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BUÑUEL AND MEXICO: THE CRISIS OF NATIONAL CINEMA Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003,202 pp.
In Buñuel and Mexico, Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz explores an important and largely overlooked aspect of Buñuel's career: the movies he made within the Mexican film Industry that reveal an interest in the economic, political, and social context of his adopted country and that also show his mastery of its filmmaking conventions. Acevedo-Muñoz focuses on the "potboilers" intended for popular consumption, but he also includes films destined for international distribution, provided they address Mexican concerns (Los olvidados and El: This Strange Passion make the cut; Nazarín, The Exterminating Angel, and Simon of the Desert don't). He covers the period from 1946, when Buñuel arrived in Mexico, to 1955, when he made his last film intended primarily fora Mexican public.
Although a number of studies refer to Buñuel's Mexican-period films, including Victor Fuentes' Buñuel en México: lluminaciones sobre una pantalla pobre, Gaston Lillo's Genero y transgresion: El cine mexicano de Luis Buñuel, and Peter W. Evans's The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and Desire, along with an increasing output of essays on previously neglected classics like El and The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, none of this critical work addresses the complex negotiation between Buñuel's films and the highly codified Mexican system of genres (LiIIo relates these popular films to Hollywood's parameters), and none of it engages the issues affecting Mexican society at the time Buñuel was filming there. Acevedo-Muñoz provides a detailed examination of these subjects, relating them to theories of national cinema. The book takes an "industrial auteur" approach, similar to Judith Mayne's in Directed by Dorothy Arzner.
Buñuel's arrival in Mexico coincided with the beginning of Miguel Alemán's presidency (1946-52). Alemán pushed for industrialization and modernization, encouraged foreign investment, clamped down on the left, and dropped social programs. The always sporadic efforts at land reform were completely abandoned, and peasants flocked in ever-greater numbers to Mexico City. By the late 19405 it had become clear that the Revolution, with its promise of social...