Microcinema DVDs - Luis Buñuel's Death in the Garden

2010-02-26 Barnes and Noble
By Chris Gisonny

A rare gem excavated from Luis Buñuel’s Mexican period, Death in the Garden (1956) depicts the savage violence that unites nature and civilization. A criminal (Georges Marchal), a priest (Michel Piccoli), a prostitute (Simone Signoret), a diamond miner (Charles Vanel), and his deaf-mute daughter (Michéle Girardon) struggle to survive after a revolution forces them to flee into the jungle. Buñuel’s typical obsessions blossom across the narrative and render this genre film as idiosyncratic as his collaborations with Salvador Dalí during the silent era and the masterful productions of his late-career renaissance in the '60s and '70s. Of the many Buñuelian motifs that appear, his fierce anticlericalism and his fascination with entomology steal the show. The former finds its bitter expression when a dying soldier refuses his last rites, while the latter works itself into a jarring moment when an army of ants devours a snake.

The film ultimately concerns moral ambiguity and the futility of idealism, which nicely complements a story comprised of meandering conflicts. Buñuel actually admitted that he struggled with the script, despite help from novelist and Oulipo co-founder Raymond Queneau. To make matters worse, he also found himself battling a temperamental Signoret on the set. She apparently longed to be with her husband, Yves Montand, in Rome instead of with Buñuel in the jungle. Signoret’s sentiments aside, anyone acquainted with this surrealist's expansive career knows that he is one of the most qualified adventurers to guide us through the jungle (figuratively speaking, at least). In his autobiography, Buñuel famously provided a recipe for the perfect martini. He was clearly a man one could trust.

2009-11-20 Popmatters
By Scott Jordan Harris

Luis Buñuel made so many masterpieces in his near 50-year career that those films of his that are merely very good tend to be overlooked. Death in the Garden is just such a film, and so it is a delight to discover it has been given such a well-appointed release on DVD.

Introducing Death in the Garden as a Buñuel film, however, is effectively a misrepresentation: there is little, if not nothing, in the film’s opening hour to suggest that this is the work of the same savage surrealist who created the better known Belle de Jour, Un Chien Andalou or Virdiana. The synopsis on the back cover of this DVD begins:

Amid a revolution in a South American mining outpost, a band of ill-starred fugitives… are forced to flee for their lives into the jungle. Starving, exhausted, and stripped of their old identities, they wander desperately lured by one deceptive promise of salvation after another.

Most summaries of Death in the Garden begin the same way, essentially starting over halfway through the story. The aforementioned fugitives do not actually flee into the jungle until over 50 into this 100-minute movie. For the majority of its running time, the film is a spirited and uncomplicated adventure movie about the anger felt by a group of diamond prospectors—at new laws being imposed by the military government of an unspecified South American nation—and the unlikely uprising to which this leads.

Charles Vanel is Castin, an ageing miner who hopes to escape to Paris with his wealth, his childlike, deaf-mute daughter (Michéle Girardon) and Djin (Simone Signoret), the hard-hearted whore he wants to make his wife. Michel Piccoli is Father Lizzardi, a priest so pious he is almost an automaton, and Georges Marchal is Chark, an angry adventurer who is probably an outlaw and certainly unsavoury. Their stories become entwined as the diamond miners’ uprising erupts and, through a combination of chance and design, they flee their unnamed town together.

What counts against this portion of the film is that—though well made—it has little intellectual resonance, and that it could have been overseen by any clever and competent director. The second portion, however, is unmistakably imprinted with the identity of Buñuel, and so it is unsurprising that discussion of Death in the Garden generally begins with it.

Such discussions, though, do the film a disservice. While its first half is unlikely ever to invite the rigorous readings that can be made of its second, it has a profound influence upon how we approach that second section of the movie. The opening 50-minutes instill in viewers the kind of vital interest we have in the fate of the characters that is routine in a romantic melodrama, or a Western winding up to its shootout. To create characters whose fates are both allegorical and as basically fascinating as a soap opera storyline is one of the highest aims of all fiction. Death in the Garden achieves this, and does so largely because of the investment viewers make in the five main characters in the film’s underappreciated first half.

As the better-appreciated second half begins, and the film transitions from a film directed by Buñuel into a Buñuel film, those lead characters, through circumstances it would spoil too much of the plot to elaborate upon, are driven into the rainforest by a pack of pursuing policeman. The Eastmancolor cinematography, which so often seems a poor substitute for Technicolour, is inspired here, suggesting the smothering homogeneity of the jungle, thus evoking the decay corroding the characters whose struggles are set against it. The sound, too, is remarkable; expertly and innovatively capturing the oppressive and alien soundscape of a jungle.

As his characters trudge towards death, Buñuel surprises his audience with the film’s only true splashes of Surrealism. This first is simply showy – the jarring images and sounds of a Paris street abruptly appears, as Castin, abandoning a dream, tosses a Parisian postcard into a campfire – but the second is astonishing. As Buñuel expert Victor Fuentes says in his excellent half-hour interview on this DVD:

... (A)ll of a sudden there’s a Buñuelian spectacle: a plane appears carrying the artefacts of our consumer society… after so much hardship, the jungle turns into a boureoise salon with all the goodies of consumer society. In The Exterminating Angel we see the salon transformed into the jungle…

In Death in the Garden we see the jungle transformed into the salon—and the sudden comfort and avarice this brings the characters stuns us. For the second time, we lose our sense of where the film is heading and are forced to reassess the way we engage with it.

Fuentes’s interview is probably the standout among the admirable extras here. Another scholar, Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz, contributes an audio commentary and there is a second half-hour interview, with Michel Piccoli. The DVD’s unusually stylish booklet contains an essay on Simone Signoret by Susan Hayward and one on Buñuel by his son, Juan-Luis. If these are often too generally-focused and don’t deal specifically with Death in the Garden as much as we might like, it is a very slight criticism of a very impressive release.

Impressive as it is, though, the DVD cannot be recommended to all. To viewers who aren’t thoroughly versed in Buñuel’s work, there must be at least eight of his films more worthy of their attention than this. To anyone who has seen his several classics, however, and wants to experience more than the very cream of the Mexican master’s oeuvre, Death in the Garden is an ideal purchase.

2009-10-29 DVD Talk
By Jamie S. Rich

I haven't seen a lot of movies from Luis Buñuel's Mexican period, but what I have been able to catch suggests to me that this fruitful work time often saw the surrealist director turning to more conventional stories rather than the looser, more anarchic films that bookended his creative career. 1956's Death in the Garden (La morte en ce jardin) is no exception. Based on a novel by José-André Lacour, it's one half political drama, one half adventure movie, with a lot of steamy melodrama mixed in.

Death in the Garden is set in a remote South American village that has sprung up around the area diamond mines. A military revolution is underway, and the new ruling class demands that the independent miners move off their claims, surrendering their land to the government. This inspires heated protests that threaten to split the town. The scoundrel Chark (Georges Marchal) unexpectedly wanders into this charged atmosphere on his way to Brazil. Where he's coming from is never really explained, though after he drifts into the bed of Djin (Simone Signoret), the town madam, she gives him up to the police. They claim that the money belt he is wearing is full of stolen cash. It's not clear whether this is true. Chark resists his arrest, but he never really denies the charges.

Amidst all this are an upstanding priest (Michel Piccoli), an old prospector (Charles Vanel), and his deaf-mute daughter (Michèle Girardon). All three are looking to get out of town, but the situation explodes before they can. Chark escapes from prison and joins the violent uprising, and the easily identifiable prospector, who is named Castin, is branded alongside Chark as one of the instigators and a bounty is placed on both of their heads. Castin has a pretty sizable cache of diamonds, and he's in love with Djin, who will help him escape and become his wife in hopes of inheriting his riches. She books herself passage on a pimp's boat, sneaks Castin and daughter on board, and is then much chagrined when Chark, who has a grudge against her, hijacks the ship. Oh, yeah, and the priest, Father Lizardi, is there, too.

That's a lot of plot for one movie, and that's just the first half. The cops take off in hot pursuit after the fugitives, and Chark and his crew run aground midway between the village and Brazil. They have to take the rest of the journey on foot, contending with a hostile jungle they are not prepared for. Greed and their natural selfishness begin to take over as they revert to animalistic ways. It's kind of an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em scenario. Humans in the wild will become wild. Here the old rascal Buñuel gets playful, filling the speakers with the cries of jungle creatures, the sounds hedging in on the wanderers as much as the trees. It's a harsh environment where the strongest isn't always the most obvious candidate. Chark--whose name is meant to sound like "Shark," just as Lizardi is a "lizard"--kills a snake, and the snake carcass is set upon by fire ants. The closer you get to the ground, it seems, the deadlier the predator.

Buñuel stages all of this potboiler action in an exaggerated fashion. The melodrama is cranked all the way up, nuanced acting taking a backseat to bald, on-the-face-of-it emoting. Though the early part of the picture has political undertones, with Buñuel and his writers taking aim at oppressive governments and the exploitation of the working class, even before the group gets to the jungle, it's clear that man is hopelessly divided. It's every crook for himself, regardless of class. Amusingly, this means some personality switch-ups. Chark grows compassionate, becoming protective of Castin's daughter, whereas Castin becomes selfish and nihilistic. Not that he doesn't have plenty of reason to hate Chark. The tough guy ends up stealing Djin, who has softened under his impromptu leadership. While before she was willing to marry Castin for his diamond bag, she surrenders the lost jewelry she finds at the site of a plane crash to Chark as a symbol of love and partnership. Through it all, Lizardi is caught in the middle, constantly compromised--or at least caught in compromising positions. Prior to leaving town, he was found in Djin's bedroom, a humiliation he must endure rather than reveal he is there to see a wanted man.

Death in the Garden is fun to watch, full of Buñuel's trademark pranksterism and evocative imagery. He plays it larger here, enjoying the wide emotional expanse the potboiler provides him. I do think, however, that the more focused first half is more interesting. The communist-leaning message gives Death in the Garden some bite, and the action sequences and dirty dealing make for an exciting plot. The jungle trek, on the other hand, feels more conventional and overly long. The broad strokes don't work as well on the confined canvas.

Things pick back up in the final reel, when all the craziness starts to take its toll. With the Promised Land in site, the last vestiges of civility drop. It's a cynical ending, paying off on Buñuel's conceit that the bad will make good and the good will go bad, and actually full of quite a few surprises. In fact, regardless of the familiarity of the territory or even the slowness of some of the walking through it, Buñuel rarely makes the predictable choice. I assume he picked such typical stories for the intended purpose of making them atypical, and he does just that. You know, it strikes me that if this script had been shot in Hollywood at the same time as Luis Buñuel was shooting it down in Mexico, it could have been a fairly decent Raoul Walsh picture. As it is, it's a fairly decent Luis Buñuel one and worth checking out.

Video:
Death in the Garden is a color film presented in full frame, with the package boasting a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. IMDB suggests the film was shot at 1.37, and indeed, as you can see from the screengrabs, the size looks more in line with a standard 1.33 than it does the more European framing of 1.66.

The image looks fairly good, clean of most spotting and scratching. The colors are kind of garish, as often was the case with old 35 mm Technicolor. The transfer only falls down in terms of resolution. You will see some ghosting and some digital combing.

Sound:
There are two dubs here, one in French (thus leaning toward the French-speaking actors), and one in Spanish. The French is the default that plays automatically. Both are mixed in stereo.

The optional English subtitles are good, though slow at times, often appearing after a line has been said rather than in conjunction with the audio.

Extras:
Death in the Garden is packaged in a standard-sized plastic keepcase. A 12-page interior booklet features photos, credits, and essays about the film by Juan-Luis Buñuel and scholar Susan Hayward.

Film historian Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz recorded a new audio commentary for Death in the Garden, in which he explores the movie in terms of style, story, and the details of the production, placing the film in the context of Buñuel's career based on when it was made, both in relation to the story of the director's life and the development of his themes.

Two new interviews feature actor Michel Piccoli (35 minutes, 50 seconds) and Buñuel expert Victor Fuentes (24:46), both of whom look at this movie in addition to the broader subject of the director's artistic passions.

A stills gallery is set to music from the film and runs as a 1-minute, 30-second slideshow. It features on-set photos as well as publicity shots.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Recommended. Though not up to the dizzying heights of some of Buñuel's later work, Death in the Garden is a good example of his Mexican period. Melodramatic, politically provocative, and often playful in its approach, it takes a dime-novel plot and turns it into an adventure movie that examines human nature and the animal instinct inside all of us. With Simone Signoret as a weary, untrusting prostitute and Michel Piccoli as a priest with his faith down, Death in the Garden is an enticing bit of fun. Flawed, sure, but fun all the same.

2009-10-29 seanax.com
By Sean Axmaker

The “garden” of Death In The Garden (La Mort En Ce Jardin) (Microcinema) is the South American jungle, but there’s death everywhere in this rarely seen Luis Bunuel thriller. Chark, a hard-bitten prospector (Georges Marchal) wanders into a rural mining village and the middle of an uprising against the corrupt military rule. He’s hardly an innocent, but in this mercenary world he’s as close to hero as we’ll find even as he uses the uprising for his own revenge and escape from a criminal frame-up. Some escape; the second half of the film follows Chark and a rag-tag group of mercenaries (including Simone Signoret as an opportunistic hooker and innocents (Michel Piccoli as a naïve but sincere priest and Michèle Girardon as the deaf-mute daughter of a local miner) fleeing the violence of the uprising into the jungle, where they become lost in the “garden” which, true to Bunuel and his cheeky Biblical reference, is both beautiful and deadly.

This 1956 Franco-Mexican co-production was one of Bunuel’s “commercial” films and he delivers a wonderfully cynical thriller filled with brilliant Bunuelian flourishes (Chark is arrested but dragged to a church on his way to the station, where the cop kicks him in the leg to make him kneel in prayer) and a grim sense of futility. But Bunuel is also a solid commercial filmmaker and he delivers a tight thriller filled with cynicism right out of American film noir and an atmosphere unique to this film. The jungle scenes may be studio-bound, but the thick, smothering foliage creates a hothouse claustrophobia and the soundtrack is dense with the alien world of nature, whether it’s the oppressive white noise of the rain or the constant bird chirps and insect buzzing of day time scenes. The disc is nicely mastered from a restored print with vivid color and includes both French and Spanish soundtracks with English subtitles. There’s a generous new 35-minute career retrospective interview with Michel Piccoli conducted by Juan-Luis Bunuel, as well as an interview with Bunuel scholar Victor Fuentes, commentary by film scholar Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz and an accompanying booklet with essays.

2009-10-26 DVD Talk
By Glenn Erickson

His avant-garde career cut off by the Spanish Civil War, director Luis Buñuel made an impressive cinematic comeback in Mexico with pictures like Subida al Cielo and the internationally acclaimed Los Olvidados. By the middle 1950s he was ready to reach out for larger productions and larger audiences. 1956's Death in the Garden is a Mexican-French co-production with big-name French stars, filmed on location in Mexico.

The French title La mort in ce jardin is said to actually translate as "Death in this Garden", perhaps to make more of an issue of the film as a social morality play. The movie is considered the second of a Buñuel political trilogy that includes Cela s'appelle l'aurore and El fièvre monte à El Pao. They aren't necessarily about actual revolutions but involve various kinds of insurrection against power structures in Latin America.

Hardworking diamond miners in an unnamed South American country are infuriated when, just as it looks that their efforts will yield results, the repressive government revokes their claim and orders them to leave. Their grievances turn into a bloody riot. A disparate group of people is affected. Having hidden away a sack of uncut diamonds, miner Castin (Charles Vanel of The Wages of Fear) plans to return to France with his deaf-mute daughter María (Michèle Girardon) and the local prostitute Djin (Simone Signoret), if she'll accept his marriage proposal. The military authorities declare Castin a ringleader of the uprising, and want him held for execution. Also fleeing is adventurer-criminal Chark (George Marchal of Cela s'appelle l'aurore and The Colossus of Rhodes). In his one day in town Chark has already been robbed and imprisoned by the corrupt police, with the aid of Djin and her crooked partner Chenko (Tito Junco), a pimp who operates a riverboat. Chark escapes and helps the rioters blow up a building. The idealistic Father Lizzardi (a young Michel Piccoli) decides that all must flee -- even Djin, who is now considered an accessory for hiding Castin in her rooms.

All of these people end up aboard Chenko's boat. Chark takes Chenko prisoner and leads the group's freedom flight to Brazil. They tangle with the army, which eventually withdraws in the certainty that the escapees will perish in the jungle. But even when left in peace this small sampling of humans can't seem to cooperate with each other.

Death in the Garden perhaps spreads itself out a bit too thinly. Henri-Georges Clouzot blamed an American oil company for all the evil in The Wages of Fear, but Buñuel indicts all of society, its corrupt leaders and the powerless citizens, in one fell swoop. The government has only to issue an edict to steal the fruits of the miners' labor, but no solidarity exists among working men either. Castin and Chark will surely be betrayed for the reward on their heads. The mercenary Djin sells out Chark without a second thought. Chenko bears false witness against Chark just as casually, condemning him to death for a few pesos. The average nice guys in the bars can't be depended upon either. When Father Lizzardi covers for Castin, the townspeople automatically assume that he's another of Djin's customers and unfaithful to his vows.

Out in the wild things get worse, not better, allowing Buñuel to score his familiar negative points about human nature. The individualist Chark takes responsibility for the others, making it possible for them to attempt a cross-country escape through the jungle. Following the South American literary tradition of La selva, the jungle is a place that silently swallows up those who dare to enter. With typical narrative logic, Buñuel simply allows his characters to follow their true natures. The scheming Chenko maroons his captors without adequate food. Morale breaks down. María is drawn to Chark, while Castin becomes disoriented and eventually goes mad. Father Lizzardi's tolerant and trusting nature leads directly to serious trouble. Every time Chark allows the padre to follow his humanitarian instincts, something goes very wrong. In this jungle (or Garden of Eden), only Chark's unsentimental pragmatism makes sense.

Georges Marchal is a fair-minded but coarse hero. His introductory shot shows him "giving the finger" to a troop of armed soldiers pointing rifles, something we don't expect in any movie made in 1956. All the performances are good but viewers looking for standout scenes with Signoret and Vanel will probably be disappointed. Standard "star showcase" scenes usually involve characters transcending their base natures, something that doesn't happen in this director's movies. Buñuel's human specimens follow a logical route to their own destruction. All that's needed is a shove from a hostile society.

Classic surreal Buñuelisms are few but strong. In one scene the starving party tries desperately to start a fire to cook a partially skinned python. When the fire is finally lit, they look over to see the snake covered in ants ... and twisting as if still alive. Audiences find it disturbing when one of the characters sits by the river, idly tossing away precious diamonds. Seeing a fortune go to waste is a bigger jolt than scenes in which characters are killed. The moment seems designed by Buñuel to demonstrate our essentially bourgeois materialism.

The last act sees the survivors discover the wreck of a crashed passenger plane, like primitive men finding an artifact from the future. The plane carries food they can eat, but also clothes and luxuries. The women take the clothing of the dead to compete for Chark's affections. The restoration of the material world triggers a resurgence of selfish behavior, and hastens the violent ending.

Transfluxfilms and Microcinema's Death in the Garden is a quality DVD from excellent source materials. As I have not once in the past forty years seen this title showing up in theaters, special venues or video, it's a very welcome find. The flat transfer seems proper even though the main titles are framed for an image at least as wide as 1:66; perhaps the titles were re-shot to allow screenings after widescreen became the norm. The disc comes with full audio tracks in Spanish and the original French, with English subtitles.

The movie is filmed in bright color by Jorge Stahl, Jr., (Garden of Evil, The Beast of Hollow Mountain) on some of the same locations used for Vera Cruz. The main town is clearly the French fortress from the conclusion of the Robert Aldrich film. The emaciated storekeep is played by Francisco Reiguera, Orson Welles' Don Quixote.

The disc extras include an interesting Buñuel-centric audio commentary by Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz. Film scholar Victor Fuentes is interviewed on camera, along with actor Michel Piccoli. The amusing Piccoli insists that he won't divulge anything personal about Buñuel, and then offers two or three funny anecdotes anyway. A booklet contains an essay by Juan-Luis Buñuel and an essay excerpt on Simone Signoret by critic Susan Hayward.

Even Raymond Durgnat got his plot synopsis wrong for Death in the Garden, which shows us how rare the picture once was. Microcinema's DVD release will be a must-have for Buñuel fans, most of whom will go way out of their way to see more of his pictures.

2009-10-21 Curled Up With a Good DVD
By Trent Daniel

Though perhaps relatively forgotten today, Luis Bunuel is still considered by cinephiles to be one of the most important directors of all time, as well as, along with Fellini, perhaps the greatest surrealist filmmaker. During the 1950s, Bunuel worked in Mexico and made a small number of low-budget Mexican-French productions before returning to Europe in the late 1960s.

Death in the Garden (1956) is, for Bunuel, a relatively mainstream adventure film, perhaps designed at the behest of the film’s backers to be somewhat commercial. Still, there are plenty of avant garde, surrealist touches in this film that make it much more than your average B-movie.

The plot: In an unnamed Latin American country, a loner named Shark (Georges Marchal) arrives in a small gold-mining community. The town is in upheaval because the government has seized the local diamond mine and placed it under the rule of a corrupt military captain. Through numerous complicated plot devices, the audience is eventually introduced to the main characters: Shark; Dijn; the town madame (Simone Signoret); Father Lizzardi (Michel Piccoli); old prospector Castin (Charles Varnel); and Castin’s deaf and mute daughter (Michèle Girardon). These six main characters try to run from the turmoil (and the Captain) by way of the Amazon but soon have to abandon ship as their boat cannot outrun the military’s vessel. The last half of the film finds the six lost in the Amazon jungle and left to fight for their lives.

There is a sharp divide in both tone and plot for this film. The first half, set in the corrupt town, features numerous characters, is plot-heavy and a relatively fast-paced but standard action film. Only the six main characters are seen for the remainder of the film. In this second half, as the characters struggle to survive and begin to go mad, Bunuel adds some surrealist touches - such as the profound but absolutely hideous shot of ants crawling over a skinned snake, a sudden shot of downtown Paris that quickly dissolves into a photo about to be burned (signifying a lost dream), and the sudden discovery of the aftermath of a plane crash (note: this plane crash is vintage Bunuel, for it not only comes out of the blue but is also somewhat of a critique of the belief in a God -Father Lizzardi thanks God for the miracle of the downed plane, but Shark is quick to add that 50 people had to die for this miracle).

This film is not Bunuel’s greatest work (those would likely be Belle du Jour, L'Age D'or or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, yet it is a very good, interesting film highly recommended for those interested in the director’s work. It integrates some touches of the surrealism he is known for and makes some profound statements regarding the brutal practicality of life, yet it also works as an entertaining potboiler.

Extras:

* Audio commentary by film scholar Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz
* New video interviews with actor Michael Piccoli and film scholar Victor Fuentes
* Booklet featuring essays by Javier Espada, Juan-Luis Buñuel and Susan Hayward

0000-00-00 Slant Magazine
By Ed Gonzalez

Luis Buñuel followed 1955's little-known That is the Dawn with the Mexican-French co-production The Death in the Garden (also known as Gina), a precursor of sorts to his equally minor Fever Mounts in El Pao. In a nameless Latin American country, a foreigner named Shark (Georges Marchal) is caught in the middle a political uprising between a group of oppressed diamond miners and the malicious Captain Ferrero (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos). Amid the turmoil of the banana republic revolution, Shark joins an all-star group of political refugees on a boat ride to an elusive Brazil. Though the film's first half is noticeably burdened by plot, things take a turn for the surreal when the refugees escape into the jungle (the titular "garden"). After going around in circles for days, Shark discovers a downed plane full of food and luxury items. Father Lizardi (a then unknown Michel Piccoli) thanks God for this miracle yet Shark is quick to point out that some 50 people had to die for that miracle. The prostitute Djin (Simon Signoret) is equally humbled by hunger though it's not long before she and Lizardi are shot dead by one of their own. This tale of heated passions and broken dreams was noticeably compromised by an insufferable shooting schedule. Buñuel had little financing for the project and was burdened by the constant changes being made to the script. More troublesome, though, was Signoret. According to Buñuel, the unruly actress missed her husband Yves Montand so much that "on her way to join us in Mexico, she slipped some Communist documents into her passport, hoping to be turned away by American Immigration."

2009-06-04 New York Times
By Vincent Canby

Like "Fever Mounts at El Pao," a 1959 Mexican-French co-production that Buñuel himself would like to forget. "Death in the Garden" is full of marvelous, uniquely Buñuelian moments set in a melodramatic custard. It's not a film by which to be introduced to Buñuel, but if you know and appreciate his work as I do, it's one of the few movies around that should not be missed.
"Death in the Garden," set in the backwaters and the jungles of an unidentified South American dictatorship, is a large-scale narrative that takes on state, church, the military, society and the individual in such a way that you feel the director must have intended this primeval locale to be a kind of psychological mirror-image of the Franco Spain from which he exiled himself.
Though the film's intellectual substructure is fascinating, the screenplay (by Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza and Raymond Queneau) is so packed with incident that it's all that one can do to keep up with the plot, which is at war with reflection.
Its principal characters are a beautiful hard-hearted whore (played by a very young Simone Signoret), a handsome, amoral young drifter (Georges Marchal), a well-meaning but ineffectual priest (Michel Piccoli, with all of his hair), an aging diamond miner (Charles Vanel) who dreams of opening a restaurant in Marseilles, and his pretty, mute daughter (Michele Girardon).
Through one ruse and another, including a bloody but ineffectual rebellion, Buñuel and his collaborators put the characters into the position of having to flee for their lives upstream and into the jungles. Nobody in the small party of fugitives either lives or dies by accident. Their fates are decided by a scheme that invites interpretation more than surprise.
It's not the story, the performances or even the ideas (much more wittily and succinctly put in both earlier and later Buñuel films), but the sudden moments in which a Buñuel image or gesture comes shining through a haze of melodramatic conventions.
There's an extraordinary moment when the body of a headless python, killed by the fugitives for their supper, suddenly seems to come alive again as it is attacked by an army of ants. That one image could be one entire movie. In another scene, Mr. Piccoli, the priest, recalls for no easily apparent reason a story about a fellow seminarian who once had a compulsion to eat poached eggs. In moments like this, one glimpses Buñuel's appreciation for the act of disorder.
At the time Buñuel made "Death in the Garden" he had already produced such masterpieces as "Los Olvidados," "El" and "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de La Cruz," and he was within four years of beginning his golden age that includes "Viridiana," "Simon of the Desert," "Belle de Jour," "Tristana" and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie."
"Death in the Garden" is a kind of halfway house for the film genius, made when he had yet to receive the acclaim that would give him full control of his movies, but after he had been taken seriously enough by the money men to be entrusted with an expensive movie with big stars.
"Death in the Garden" is a perfectly honorable compromise, but you won't see in it the simplicity and the clarity of technique and spirit that are so breathtaking in his best movies.