#luis bunuel

A young government official, Ramón Vásquez (Gérard Philipe) wants to improve the living conditions of prisoners on Ojeda Island, but his efforts to liberalize a dictatorial regime from within prove counterproductive and only succeed in blackmailing his wife (Maria Félix) who is forced to accept the advances of the new governor (Jean Servais); faced with yet another failure of his reformist attempts, Ramón will act in a way that triggers the greatest possible punishment. Gérard Philipe's last film is also Buñuel's only one to tackle an overtly political theme (somewhat similar to "Nazarin"). Many critics have pointed out some (unclear) weaknesses in the film, noting that the screenplay (co-written by Buñuel himself along with other writers, including Henry Castillou, the author of the novel of the same name on which the film is based) fails to update the Sartrean apologue (with the intellectual attempting to change the world from within) nor to sufficiently clarify the protagonist's ethical and moral dilemmas. Personally, while I agree with these criticisms from a purely formal and academic perspective, I find the story and its staging by Buñuel absolutely consistent with the "apologetic" message (in the most pessimistically libertarian sense) that the Spanish director entrusts to his film, a film that, while not among his many masterpieces, remains a notable example of subversive cinema (each character "changes" and "gets worse" over the course of the story). For this reason, in my opinion, LFMAEP still maintains an important place in Buñuel's filmography and for this reason alone deserves to be revisited and (probably) reconsidered.

N.B. Buñuel stated that he was inspired by Puccini's "Tosca" for the scene in which María Félix undresses in front of Jean Servais to save Gérard Philipe's life.

r.m.