the only small disappointment, not so much because it's so atypical for a Buñuel film, but because it's so sudden.

The black and white photography is very decent, although the image quality of the DVD that I watched was a little bit deteriorated. It would be a real treat to watch an enhanced version.

I hardly doubt that anyone considers this one of Buñuel's unique masterpieces, but it's still a great, extremely enjoyable film with a strong message and, personally, I highly recommend watching it.

Unknown Buñuel film about an useless and bloody revenge has been going on for ages between two Mexican families

[ma-cortes · 7/10 · 25 September 2021]

A mockery during a Day of the Dead The celebration at a Mexican village unleashes the relentless enmity between two families : Anguiano and Menchaca , generation after generation relives it where a gun is worth more than a horse. Nowadays , there are only two sons left, one in each family. One , Gerardo (Joaquin Cordero) , has become a doctor in the big city and his culture is modern. The other last one Felipe : Miguel Torruco - of the other family - hasn't left the village and is waiting for the doctor to come "home" as he plans to murder him , to settle this war on this matter of honor once and for all. One is a doctor without a stomach for brutality, his head sticks out of a vast iron lung when the other goes on to demand a confrontation . When the doctor finally comes to the village, because of his mother (Columba Domínguez) influenced by the villagers, he faces the other contender who challenges his courage. A fragile amnesty with his nemesis is repressed by the cowardly mediator , the sheer weight of hardened tradition and clan expectations quickly crush both enemy familes . It is a wild world, it is up to the children to change it.

The main subject is the absurdity of tribal machismo, the camera sweeps across the top of a colonial building before leaning toward the dirt street where a three-way crossfire casually takes place . The interpretations are all solid and photography never less than competent . Dealing with a merciless vengeance through years and years , when men, sons, have killed each other for generations, for a so-called conception of honor in a revenge that never ends since it is also triggered by people of the little town , resulting in the people of the village want blood . The pistol and the icon of the Virgin Mary occupy the same belt, even the local priest comes armed to a card game . The river is deep and murky , people cross it in the fugitive or in a coffin in the black canoe , the hero lives both ways. Circle of hate as a strange habit , the waste of vengeful honor, the clarification of cowardice and the violent stand-off , thus a superb western style by the Spanish maestro Luis Buñuel . And others questions of making peace , letting the dead bury the dead , just a hug on the main street to break the curse are also displayed . Here the violence is unglamorous, there's a priest carrying a gun, and it's not often that you see a man with an iron lung get slapped, surreal amusements or the usual perversities of Buñuel, but otherwise, this is pretty fine flick . The structure is a bit out of place, starting with a flashback to an era that has nothing to do with either the contemporary period or the long flashback of Gerardo's parents that takes up most of the running time. And the ending is so straightforward that one wishes it weren't so sincere. But in general, it is a fairly well-constructed film, although it lacks the ordinary nuances of much interest for fans of Buñuel's style.

It includes atmospheric cinematography in black and white by Raul Solares , shot on location in Huauchinango, Puebla, Mexico. The motion picture written by his usual collaborator Luis Alcoriza was well directed by Luis Buñuel , but there aren't many of the director's signature touches. Buñuel's sensibilities actually do quite well in the Western language, tearing down outdated macho standards and petty hypocrisy. This Spanish filmmaker was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his Mexican second period ; in fact , it's plenty of known Mexican actors . As Buñuel subsequently emigrated from Mexico to France where filmed other excellent movies . After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . After his two avant-garde collaborations with fellow surrealist Salvador Dali , his career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War , where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨ , as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . He subsequently went on his Mexican period he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention , reappearing at Cannes with ¨Los Olvidados¨ in 1951 , a lacerating study of Mexican street urchins , winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , ¨Susana¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz" , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . His mostly little-known Mexican films , rough-hewn , low-budget melodramas for the most part , are always thought-provoking and interesting ; being ordinary screenwriter Julio Alejandro and Luis Alcoriza . He continued working there until re-establishing himself in Europe in the 1960s as one of the great directors . And finally his French-Spanish period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films such as ¨Viridiana¨ was prohibited on the grounds of blasphemy , ¨Tristana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" , of course , ¨ ¨Belle Du Jour¨ , with all the kinky French sex and his last picture , "That Obscure Object of Desire" .

Good, but not brilliant

[primogose · 6/10 · 1 January 2010]

This movie it's not the most personal job of Luis Buñuel, but it has its moments, and it's well told. I always wonder at Buñuel's mastery at storytelling; I mean, he seems very careless about the technical aspects of doing a film, like choosing the more distinguished framing, but always manages to tell us very clearly what's happening, even in his more surreal movies.

Said that, this particular film has, to me, a very weak part in the story of Doctor Gerardo and his mother. The Mexico D.F. scenes are too discursive, always leaning on the idea of the unavoidable character of human progress, that i think it's almost unbelievable nowadays. Also, I couldn't trust the change of Gerardo's mother point of view about revenge and honor when he arrives to the village. Not to mention the final reconciliation between Gerardo and Lorenzo, that, like some other user said, seems too sudden, or the way that Gerardo beats Lorenzo the night before.

I guess that Buñuel didn't have the same interest on this part of the history than on the central, western flavored flashback, that is the very spine of the film (It's a shame that Buñuel didn't directed a western movie). In his autobiography he said he didn't agree with the thesis of the movie: "let's all graduate, and we will stop killing ourselves". And i think he was right.

THE RIVER AND DEATH (Luis Bunuel, 1955) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 14 October 2010]

I had first watched this in January 2007 as part of the Bunuel retrospective held at London's National Film Theatre. Incidentally, being the closest the Spanish Surrealist master ever came to the traditional Western formula, I was also surprised by the fact that the narrative (dealing as it does with a long-running blood feud) pretty much duplicated that of a historical book about the Old West my twin brother and I had intended adapting as a script years before I ever came across the Bunuel picture! Obviously, his intentions here were far from paying tribute to that most American of film genres but rather (avid gun collector that he was) to tackle the age-old Mexican tradition of defending one's honor through gunplay! Actually, Bunuel himself had dismissed the film as a failure but, now that I have re-acquainted myself with it, I feel I must contradict him and maintain that this devotee of the Western found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable excursion.

One of the things that really make the film is its depiction of various religious customs (or, more precisely, the peculiar rituals at their center) such as those involving the processions of a village patron saint and a funeral interrupted by numerous reverent pauses; this element is as much a part of Mexican folklore (a remnant of Spanish Colonialism) as it is of my own country (the European island of Malta). Other reverent situations that come under fire here are baptism (one such celebration being suddenly interrupted by the cold-blooded knifing - in full view of the guests - which kick-starts the narrative!), motherhood (a woman has to bear one humiliation after another because of her 'spineless' crippled son) and sickness (the latter being himself 'attacked' by his current nemesis when most vulnerable i.e. undergoing treatment inside an 'iron lung' at the hospital!).

The film's lack of a proper reputation may have something to do with the fact that the cast is largely made up of unfamiliar faces; the only name that stood out for me was that of Jaime Fernandez - if only because he had played Friday in Bunuel's own ROBINSON CRUSOE (1952). That said, though it was obviously made on a tight budget, THE RIVER AND DEATH still managed to receive three nods at that year's Ariel Awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar - for Cinematography, Sound and Music (even emerging victorious in the latter category!). That said, it was submitted to the Venice Film Festival (in favor of the much superior CRUSOE, whose release had been delayed for two years) without success. Anyway, the movie under review has an atypically complex narrative structure for a genre film: the aforementioned opening sequence, for instance, is set neither in the present nor in the flashback (taking in several generations of casualties in the deep-seated enmity between the two central families) which occupies much of the running-time but actually falls somewhere in between!

Bunuel shows up the feud as trivial, yet the participants take it with the utmost seriousness: even the Parish Priest cannot afford to go around without a gun! Yet, they have the decency (if not the common sense to see it all the way through) to attend the interment of an eminent citizen who had tried his best to act as mediator between the parties concerned; this is preceded by a beautifully done sequence in which the two enemies follow one another at a distance on their way to town but, eventually, meet up to share a few words and some cigarettes! Still, the director quashes expectations here too - in this case of Latin American machismo - by making the hero of the modern part of the story altruistic, thus a conscientious objector (rather than a coward, as would have been the obvious Hollywood route)...not to mention a polio survivor! The latter eventually provokes his hot-headed antagonist into shooting him in the back, after which he defiantly splashes the other's face with blood from his wounded hand.

The whole, then, culminates in a rushed and unconvincing – if admittedly poignant – happy ending that was apparently forced on Bunuel by the author of the novel on which the film was based! In conclusion, the title (sometimes also referred to as DEATH AND THE RIVER) is very fitting since the river here actually symbolizes death: the killer crosses it to go in perpetual hiding (interestingly, each faction has its own exclusive haven on the other side!), while the victim is carried by canoe to be buried.

A fine piece of art

[kosmasp · 9/10 · 27 July 2008]

Again Bunuel delivers a grand movie, that is top notch, from beginning to the end. While exploring more human faults, as in his other movies I have watched at the Berlin Film Festival, he digs deep inside the homo sapiens and shows us our flaws, while the characters don't really understand that they're acting irrational. And even if they do try to swerve from this "circle", it seems inevitable that they fall back into it.

Great acting and a great story get mixed together with a nice framing by Bunuel, who understands how he can use the medium film, to portray human stories, that do touch us (as in this case). Some might feel, that the pacing could've been a bit faster, but I do think that it is better this way. Slow but steady into ... Watch it and you won't be disappointed!

Not a classic Buñuel Film ... but very good indeed

[david-araneda · 8/10 · 19 August 2009]

I saw this one last night, just knowing that is considered a minor work in Buñuel's career, and I have to disagree because being an old movie with a relative plane plot, it kept me really interested from beginning to end so I had to watch it completely, considering that I was really tired last night ...

The story about the town, the river, the traditions of the people who lived there, the constant fights between the Anguianos and the Menchacas, are quite thrilling and charming on a certain point of view If you're looking for strange situations, surprises, surrealism, plot twists, black humor (excepting the priest with the gun) and absurdity, you may be disappointed by this film I love Buñuel films, and I fully enjoyed this one

A sad reminder of past and present culture and lifestyle in rural Mexico.

[hitherto · 8/10 · 28 April 2018]

This film is hard to follow to my untrained eyes in black and white cinema. Not that I haven't seen many black and white movies, but this story, in typical Buñuel fashion, jumps seamlessly back and forth between characters in the present, and close and distant past. Making it hard to follow, but nonetheless, I was able to appreciate it and enjoyed both the rural Mexico, as well as the folk culture.

The story begins with a naive toast between two men, one who just became a parent, and the other, the godfather of the child. As the celebration and tequilas start flowing, both men talk about their future, families and friendship. When the big-mouthed godfather jokingly suggests sexual interaction with the mother of his godson, the other man, the husband, gets furious and violently demands respect or otherwise. The godfather, another short-fused macho, takes that to the extreme and in return, says he can say whatever he can say. After this, the recent parent pulls out his knife and shoves it in the godfather's belly. This becoming the beginning of the three generation tragedy that was about to unravel in this Mexican northern town of machos.

What follows is the narration from a doctor, the then child given birth in the tragic ceremony. The grandson of the killer, is a doctor now prostrate in a special stretcher treating his disease that prevents him from walking.

This film tells the story of my home country. Fully it reflects its culture, where a man is expected to prove his manhood through any means.

It sadly reminded me of why Mexico is considered one of the most violent countries in the world. Where narcos and government alike revert to violence in a never ending cycle of proving yourself. Where the value of a human life is no more valuable than cattle, land or respect in itself.

A must see to understand why rivalries exist in Mexico, and to understand why grassroots measures work best than any other foreign facts.

The Styx

[ulicknormanowen · 9 August 2020]

In this film ,the great director pits an obsolete world (the vendetta , eye for an eye , tooth for a tooth ) against the modern scientific background of a son who is expected to avenge his father ;the contrast between the urban background where the young doctor is to work and the archaic and macho village is striking ;that two worlds can still cohabit may seem startling ,even in the fifties ; this is not typically Mexican ; in some Mediterranean regions (Sicily,Corsica ) it endured through the early twentieth century.

With a genius such the director, one has a tendency to show oneself demanding ; but his touch can be felt no and then: the depiction of the "tradition" recalls the documentary side of "los hurdes" :the survivor swimming across the river ,some kind of Styx which is some frontier between the living and the dead ,filmed in the darkest night , the black coffin of his victim on the boat ; the painting is almost surrealist ;so are the skeletons at the beginning .

In his highly superior "Viridiana" (1961) ,Bunuel would resume the obsolete/modern subject .While the heroine ,steeped in piety ,entertains all the bums of the village, her cousin, a pragmatic resolute man ,develops his estate .