Dismage
of France and Producciones Tepeyac of Mexico join together in 1956 to recreate
José-André Lacour’s La mort en ce jardin
into an adventure film. Translated into
English as Death in the Garden, the
film gets its dramatic and surrealistic touch from director Luis Buñuel. Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza, Raymond Queneau,
and Gabriel Arout write the screenplay and the Spanish and French dialogue for
the actors. Many of the performers hail
from France. Georges Marchal plays
Chark, a strong, amoral, and independent adventurer that has little regard for
authority. Simone Signoret acts as Djin,
a prostitute who survives by plotting her next move with anyone she can take
advantage of. Michel Piccoli plays
Father Lizardi, a Catholic missionary with a well-meaning yet slightly vain
personality. Charles Vanel acts as
Castin, an old diamond prospector that dreams of returning to France to start
his own restaurant. Michèle Girardon
plays María Castin, Castin’s deaf-mute daughter who is innocent, loving, and devout
to the Catholic faith. Tito Junco, an
actor that comes from Mexico, plays the hoggish and opportunistic Chenko. The producers for this particular movie are
Oscar Dancigers and Jacques Mage.
Cinedis distributes the film at the time of the movie’s release. Les Grands Films Classiques obtains the
copyrights in 1996 and Transflux Films releases the movie on DVD in 2009.
The
DVD includes: French and Spanish soundtracks with English subtitles, a
recollection entitled “An Afternoon in Saint-Germain Des Pres” by Juan-Luis
Buñuel, an excerpt of an essay called “Simone Signoret: The Star as Cultural
Sign” by Susan Hayward, an interview with Michel Piccoli, another interview
with Victor Fuentes, an audio track with commentary about the film by Ernesto
R. Acevedo-Muñoz of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a still gallery. All of these extras help to situate the
patron in understanding the cultural and academic significance that Death in the Garden has within the
Buñuel canon. I especially recommend
listening to Acevedo-Muñoz’s commentary.
He gives a step-by-step demonstration on how to analyze a film by
recognizing patterns, images, viewpoints, and motifs. He offers insights from other Buñuelian works
but does not digress into tangents. I
would love to take a film class from him if the opportunity arises.
Death in the Garden
does have its share of Buñuelian touches and surrealistic moments. Right at the beginning, we see a conflict
between the working prospectors and the authoritarian military leadership. Whether feigned or not, the military
personnel notify the diamond prospectors of a constitutional proclamation
confiscating all claims and property for the government. The workers resent the move and aggressively
protest against their leaders. Buñuel
consistently shows imagery of haughty military or police forces suppressing or
threatening the disadvantaged and hardly armed working class. The contrast between liberal or communist
ideals and heavy-handed fascist enforcement cannot be clearer. A surrealistic moment—which is especially
antiocularcentric in its gesture—happens when Chark stabs a guard in the eye
with a fountain pen before he escapes the jail cell and prison. Eventually, the tension between the two sides
boils over into an attempted coup and the main characters flee into the jungle
to escape their general and particular dangers.
The
second half of the film has all the main characters combined into one group and
hijacked by Chark. It begins at this
point when surrealistic elements come to the forefront. Buñuel rarely incorporates music into any of
his films, but the continuous animal sounds of the jungle act as a surrealistic
orchestra that reflects the mood of the group or the augury of things to come. We never see the animals that make these
sounds, suggesting a sort of ghostly presence, an ominous gaze, or a conscious
forest. The jungle recreates a type of
the Garden of Eden, although in this garden, which Acevedo-Muñoz labels as a “garden
of evil,” the dwellers dwindle into death or madness. The snake that inhabits this garden gets
killed and eaten by the inhabitants instead of tempting them into some
forbidden act. A striking surrealistic
image in this film shows the serpent’s carcass being moved by fire ants. The group descends into violence under the
oppression of brutal nature. The only
relief seems to come when the group comes upon a crashed airplane with no
survivors but full of bourgeois trappings.
Yet this turn of events does not guarantee that all of the members will
survive.
Another
characteristic of Buñuel that I would like to understand more is his anticlericalism
or anti-Catholicism. I suppose his
sentiments come from his experiences with events leading up to and including
the Spanish Civil War, but it would be nice to know if he has had personal
experiences that relate to seeing or reacting to hypocrisy and corruption in
the clergy during his formative years.
(I was quite surprised when quite a few people in Spain told me about
their personal experiences with wayward priests.) Disaffected apostates that leave the
membership of their hegemonic religions do not tend to leave the same alone.
In
this movie, two instances come to mind that give me occasion to conclude in
this manner. In the first scene, Father
Lizardi has an argument with Chark about the Catholic Church’s role in
proselytizing to the local tribes of the New World.
Father Lizardi. – Castin,
where are you taking me?
Castin. – Wherever you
like, Father.
Father Lizardi. – Leave
me near the Santa Rosalia Mission, with the Venantes Indians.
Chark. – They’d be
better off without you. At least nobody
would force them to work.
Father Lizardi. – I’m
here to save their souls. Thanks to the
mission, many tribes hear the word of God.
Chark. – From the mouth
of their exploiters.
Father Lizardi. – We’re
not responsible for the overseers.
Chark. – No, but they
follow you wherever you go. They must
really like you guys!
Father Lizardi. – I
refuse to argue with you! I insist on
disembarking at once!
Chark. – I’m in command
here. Get that into your head and we’ll
get on nicely.
Father Lizardi. – I
have only one master. I’m not afraid of
you.
Chark. – We’ll see.
Father Lizardi. –
Castin, you’re wrong to associate with…
Chark. – …a scoundrel.
Castin. – What could I
do? I was innocent and they put a price
on my head.
Chark’s
opinions and arguments are not unusual for a man of his nature, but Father
Lizardi falters in defending his position.
People in religious positions find themselves in a quandary, because their
belief systems are not readily verifiable in the short term. Suppose Father Lizardi really tries to
perform his office in an upright and honest fashion. He acts on faith and belief that do not prove
themselves true until long after the act or even after death. He can vouch for his own actions, but
defending his comrades or the larger system becomes difficult when they follow
their own policies. Hence Father Lizardi
is unjustly interrogated by Chark who accuses him of those abuses that he
doesn’t commit. On the other hand, if
Father Lizardi is not innocent, but condones wholeheartedly the practices of
his superiors, then Father Lizardi evasion of obvious discrepancies shows his
motives are not exactly altruistic.
(Father Lizardi hypocritically stashes jewelry away near a tree after
lecturing María Castin not to “take things that belong to the dead.”) On top of that, the injunction to “repay evil
for evil” already places Father Lizardi in a tight spot (1 Peter 3:9). Father Lizardi has lost the debate before it
has even begun.
The
second instance shows Father Lizardi relating a story to the rest of the party
one night during a downpour. Drenched
from head to toe, everyone tries to sleep comfortably despite the uncomfortable
conditions. Father Lizardi, in a sort of
confession, reminisces about a colleague’s idiosyncrasies of stealing
soft-boiled eggs and eating them.
Father Lizardi. – My
friends, do you hear me? It may be that
hunger is making me delirious but I’m obsessed with a story about soft-boiled
eggs. It happened when I was at the
seminary. I must tell you about it. I was in my second year of theology. I remember the refectory with its rows of
tables like it was yesterday. We were 10
to a table. The seminarist who served us
was a fat kid—a good soul—we had nothing to reproach him for except something
that happened each time we had soft-boiled eggs. Four or five always disappeared. There was no explaining these
disappearances. Until one day someone
saw him swallowing the eggs two by two on the way from the church to the
refectory. I mean, from the kitchen to
the refectory. It didn’t stop him from
becoming coadjutor back home. My
mother’s name was Mary.
During
his story, the rest of the party ignores him or, if the group is listening to
his story, does not acknowledge him.
Father Lizardi’s oneiric confession suspiciously reveals a subtle
surrealistic or psychoanalytic revelation regarding ambition and favoritism
within the seminary’s ranks. Father
Lizardi’s self-correction from church to kitchen passes off as a parapraxis
that could reveal some sort of scandal that Father Lizardi’s doesn’t intend
fully to divulge. If we suppose the
party is listening to his story despite obvious signs to the contrary, we can
conclude that the party does not react to this revelation because either they
condone such behavior as being socially acceptable or think that they are
powerless to change things. Another
possibility could be that they think he is just dreaming out loud about his
hunger or mother, topics that Acevedo-Muñoz explores in his commentary.
The
thing I most enjoyed in this movie is the cinematography and the scenery. The jungles, rivers, and lakes look lush and
beautiful. The village where the action
takes place has gorgeous shots of cathedrals and squares. One sequence shows an angle from the
soldiers’ point of view while confronted by the prospectors. A few stones are thrown from the crowd and
make their way toward the camera. The
agility of the actors to throw those stones at or near the camera is nothing
but impressive. One stone even swerves
like a curveball that nearly misses a soldier. The camera lets the events tell the story and
moves economically and efficiently.
I
would rate this movie with a PG rating.
Sexual activity is implied and the word “prostitute” is never used. There is a scene depicting animal cruelty and
slaughter. Violence against women is
shown or is implied as in a scene in which Chark hits Djin three times for
handing him over to the police for no apparent reason than to pilfer his
money. Violence in other contexts is
mild.
