El Bruto

Katy Jurado has Pedro Armendariz typed as El Bruto

The melodrama of 1953's El Bruto is much more logically plot bound than is to be expected from a Luis Bunuel film. However, Mr Bunuel, as was his want, didn't just settle for a paycheck and uses this lurid feature to arrestingly explore strands of Marxism, Surrealism and Absurdist humor.

Class struggle is one of the central conflicts of the film. A rich landlord, Andres, wants to evict some poor tenants from his slum so he can make a financial killing redeveloping the land. When a collectivist response threatens his plans, he enlists an employee, the titular brute, to muscle the tenants into submission. After the "success" of Los Olivados, Bunuel was working his way up the food chain of the burgeoning Mexican film industry. He ended up doing everything from distinguished literary adaptations to the charming Mexican Bus Ride in a period every bit as interesting as his later European one. What strikes me was how deft he is here with the early crowd scenes. He contrasts the lone wolf oligarch and his thugs with the unwashed masses gracefully, utilizing multiple speaking parts, but able to invigorate and speed the dramatic action so the baldly Marxist outlook never seems pedantic. 

Armendariz is one of the most important actors of postwar cinema and is somewhat neglected; at least in the USA. He had dipped his toe into Hollywood cinema (The Fugitive, Fort Apache, We Were Strangers), but worked largely in Mexico, where he was a major star. The role of a simple minded fascist thug is not really a test of his ability, but he makes a convincing thug. Katy Jurado is best known for her role as the masochistic Helen in High Noon, but she had roles more worthy of her talent in One Eyed Jacks and Pat Garrett and Bill the Kid. As a raging virago, she has a field day here. When the brute dumps her for a mousy good girl, she exacts a furious revenge.

Bunuel leavens the gloom with humor, particularly in the character of Andres' father, a demented codger. The patriarch is now a drooling child, stealing and hoarding candy. The sardonic streak in Bunuel also emerges as he has the brute declare what a beautiful country Mexico is to his lady love while standing in a pile of rubble. This helps dissipate the nightmarish nature of the world of El Bruto, which is replete with degradation, poverty and charnel houses.

The surrealistic asides of the film usually involve animals or their corpses. Bunuel is stressing that we are material creatures to whom life is but a brief dream. Jurado's character is a destructive force of nature. Bunuel presents her first savagely gorging on grapes as she admires herself in a mirror. Later, she rips the heads off flowers to visually reinforce fatal advice. She ends the film triumphing over her male lover/combatant and sealing his fate. Bunuel has her hiss at a cock as she exits. 

Maybe not a major Bunuel film, but an accomplished and enjoyable one. For anyone interested in the great Spaniard, his memoir, My Last Sigh, even in its expurgated English version, is a droll pleasure.