 Should we Feel Sorry for Canelo and Heidegger?
There is a scene from Bunuel's film
where
a group of people are sitting talking
and
enjoying an evening drink on a patio
in a
provincial Spanish town. They hear
the squeaking
sound of an ungreased axle which heralds
the approach of a horse-drawn cart.
Eventually
a rickety wagon hoves into view drawn
by
an emaciated horse, its rib-bones sticking
out and its head hung low. A man sits
on
the cart with a long whip which he
applies
to the horse with gratuitous and needless
force. Behind the cart, tied by a thin
string
to the rear axle, a small dog is being
half
dragged along in the dust, the cord
has bitten
into its neck, for it is so weak it
can hardly
keep up with the pace of the slow-moving
horse.
The small group of people who witness
this
scene are mortified and outraged at
this
cruel spectacle and one of them called
Jorge
rushes into the road to remonstrate
with
the carter. The driver growls back
that it
is his cart, his horse and his dog,
and they
can all get back to where they came
from.
He rejects all demands to stop and
ease the
noose about the dog's neck and give
the horse
a drink of water and a rest. He rejects
all
these demands. At last the people decide
that the only way that they can relieve
the
suffering of the little dog and rescue
it
from it tormentor is to buy it from
the man.
This they do, and the creaking cart
with
the squeaking axle slowly disappears
from
view as they retake their seats, the
little
dog gratefully lapping from a bowl
of water
at their side.
 The jollity of the evening returns as they
resume their drinking and take up their
conversation
once again, but suddenly their ears
pick
up the sound of the squeaking from
another
ungreased axle, and the crack of another
whip, and it is not long before yet
another
cart drawn by another emaciated horse
appears
slowly from around the corner.
Sure enough tied to the rear axle is
some
other little dog, its little neck red-raw
from the biting cord which tugs at
it with
every movement of the cart. And then?
Yes,
more squeaking and cracking of whips
as another
cart - and yet ANOTHER and ANOTHER
appear
from around the bend and proceed in
procession
down the dusty street and traipse in
front
of the little knot of revellers, all
drawn
by half-dead nags being savagely abused
by
cruel drivers, and each pulling a little
dog behind them.
The instructive moral of the scene
is of
course that acts of charity cannot
eliminate
the abuse which mankind inflicts upon
other
humans or upon the animals with which
it
shares the world. Obviously the onlookers
[do-gooders] couldn't buy EVERY little
dog
in order to save them and to release
themselves
from the guilt of any "guilt by
association."
Single acts of compassion, such as
pityingly
understanding that individual metaphysicalists
or transcendentalists [like the little
dogs]
are not really capable of relieving
the angst-ridden
attitudes and self-abusive beliefs
of these
unfortunates who have lost all contact
with
reality. The knowledge that these walking
wounded tied to the axle of their own
inadequacy
are simply the result of their early
brainwashing
in their formative years does not help
in
eradicating the evil, though it might
make
one feel better, like the group of
people
who paid money for the little dog to
be released.
Therefore it is not enough to feel
sympathy
and compassionate understanding for
someone
who comes out with the breathtaking
obviousness
that follows in the next sentence below.
One must face up to this sort of crap.
If
one cares anything at all for the future
of humanity one must do one's little
bit
to oppose rather than appease ignorance,
particularly in the dangerous modern
world
which transcendentalism has produced.
Nowhere in the first 80-pages of Being
and
Time does Heidegger investigatorily
question
the very questioning of the *question*
of
*Being.* The whole tenor of his preparatory
approach is an unquestioning acceptance
of
the conventional, a priori, bizarre,
historical
notion of *Being* as handed down to
him and
emanating from certain primitive Greeks
and
further hyped-up from within the masturbatoriums
of his priestly scholastic medieval
informants."
*Being* is not *dependant* on anything
-
for the belief or *faith* in *Being,*
just
like the belief in *God,* [which is
often
another malignant symptom which accompanies
such psychological ontological fantasies]
is nothing else than the result of
the early
societal brainwashing suffered by those
such
as Heidegger, who in his later years
was
intellectually incapable of recognising,
throwing off and coming to terms with
the
early religious and transcendental
conceptual
child abuse which he suffered in Messkirch,
and the religious and transcendentalist
ill-treatment
he suffered at the hands of his parents
and
the religious Catholic community in
which
he found himself in the latency phase
of
his life and teenage years.
The blasphemous Last Supper scene from ViridianaSome people simply draw the short straw in
life and are psychologically incapable
of
rejecting the puerile nonsense to which
they
were exposed in their adolescence.
The cruel
fact of the matter is that for such
people
as Heidegger FULL noetic maturity only
arrived
physically and not intellectually,
as can
be seen from his attitude to others,
his
naive political stance and his inveterate
lying, [as observed, commented upon
and recorded
by Arendt.]
Such psychotics are dangerous, and
can,
as a result of their early mental conditioning,
burn people alive at the stake, unleash
the
dogs of war on innocents, fly aircraft
full
of screaming people into buildings,
or immolate
themselves in a desperate dive onto
the decks
of aircraft carriers like the Japanese
Shintoists,
and agree with and assist to power
mass murderers
who intend to eliminate millions in
gas chambers
[Heidegger/transcendentalists.]
Should we pity these people? Should
these
individual transcendentalists and their
fellow
religious maniacs be sympathised with
and
*undertood*? After all, they were innocent
children themselves once — just insouciant
kids with a mental tabula rasa - kids
who
were conceptually abused, insidiously
brainwashed
and damaged in this way, by parents,
priests,
newspapers and magazines, early schooling
[with *religious assemblies, etc.,]
and robbed
of any future ability to henceforth
think
laterally and judge for themselves?
My answer is NO! It IS POSSIBLE for
somebody
to summon up the willpower to overcome
these
early disadvantages, as indeed in many
ways
Nietzsche did in relation to religion,
although
the hydra of transcendentalism had
already
wreaked its damage, a mental mutilation
from
which even the poor Nietzsche was incapable
of completely disentangling himself.
Individual
transcendentalists are easily pitied
- but
should we allow this pity to cloud
our judgement?
Heidegger speaks of *Being* as requiring
both the apriority of an existence
for any
being, that is, the world into which
every
being is brought, and the horizon of
all
future possibility.
To mouth such ontological obviousness,
that
for something to be something it must
first
exist as something is the ontology
of the
philosophically ga-ga. OF COURSE something
must exist in order to exist - BUT
NOT FIRST
EXIST! If something wasn't something
it wouldn't
exist as anything in the first place.
How
can there be any
*apriority* regarding: *Being* and
*Existence,*
[which are two words for the same thing
-
one Latin and the other English] in
order
for an entity [a being] to exist? The
perceived
FACT of an entity existing and the
actuality
of such an entity can only be contemporaneous.
The pathetic confusion amongst transcendentalists
regarding
*Being* stems from the fact that existing
as an object is a FACT that can be
observed
- but it is not the FACT which is observed
or the FACT which exists - it is the
OBJECT.
Heidegger's thurifers claim that Heidegger
established the transcendental nature
of
being throughout his entire oeuvre,
but the
Heidra, (from: Greek mythology - monster
with nine heads; when struck off each
head
was replaced by two new ones) doesn't
*establish*
anything at all, other than the fact
of confirming
that he is just another run-of-the-mill,
boring, blinkered imitator and plagiariser
of those ontological inadequates who
preceded
him. He doesn't *establish* the *transcendental
nature* of zilch, because *Being* is
no more
than a jejune fantasy which doesn't
exist
at all, other than in the childish
imagination
of the intellectually undeveloped Heidegger.
It is arguable whether this stunted
intellectual
underdevelopment is his fault or indeed
whether
he and those like him should be blamed
for
holding such attitudes.
Some people simply draw the short straw
in life and are psychologically incapable
of rejecting the puerile nonsense to
which
they were exposed in their adolescence.
The
cruel fact of the matter is that for
such
people as Heidegger full noetic maturity
only arrived physically and not intellectually
as can be seen from his attitude to
others,
his naive political stance and his
inveterate
lying, [as observed and commented upon
by
Arendt].
My answer is NO! It IS POSSIBLE for
somebody
to summon up the willpower to overcome
these
early disadvantages, as indeed in many
ways
Nietzsche did in relation to religion,
although
the hydra of transcendentalism had
already
wreaked its damage, a mental mutilation
from
which even the poor Nietszche was incapable
of completely disentangling himself.
Individual
transcendentalists are easily pitied
- but
should we allow this pity to cloud
our judgement?
The instructive moral of the scene
is of
course that acts of charity cannot
eliminate
the abuse which mankind inflicts upon
other
humans or upon the animals with which
it
shares the world. Obviously the onlookers
[do-gooders] couldn't buy EVERY little
dog
in order to save them. Single acts
of compassion,
such as pityingly understanding that
individual
transcendentalists [like the little
dogs]
are not really capable of relieving
the angst-ridden
attitudes and self-abusive beliefs
of these
unfortunates who have lost all contact
with
reality. The knowledge that these walking
wounded are simply the result of their
early
brainwashing in their formative years
does
not help in eradicating the evil, though
it might make one feel better, like
the group
of people who paid money for the little
dog
to be released. Therefore it is not
enough
to feel sympathy and compassionate
understanding
for someone who comes out with the
breathtaking
obviousness that follows in the next
sentence
below. One must face up to this sort
of crap.
If one cares anything at all for the
future
of humanity one must do one's little
bit
to oppose ignorance, particularly in
the
dangerous modern world which transcendentalism
has produced.
No, I refuse to buy Heidegger's pathetic
little conceptual runts, his word salads,
ill thought-out strangulated dog-matisms
and intellectually damaged incoherencies
whether they appear in conversation,
on paper,
or on the screen.
Jud Evans Jan 2005.
Screenplay by Luis Bunuel in collaboration
with Julio Alejandro
Translated by Piergiuseppe Bozzetti
Before taking her vows, a novice nun,
Viridiana,
visits her only living relative, her
uncle,
Don Jaime, who lives alone on his large
country
estate. Don Jaime is struck by Viridiana’s
resemblance to his wife, who died on
their
wedding night years ago, and attempts
to
coerce Viridiana into staying with
him. When
she refuses, he commits suicide. Guilty,
Viridiana returns to the country house,
which
she inherits along with Don Jaime’s
illegitimate
son, Jorge. Whilst Jorge attempts to
renovate
the estate, Viridiana rounds up some
lame
paupers and provides a home for them
in an
outhouse. Whilst Jorge and Viridiana
are
away, the paupers repay their benefactor’s
kindness by holding a bawdy dinner
party
in Jorge’s house… Few would disagree
that
Viridiana is one of Luis Buñuel’s best
films,
combining the stunning cinematography
and
surreal black comedy for which the
Spanish
director is best known. The film was
also
one of his most controversial, being
banned
in Spain immediately after it won the
Palme
d’Or at the Cannes film festival, and
creating
a scandal in Italy, where an order
was issued
for Buñuel's arrest if ever he set
foot in
the country. It is not difficult to
see why
the film would upset Catholic sensibilities.
The famous last supper scene, where
a group
of disabled paupers re-enact a debauched
version of the famous biblical painting
by
Da Vinci, is one of Buñuel’s most flagrant
attacks on Catholic hypocrisy. This
scene,
and much of what precedes it, shows
that
poverty or ill-fate is no barrier to
moral
corruption: the poor can behave just
as badly,
if not worse, than the most fortunate,
given
half a chance, in strict contrast to
the
teachings of Christ, which are based
to a
great extent on the nobility of poverty.
Viridiana’s own small attempts to do
good
are a spectacular failure compared
with Jorge’s
lesser attempts, the difference being
that
Viridiana is doing good as a conscious
effort
to follow her religious beliefs, whereas
Jorge is governed by basic humanitarian
responses
(for example, the scene where he rescues
an ill-treated dog). Examples like
this about
Buñuel’s perceived flaws in Catholic
teaching
abound in this film, culminating in
an almost
heretical ending.
Honest the film may be; subtle, it
is not.
Here is the actual dialogue for the
scene
from the original film-script:
Jorge, sickened by the cruelty of the
scene,
comes up to the wagon. He is frowning
and
speaks harshly to the peasant.
JORGE:
That animal can't take any more. Now
that
the wagon's empty, why don't you let
him
ride?
The peasant straightens up and stares
at
Jorge.
PEASANT:
It's for people!
JORGE:
Then let him go and he'll follow you.
PEASANT:
And let him get run over by somebody
else?
The apparent contrast between the peasant's
cruelty and his care for the dog bewilders
Jorge. He bends down and strokes the
animal.
JORGE:
I'll buy him.
The peasant looks at him for a moment.
He
is perplexed but reacts immediately.
PEASANT:
He's good at rabbiting and he knows
it.
When we're in the country, if he doesn't
hunt he doesn't get fed.
JORGE:
How much do you want for him? P
PEASANT: (hesitating)
I wasn't thinking of selling him, but
if
you want ... I'll leave it to you.
Jorge pulls some notes out of his pockets
and gives two to the peasant.
JORGE:
All right, untie him.
The peasant does so and hands the string,
which is used as a lead, to Jorge.
PEASANT:
Thank you, and God keep you and bless
you.
(he taps the wagon and addresses the
driver,)
Get moving! He gets onto the wagon
and sits
down where the policemen had been.
The wagon
moves off.
PEASANT: (to Jorge)
And remember, the less he eats, the
better
he runs. J
JORGE: (as the cart is going away)
What's he called?
PEASANT: (shouting)
Canelo!
On hearing his name, the dog tries
to jump
toward his master, but Jorge pulls
him back
with the string.
JORGE:
Be quiet! Where are you going? Come
here,
Canelo! Canelo! Come on!
Jorge and his companion leave the road
and
cross the field toward their workers.
The
wagon continues on its way. Another
carriage
comes from the opposite direction toward
the camera. The second carriage, with
another
miserable dog attached to its axle,
passes
in front of the camera. The two men
do not
notice the unhappy dog as the cart
goes by.
Neither Jorge nor the foreman pays
any attention
to it.
Screenplay by Luis Bunuel (in collaboration
with Julio Alejandro) Translated by
Piergiuseppe
Bozzetti
and now... three excellent reviews...
Keith F. Hatcher
Buñuelesque Extravaganza,
30 August 2001 Author: Keith F. Hatcher
from La Rioja, Spain
Forty years on and `Viridiana' is one of
the very few, almost unique, examples
of
classical Spanish cinema to have survived
the turmoil of the latter half of the
last
century. It remains as a little light
in
the midst of the darkness of the Franco
Régime,
which promptly banned it, or as an
insouciance
to the Vatican, which promptly excomulgated
everyone concerned with it.
Buñuel's genius is apparent in every
frame:
the eye for detail, nonetheless permitting
that impromptu evanesqueness which
lends
exquisiteness to these memorable scenes,
above which shines the `Last Supper'.
And
it is precisely this scene which gives
one
the impression that the real stars
in the
making of this film were the motley
beggars
taken in from the streets. Silvia Pinal
and
Francisco `Paco' Rabal are not outstanding
in this piece; even the incomparable
Fernando
Rey is overshadowed by the band of
social
outcasts. The sheer poeticness so brilliantly
captured by the camera roaming among
the
vagabonds is cinematographic exquisiteness
carried to its extreme: every grimace,
every
wrinkled nose, the debauchery, is what
makes
the principal actors be no such thing,
but
secondary actors overwhelmed by the
nuances
and gestures of these `untouchables".
Brilliant filming, indeed – whether
intentional
or not or whether this be only my personal
interpretation after seeing this film
three
times in the last twenty five years,
is of
course open to debate.
Suffice just to mention Lola Gaos:
(Tristana
(1970) – also by Buñuel - is one of
her other
films worthy of mention, surprisingly
accepted
by the censor's blue pen). In the 70s
her
voice began to break up, such that
in the
end she lived out her last years in
poverty,
forgotten by the times and cinema makers,
until hauled out of hiding for a last
TV
appearance, sardonic way of giving
her a
few pennies to eke out to the end of
her
existence, but by then (1989) her voice
was
so fragmented it was near impossible
to understand
her. Her throat-cancer was never treated
adequately.
Luis Buñuel (`Thank God I am an atheist')
has gone; Fernando Rey has gone; Paco
Rabal
died yesterday in an aeroplane flying
over
the English Channel, returning from
the Montreal
Film Festival where he received his
last
award…….
They leave `Viridiana' as testament
to those
historical and difficult times, an
isolated
exposé amid what was, for Spain, a
cinematographical
desert.
Luis Buñuel: Viridiana
By Derek Malcolm Thursday April 1, 1999
A great many directors, when asked
to name
their favourite film-maker, invoke
the name
of Luis Buñuel. It isn't surprising,
since
he was undoubtedly a genius who had
the invaluable
capacity to offend and delight at the
same
time. You could choose any of a dozen
of
his films as one of the best 100. Viridiana
is my choice, since it caused the maximum
annoyance to people one is quite glad
to
see offended. It was made in Spain
in 1960
after Franco had told his minister
of culture
to invite the country's leading film-maker
back from exile in Mexico to make whatever
film he liked. But once he completed
it,
Buñuel sensibly decamped, deliberately
leaving
a few out-takes behind to be instantly
burned
by the authorities.
The film was, of course, banned outright
in Spain and the minister reprimanded
for
passing the script. But it won the
Palme
D'Or at Cannes, despite protests about
it
representing Spain and articles in
l'Osservatore
Romano, the Vatican's official organ,
saying
it was an insult not just to Catholicism
but to Christianity itself.
That was exactly what Buñuel intended.
He
had long ago lost his faith and Viridiana
was the score he had to settle with
the Catholic
Church, for its support of Franco and
what
he considered to be many other sins.
"I
hope I don't go to hell", he once
said,
"imagine the table talk of all
those
popes and cardinals".
Viridiana, played by Silvia Pinal,
is a
young nun about to take her final vows.
She's
so devout that she wears a crown of
thorns
and a large wooden crucifix hangs over
her
bed. Unfortunately her uncle (the great
Spanish
actor Fernando Rey) is hopelessly obsessed
with her and gets his servant to drug
her.
Seduction is beyond him though, and
he hangs
himself in a fit of guilt after telling
her
that he had deflowered her.
Disorientated by these strange events,
she
invites a band of beggars to live in
her
uncle's old crumbling estate, hoping
to reclaim
them, and possibly herself, through
prayer
and charity. They have different ideas,
however,
and take over the house for an orgy.
One
of them even rapes her. Totally disillusioned
(like Buñuel), she plays a game of
cards,
to the strains of Shake Your Cares
Away,
with her uncle's illegitimate son and
the
servant who is his mistress. The game
ends
is a kind of menage à trois.
Sequence after sequence of this extraordinary
film - incredibly Spanish and yet incredibly
offensive to conservative Spaniards
- show
both Buñuel as a master film-maker,
telling
a story that is simultaneously simple
and
sophisticated. The scene in which Viridiana
piously collects her beggars, each
more ugly
or deformed than the next, and their
singing
of the Angelus as a rubbish truck thunders
by, is later contrasted with their
ungrateful
party in the villa. A leper dresses
as a
bride and the company are suddenly
frozen
into a replica of da Vinci's Last Supper
(to the crackling strains of Handel's
Hallelujah
Chorus on the gramophone, which continues
as the nun is molested).
This, suggests Buñuel, is what happens
to
saints - their virtue is thrown back
in their
faces. People, and the world, cannot
be changed,
and acceptance of things as they are
is the
only course.
People have said that Buñuel was first
and
foremost a Spaniard and then a surrealist,
and it is no accident that the ending
of
Viridiana resembles that of L'Age d'Or,
his
great surrealist masterpiece made 30
years
previously. But there's a despair about
this
film which wasn't in that earlier work.
"I should like", he once
famously
said, "to make even the most ordinary
spectator feel that he is not living
in the
best of all possible worlds".
The forces
of darkness, he suggests, await us
all. The
perfect candidate for Prozac then.
But then
we would never have had Viridiana,
one of
the great feelbad movies of all time.
A Good Review by Michael Brooke
Viridiana: Luis Buñuel As a character
in
a John Ford film released only a few
months
after Viridiana wisely recommended,
"when
the facts don't fit the legend, print
the
legend." So let's kick off with
the
legend.
Though a native of Spain, Luis Buñuel
spent
most of the period from the late 1930s
to
the early 1960s in self-imposed exile
in
the USA and Mexico, where he built
up a reputation
as one of the Spanish-speaking cinema's
greatest
talents. Hearing of this, Spain's Fascist
dictator General Franco invited Buñuel
back
to make a film in his native country
for
the first time in thirty years...
... and Buñuel, in a masterly demonstration
of how to bite the hand that feeds
you clean
off, used this largesse to make a film
so
calculatedly offensive to right-wing
Catholic
sensibilities that Franco immediately
banned
it when he saw it and ordered the negative
to be seized. Fortunately, it was smuggled
out of the country and a print was
screened
at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, where
it
promptly won the Palme d'Or - setting
in
train the extraordinary flowering of
Buñuel's
late career.
Just how much of the above is true
is a
matter for speculation: Buñuel denied
most
of it and even claimed that Franco
liked
the film, though wouldn't intervene
when
his censors took against it. But it's
hard
to believe that Buñuel didn't know
exactly
what he was doing - not least given
the evidence
of Viridiana itself. Working with the
biggest
budget that he'd enjoyed up to then,
it's
as clear-eyed and lucid as any of his
other
films, with a near-total absence of
stylistic
flashiness. There's plenty of symbolism
if
you like that sort of thing, but the
film
never runs the risk of slipping into
arty
pretension: the story and subject-matter
are too strong.
Viridiana (Silvia Pinal, foreshadowing
the
icy blonde characters Catherine Deneuve
would
play in Belle de Jour and Tristana)
is on
the verge of becoming a nun, but before
she
takes her final vows she is summoned
to visit
her uncle, the middle-aged Don Jaime
(the
great Fernando Rey).
She's initially worried about the corruption
of his wealth, but it's unsurprisingly
(to
all except her) the corruption of the
flesh
he's most interested in, largely thanks
to
Viridiana's startling resemblance to
his
late wife. After a series of fetishistic
games lead to a disastrous seduction
attempt,
Don Jaime hangs himself and leaves
Viridiana
his estate.
Vowing to use her new-found money for
good
causes, Viridiana takes in a group
of beggars,
but as they take over her house and
her life
she quickly comes to realise the hard
way
just how limited and hopelessly idealistic
her vision of the world is, and that
the
cynical rationalism of her cousin Jorge,
Don Jaime's worldly son, though less
godly,
offers far more practical benefits
(the closing
card game, underscored by a wonderfully
trashy
and embarrassingly catchy early Sixties
pop
song in English - as distinct from
the Handel
and Mozart Viridiana prefers - is a
miniature
classic of pointed observation in its
own
right).
It's easy to see why many Catholic
groups
found Viridiana so offensive (it was
condemned
by the Vatican, who took particular
exception
to the beggars' re-enactment of the
Last
Supper), but Buñuel's anticlericalism
- in
this film above all - stems from a
desire
to be painfully honest. If the Church
is
demonstrably failing its people by
substituting
practical action for meaningless piety,
why
stay silent?
The performances are beyond praise,
from
established actors Silvia Pinal, Francisco
Rabal and Fernando Rey (in the first
of four
marvellous characterisations he would
create
for Buñuel), right down to the beggars,
some
of whom were genuine (and apparently
their
mutual animosity was equally unfaked).
Both
Viridiana and Don Jaime could easily
have
been two-dimensional caricatures -
we've
seen plenty of idealistic, virginal
nuns
and lecherous uncles in other films
- but
Buñuel, Rey and Pinal add untold layers
of
ambiguity and complexity: Don Jaime's
unhealthy
interest in his niece is counterbalanced
with and to a certain extent justified
by
his grief at losing his wife on her
wedding
night, a void in his life that he's
never
been able to fill.
It's often underrated compared with
the
more high-profile French-made masterpieces
that Buñuel would make over the next
decade
and a half, but two viewings over the
last
few months have convinced me that it's
one
of his very best films - and considering
Buñuel's unquestioned importance in
cinema
history that's no small claim, or indeed
achievement.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As ever in these situations, I'll get
the
bad news out of the way at the start,
assuming
you haven't already spotted it in the
infobar
at the side: this DVD doesn't have
an English
language option in any shape or form,
offering
only the original Spanish soundtrack
with
optional French subtitles. Since this
is
a French DVD, one can't complain too
much
- though it does seem odd that they've
specifically
released it as a Region 0 disc without
catering
for a wider market.
That's the only drawback, though -
everything
else about this DVD turned out to be
way
ahead of expectations. Although at
the time
of writing (April 2001) there are only
two
Buñuel DVDs available, it's immensely
gratifying
that the quality threshold is so high.
Criterion's
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
was
a revelation even to people who thought
they
knew the film backwards, and if this
DVD
never quite scales the same heights,
it's
still a remarkably good transfer.
For starters, it's anamorphic, while
still
respecting the original 1.66:1 ratio
(the
picture is slightly windowboxed at
the sides).
Secondly, the print is in superb condition
- a tiny number of minor spots and
scratches,
which are doubtless age-related, but
absolutely
nothing obtrusive or distracting. Thirdly,
the transfer is excellent, with digital
artefacting
kept to a minimum.
I do have some minor quibbles: the
print
is a little contrasty for my taste
(though
despite this, shadow detail still manages
to come across reasonably well) and
it lacks
the lustre of the Criterion print -
but it's
still by far the best print I've ever
seen
of Viridiana, putting both my old VHS
copy
and indeed the 35mm version I saw a
few months
ago to shame.
The sound is less spectacular, but
that's
unsurprising given its age and the
mono source
materials. The box claims that it's
stereo,
but you'd never know it to listen to
it -
but I don't have any serious complaints:
it sounds exactly like what I've heard
in
the past, and any drawbacks (a relatively
narrow dynamic range, for instance)
are almost
certainly down to the original materials.
There are just eight chapter stops,
which
is a bit on the skimpy side, though
they've
otherwise been chosen well. Note that
the
running time is given as 91 minutes
on the
box and various French websites - in
actual
fact, it's just 87 minutes, but that's
explained
by the PAL speedup.
Extras are minimal - a text-only essay
on
the film and its background, which
scrolls
up the screen when selected, and a
complete
Buñuel filmography. Both the above
are, of
course, in French.
All in all, though, I was delighted
with
this DVD - if it had English subtitles,
it
would be more than a match for Criterion's
Buñuel efforts, and if the language
barrier
isn't a problem you can rest assured
that
you're getting about as good a transfer
of
Buñuel's masterpiece as you're ever
likely
to. With more Buñuel titles on the
way later
this year
- some of them on UK labels - the first
batch of releases have set a formidably
high
standard: let's hope their successors
continue
to do the films justice. Michael Brooke
|
Evans Experientialism 
Should we Feel Sorry for Canelo and
Heidegger?
