Violence, blood and tears and flying in Spain

Criminal career

tollbar

luis bunuel

Bunuel and Solomon Round Table

Carlos Saura

Zhang Yue

In the second season of the Spanish Masters Exhibition of Shanghai Art Film Alliance, three representative or special films from carlos saura and luis Bunuel were shown: bunuel's Golden Age (1930), Forgotten Man (1950) and Criminal Career (1955); Saura's flamenco trilogy, namely, Blood Marriage (198 1), Carmen (1983) and Love Magician (1986). From this, we can appreciate the elegance of the two masters and have a more intuitive and profound understanding of the characteristics of Spain.

Bunuel and the Great Painters: Persecution Caused by the Golden Age

Without the careful guidance of the curator of the French Film Archive, we would be even more confused when watching the Golden Age, and we could not understand the intention of curator Yao Lingyao to show the forgotten people together. Under the high-definition picture quality of the big screen, the curator explained with interest that "Golden Age" is a story that a man and a woman who are madly in love want to have sex at any time, but they can't do it under various obstacles such as religious ceremonies and secular laws. The film was so eccentric that it was attacked by extremists, which eventually led to the splash of ink on the screen, the interruption of screening and the destruction of works by surrealist artists (including Dali's). Only henri langlois, the founder and old curator of the French Film Archive, will show the golden age again and again.

The key point is that the follow-up influence of this ugly drama is too great. Bunuel, the future master who just entered the film industry because of an Andalusian dog, was banned for the next 17 years. His documentary "Land Without Food" was also banned after it was released a few years later. He was persecuted, hunted, left his hometown, had a bad job and was displaced. When he returned to Europe with the Mexican film "The Forgotten Man" and made a big splash in Cannes, bunuel was fifty years old that year.

The story of seventeen years is too complicated for the curator to elaborate. In fact, the Golden Age has buried the cause of disharmony from the early stage of creation. Bunuel wanted to polish the script with Dali, but Dali fell madly in love with his future life partner Gallas, so the two friends fell out, and Dali failed to participate in the actual shooting of Golden Age. Bunuel didn't attend the premiere, but went directly to Hollywood, working in an alien young state and learning film technology. Although "Golden Age" is full of surreal whimsy, it is an apprentice work, and bunuel used most of the shooting materials. We can see that the intimate scenes of couples lack the harmonious and silky beauty that we are used to seeing in later movies, and the behavior of couples may be closer to real intimacy. Personality discord will be the norm in Hollywood for bunuel, a family man immersed in movies.

Dali, on the other hand, stayed in Europe and faced the gunfire. Facing the extremists, they were angry at his father's violence of killing children for no reason, projected their sexual desire into sucking the toes of Apollo statue, and portrayed Jesus as the ridicule of the wicked in Sodom in Marquis de Sade's works. ...

Bunuel spent his whole life criticizing the upper class and the church and discussing faith. Dali, on the other hand, loves Catholicism, likes the archbishop, and wants to do something blasphemous and make a big news. The Andalusian dog they worked with before failed to satisfy his vanity and arrogance. He published an autobiography, threatening that bunuel was a communist atheist, which directly led to the double censure of American politics and the church, and lost the hard-won editing work of new york Museum of Modern Art.

Bunuel and the Great Poet: Mexican Cruel Forgetting

Bunuel had to continue to migrate step by step, looking for a job in the Mexican film industry, which was in its golden age. Finally, I had the opportunity to re-direct the film at 1947 and finish the blockbuster "Fool" (1949), and then I had the opportunity to shoot the serious art film "The Forgotten Man" that I wanted to shoot. The film originated from bunuel's experience of visiting Mexican slums. The tragic and terrible ending of finding the body of a 12-year-old boy in a garbage dump is also true news. It does have a strong Italian neo-realism tendency, but the film is also surreal, because of his clear dreams and all kinds of animals he intentionally or unintentionally placed in the painting room. In bunuel's eyes, subconscious phenomena such as dreams and fantasies, as well as intuitive feelings inspired by animals and objects that may be meaningless in the picture, may all be part of reality.

Seeing Pedro's dream mother finally willing to love him, she gave him a big piece of meat, but Jabba took it away. We know that when he wakes up, he will find a job and support his family, even if he is a child laborer. Seeing him stroking the chicken gently, a cockfighting suddenly appeared on the fence. We also know that it is Jabba, poverty, dark environment, and everything that prevents him from doing good, even fate.

The shooting, narration and production techniques of this film are all perfect. Bunuel described the food chain environment of the jungle here completely through the experiences of Jabba, Pedro, who hopes to be kind but can't get rid of the harsh environment, and "small eyes", an abandoned child who strives to uphold integrity. The weakest blind man bullied girls. Those girls who were killed were forced to be mothers and didn't love children. Children who don't love easily hate society and go astray. A bad boy without soul and heart is just a lonely wild dog ... bunuel saw that it is difficult for poor people struggling for survival to avoid violence, and also described people of insight who started schools and educated their children with love and trust, but their tentacles were difficult to penetrate into society. This may also be bunuel's own position. He can only do his best in a cruel world.

If the great poet Octavio Paz hadn't escorted the film to Cannes and returned home with a good reputation, bunuel's masterpiece might have been resisted by bad reviews. Mexico, the class that participated in the premiere, and even some people who participated in the filming, didn't believe and didn't want to see people living like livestock in slums, thinking that it was demonizing Mexico. Bunuel has to add that behind the glamour of big cities in developed capitalist countries, there are dark beginnings, but this is exactly the case. When the film entered the Mexican cinema, the audience expanded, which proved the spiritual connection between realism and ordinary people with real enthusiasm.

After this masterpiece, it is our familiar history. Bunuel, 50, is finally free to make any movie he wants. In a sense, criminal life seems to be a defense of the golden age. This black comedy, which creates dramatic tension with a sense of humor, still depicts bunuel's lifelong interest in desire, violence and their relationship. As a child, Cruz, a rich boy, decided that his desire for the music box had murdered his hated female teacher, and at the same time he felt the pleasure of death. Obviously, his desire to kill is connected with his sexual desire. All the charming "bad women" he wanted to kill died of others, suicides or accidents in the way he imagined. He is insane, but he doesn't even kill a bug in his behavior. This is the footnote of "Golden Age": you can't catch him just because he committed a crime. When he accepted that the death of those women had nothing to do with his thoughts, he was free and could start a relationship smoothly.

Bunuel also showed off his skills in sketching erotic meanings. The contact between the tour guide and Cruz is very attractive, and she has the upper hand in sexual relations. In his works, he often writes about the dilemma that men have to make their desires anxious in the face of feminine charm, which makes men look pitiful and ridiculous.

Saura and bunuel: Violence in the Flamengo Trilogy

In fact, carlos saura can be regarded as the spiritual inheritor of bunuel. He even made a fantasy film "The Round Table of bunuel and Solomon" (200 1) with his imaginary pictures of talking with bunuel. No matter what kind of criticism, he just took it to pay homage to the late master. The "Flamengo Trilogy" is also a fantastic work. If you just go to the cinema with the mentality of watching flamenco dance, the experience of watching three games in an afternoon is quite wonderful. This is why these three films with original works (equivalent to spoilers) can stand up to our watching again and again.

This trilogy is starring the master dancer antonio gades and his partner Christina hoyos, but the shooting methods of the three films are completely different. Blood Marriage completely separates the elaborate and complete stage preparation from the full makeup flamenco dance drama adapted from the poet Federico Garcí a lorca. Lorca was bunuel's best friend when he was young, which was consistent with his position of supporting the Republican government and opposing Franco's Nazi dictatorship.

Love Magician, adapted from the work of the same name by Spanish composer Faria, has a picture at the beginning. It is a slum built in a studio, and the whole movie is a non-stop ballet.

Carmen is the highest achievement in the trilogy, and its structure is also the most interesting. It is a love tragedy between the dancers who choreographed Carmen and the dancers who played Carmen. Their choreographed dance drama Carmen was spliced together in time in the form of fragments that did not repeat the plot. These two stories are merged into one story. This is a meta-movie, that is, a movie about making movies. According to Dai Jinhua's article The Structure of Cover and Mirror Text, Carmen is a story that the Spanish tried to tell in Spanish but failed. With this failure, Saura questioned foreigners' fictional "Spanish exoticism" and pointed out that Spanish intellectuals were in "inner exile" and could not escape the pseudo-Spanish culture strengthened by Franco's government.

As we all know, Carmen is a novel written by Merimee, a Frenchman, which was adapted into a well-known opera by Bizet, another Frenchman. Antonio, the protagonist, is actually looking for Carmen in his heart according to the image of Carmen designed by Merimee. The dance drama he conceived cannot be separated from Bizet's melody, and he also persuaded flamenco musicians to adapt dance music according to Bizet's rhythm as much as possible. When the dancer Carmen became the Carmen he imagined, she obeyed the transformation of foreign novels. At the same time, flamenco music gradually gave way to Bizet's music, and Antonio finally failed to escape the mold of French sculpture. Of course, regardless of cultural factors, this is also a story of a man willing to walk into his dream destiny. When he chose a rookie to be Carmen, he had already opened the door to love and destruction.

The tragic factor of the trilogy is violence. The passion in Spanish blood seems to strengthen people's hatred and jealousy, and the customs of several generations provide a legitimate reason for this kind of violence. In Blood Marriage, it is the mother who gives the dagger to her son and fights with the man who stole his bride. Honour killings were encouraged that year. In Love Magician, the fighting and unnecessary casualties caused by jealousy and suspicion did not make people put down their butcher knives, and near the end of the film, older youths were still teaching a new generation of teenagers how to fight with daggers, and the protagonist who lost several relatives and friends didn't feel anything wrong. In that living environment, they seem to have to learn to protect themselves by attacking.

On the issue of using violence, both Saura and bunuel are very worried. Come to think of it, aren't all six movies about the evil consequences of violence from a certain angle? The way they fight against violence is to tell stories about violence, so that stories can grow dreamy wings and take off. "Love Magician" is a fairy tale written in the film, which reunites two couples of men and women with the result of coming back from the dead. There is no duel, and the problem of love is solved by love.