And for a change The MacMahonian kept a promise and revisited the Buñuel retrospective running in Nimas. This time, Una Mujer Sin Amor.
Una Mujer Sin Amor was the 8th feature film and 7th directed in Mexico by Luís Buñuel, who by now you know.
Una Mujer Sin Amor adapts to the screen a melodramatic short novel by Guy de Maupassant, the black hole-thick plot involving Rosario (Rosario Granados), wife of humble extraction of grumpy older wealthy antique dealer Don Carlos Montero (Julio Villareal), whose young son Carlos (Jaime Calpe) escapes home after an altercation with dad, to be rescued by passer-by Julio Mistral (Tito Junco), who in turn thus gains the gratitude of the concerned parents and, would you believe it, soon becomes Rosario's lover, eventually entreating her to leave Don Carlos, request which she cannot satisfy due to scruples pertaining her husband's failing health and his attachment to their son, resulting in Julio finally departing to Brazil alone heartbroken, then coming to pass that some 20-plus years later, as Miguel (Javier Loya), Carlos' (now Joaquin Cordero) newly introduced to the plot kid brother graduates from medical school following his brother's footsteps, the family receives the news of the passing, in Brazil, of Julio, who in his will leaves is fortune to none other than Miguel, infuriating Carlos, since Miguel is subsequently awarded the favours of Carlos' flame Luisa (Elda Peralta), leading Carlos to accuse Luisa of preferring his brother because of his money and inducing in Carlos – and the audience – the poisonous but true suspicion that Miguel's inheritance is due to the fact that he actually is the natural son of Julio, revelation to which Don Carlos is spared, as he croaks it during an altercation between Carlos and Miguel at the latter's wedding, following a family confrontation between mother and sons in which (I don't think this qualifies as a spoiler alert) all bitterness is allowed to be extroverted and finally forgiveness and reconciliation triumph.
Before continuing, allow me to interject how much fun I had writing the previous sentence, possibly the longest in the MacMahonian canon. Back to Una Mujer Sin Amor: the consensus evaluation, with which Buñuel himself agreed, is that this is his worst film ever. Underbudgeted and shot in 20 days, the production reportedly used the script of a previous French adaptation of Pierre et Jean (André Cayatte, 1943) and just reshot it shot by shot, changing the language to Spanish and the setting to contemporary Mexico. 20 or 30 years previous, I would have tended to agree, as at the height of my auteurish fervour I would have found it unacceptable that the film doesn’t show the slightest trace of Buñuel´s style, And admittedly, Una Mujer Sin Amor has none of the power of Buñuel's melodramatic masterpieces of the same period, e.g. Susana (1951) or El (1953). But the film is nonetheless dramatically gripping and does do honour to the production standards of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (1933-1964), comparing very favourably with similar fare churned out of Poverty Row around the same time.
So there. I hope to revisit the Buñuel retrospective and report back.