Oscar Dancigers Movies

Recharging his creative batteries with a "commercial" venture, director Luis Bunuel came up with the stylish if undistinguished La Mort en ce Jardin (Death in This Garden). Set in a steaming jungle, the film concerns a disparate group of refugees from a despotic military regime. Among these worthies is "good time girl" Djin (Simone Signoret), ageing miner Castin (Charles Vanel) and deaf-mute Marie (Michele Girardon). The deeper the protagonists venture into the jungle, the more Bunuel's patented surrealism begins to surface. Only two of the escapees survive the ordeal, and they aren't necessary the two whom the viewers are rooting for. Some prints of La Mort en ce Jardin bear the title Gina. hel) F Lorsque L'Enfant Paris (When the Child Appears) was adapted from the hit play by Andre Roussin. The story revolves around the efforts of a well-meaning, highly moralistic minister, who wants the government to clamp down on illegitimacy. Complications ensue when the minister's own wife become pregnant--and all evidence indicates that the child is not his. Adding to the protagonist's headaches, his daughter, on the eve of her wedding to a wealthy young man, announces that she, too, may well be in the family way. Not to be left out, the minister's son declares that he thinks he's impregnated his father's secretary! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Luis Buñuel constructs this 1954 motion picture on the foundation of Emily Bronte's Gothic novel set in England. However, Buñuel substitutes a Mexican setting for the English one and Spanish names for the novel's central characters. He also alters the plot to heighten tension and maximize the effect of imagery. In the Bronte novel, Mr. Earnshaw rescues a foundling named Heathcliff from the streets and raises the boy at his estate on the moors, Wuthering Heights, along with his daughter, Catherine, and son, Hindley. Over the years, Hindley mistreats Heathcliff, regarding him as a rival for his father's affection. After Mr. Earnshaw dies and Hindley inherits the estate, he humiliates Heathcliff by making him a common stable boy. Catherine, meanwhile, falls passionately in love with Heathcliff, but looks down upon him because he lacks social standing. One day, after overhearing her speak of him disparagingly, Heathcliff abandons Wuthering Heights, then makes a success of himself in the world. After returning three years later, he finds Catherine married to an elegant gentleman, Edgar Linton. Heathcliff vows revenge. First, through clever scheming, he acquires liens on Wuthering Heights and drives Hindley to his grave. To spite Catherine and Linton, Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, and treats her cruelly while gaining control of her property. The turn of events destroys Catherine, who is pregnant, and she dies after giving birth to a daughter. In the Buñuel film, Heathcliff becomes Alejandro (Jorge Mistral), Catherine becomes Catalina (Irasema Dilian), Hindley becomes Ricardo (Luis Aceves Castaneda), and Isabella becomes Isabel (Lilia Prado). Early on, the film generally follows the plot of Wuthering Heights although the setting is a hacienda in Mexico. However, the plot begins to shift when Alejandro discovers that the pregnant Catalina is gravely ill. Full of regret for his past action toward her, he relents and tells her he loves her, and she expresses her love for him. Then she gives birth and dies. After she is laid to rest, he is so grief-stricken that he exhumes her just to hold her one more time. ~ Mike Cummings, Rovi

A Bunuel melodrama about a man conned into harassing tenants that his boss wants evicted. Other complications along the line are his seduction by the boss's mistress and his falling in love with a girl whose father he has accidentally murdered. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

In the drama, a father, firmly believing that the baby daughter in his arms is not his own, abandons her upon the doorstep of the town drunk. Many years pass, and the man finds himself continually wracked with guilt about deserting her. He begins looking for her. He finds that she has grown up to be happily married. She is also pregnant. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The winner of two Cannes Film Festival awards, Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (aka The Forgotten Ones and The Young and the Damned) was the director's first international box-office success. Yet Buñuel showed no signs of curbing the outrageous iconoclasm that made him famous in Europe and South America; one of the more lasting images of the film is the clash-of-cultures shot of a glistening new skyscraper rising above the squalid slums of Mexico City. The story concerns a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose sole redeeming quality is their apparent devotion to one another. Part of the film's perverse fascination is watching Buñuel's street punks cause misery to those less fortunate. The audience immediately identifies with Pedro (Alfonso Mejía), the youngest gang member, who evinces a spark of decency; yet Pedro, like the others, remains a victim of circumstances far beyond his control. Throughout, Buñuel maintains an objective tone; it is our responsibility, not his, to judge the gang members. Seasoned with haunting dream sequences, Los Olvidados was the opening volley in what would turn out to be Buñuel's most creative period. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Two great Latin singing stars team up in this musical melodrama directed by the innovative Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Gerardo (Jorge Negrete) and his friend Demetrio (Julio Villarreal) are a pair of footloose cowboys in turn-of-the-century Mexico who are looking for work after escaping from prison on dubious charges. Gerardo persuades Jose (Francisco Jambrina), an tycoon from Argentina who is looking for oil in Mexico, to give work to himself and his friends, but just as their fortunes are on the rise, the oilman disappears and is feared murdered. Jose's sister Mercedes (Libertad Lamarque) travels to Mexico to find out what's become of him, and when she learns that Gerardo has taken over as manager in Jose's absence, she's convinced that Gerardo and his pals are to blame. Wanting to know more about Gerardo and his cronies, she takes a job as a singer as "Gran Casino," a rowdy nightclub near the oil fields; in time, she strikes up a romance with the good-hearted roughneck and learns just who her brother's enemies really are. Gran Casino was Luis Bunuel's first project after settling in Mexico in the wake of the Spanish Civil War and an unsuccessful attempt to seek asylum in the United States; an uncharacteristically conventional story which was not well suited to Bunuel's talents (and a musical to boot), Gran Casino fared poorly at the box office, and it was two years before he'd get to make his next film, El Gran Calavera. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi