Watch The Brute For Free

Too much of everything

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I used to be a fan of Buñuel for ages, seen most of his movies. Now this was a primer for me. And I'm struck. While this doesn't belong to the frequently mentioned movies of his, it completely took me to emotional pieces. Most other directors would have rendered it into another mess of boring plot, which it actually is: a boring plot. But Buñuel knew how to turn boring stuff into masterpieces. And so he did with this one. It starts straightforward, like mentioned elsewhere, so the need to summarize the plot is unnecessary. And then it takes turns and turns. And like so often with Buñuel's movies - very much contrary to most other directors - don't give you the 'good' and the 'bad' ones, neither does this. It leaves the audience to decide for themselves to chose from the figure to sympathize with at a specific moment. And in this movie, at least my sympathies floated about continuously. This makes his movies so great for me: in real life there is hardly anybody to back fully, and who's always right. And so the situation is in here. Except maybe of Meche, everyone is wrong at one moment or another, respectively right one moment or another. And this extends into real crime, including murder. It also shows love, of the purest kind. However, like most Buñuel movies, it shows the weak characters that we humans have, and our so frequently inhuman behaviour. Once we have found the proper way to handle ourselves, it usually is too late. And here, likewise, everything is always just too late.

In El Bruto, a violent, ox-like abattoir worker (the great Pedro Armendáriz) is hired by a wealthy and evil old man to do a slum landlord's dirty work . There he proceeds to destroy everyone around him . But the tough, tall and strong Bruto called Pedro will fall in love for a girl called Merche (Rosa Arenas) who lives with her father in the building about to be demolish . Meanwhile , Pedro will work in a butcher's shop , where is also Paloma (Katy Jurado) , Andres (Andres Soler)'s spouse, a mature woman who starts to feel attracted to El Bruto .Buñuel explores his characteristic themes of lust , jealousy , cruelty, class differences , hypocrisy and corruption . This isn't a typical Buñuel film , though there are some symbolism but no surrealism . Interesting and thought-provoking screenplay by the same Luis Buñuel and his usual Mexican collaborator Luis Alcoriza , being efficiently produced by Oscar Danzigers . After his first French period working in which he directed his two greatest surrealist films , he disappeared below the radar in Mexico on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth watching ; one of them is this ¨Le Brute¨ or ¨El Bruto¨ . Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and gritty human dramas , issues well shown in this picture . Pretty good cast gives fine acting ; it is formed by nice Mexican actors such as Pedro Armendariz as El Bruto , a bouncing to kick out a poor people from their houses , Katy Jurado as a satanic Femme Fatale and the innocent and virginal Rosa Arenas .The motion picture was stunningly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his Mexican second period ; in fact , it's plenty of known Mexican actors . As Buñuel subsequently emigrated from Mexico to France where filmed other excellent movies . After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . After his two avant-garde collaborations with fellow surrealist Salvador Dali , his career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War , where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨ , as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . He subsequently went on his Mexican period he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention , reappearing at Cannes with ¨Los Olvidados¨ in 1951 , a lacerating study of Mexican street urchins , winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , ¨Susana¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz" , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . His mostly little-known Mexican films , rough-hewn , low-budget melodramas for the most part , are always thought-provoking and interesting ; being ordinary screenwriter Julio Alejandro and Luis Alcoriza . He continued working there until re-establishing himself in Europe in the 1960s as one of the great directors . And finally his French-Spanish period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films such as ¨Viridiana¨ was prohibited on the grounds of blasphemy , ¨Tristana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" , of course , ¨ ¨Belle Du Jour¨ , with all the kinky French sex and his last picture , "That Obscure Object of Desire" .

Although this is definitely a minor Bunuel – being pretty much a straightforward melodrama, with little of the expected subtext – it is still well-made and acted and undeniably entertaining; as opposed to most of his Mexican work, there have been two R1 DVD releases of the film from Cozumel (the first to be released and the one I immediately purchased) and, more recently, Facets. THE BRUTE also provided the director with a rare chance to work with popular Mexican actors who, like EL (1953)'s Arturo De Cordova soon after, already had established reputations in Hollywood – though it is safe to assume that Pedro Armendariz would never again be so rugged nor Katy Jurado so earthy as in their sole film for Luis Bunuel! As I said, the plot is simple: wealthy but ageing businessman Andres Soler wants to sell a property currently leased to numerous poor families; he presents them with an eviction notice but, through the instigation of a few headstrong tenants, they unanimously refuse to vacate the premises and almost assault their landlord for what they consider his inhumanity and greediness! Arriving home with his pride broken, he does not elicit sympathy from his much younger and determined wife (an altogether startling turn by Jurado, who walked off with a Silver Ariel award for Best Supporting Actress!) but she instantly suggests, metaphorically, that he simply get rid of the opposition and, to this end, Soler hires a brawny but slow-witted slaughterhouse worker nicknamed "Bruto" (Armendariz).The latter's first attempt at intimidation, even if he had even hardly touched the man, results in tragedy (due to the victim's weak physical condition); for this reason, Soler shelters him in his own house, where the boss' hilariously doddering and cantankerous, yet mischievous, father (played by 81-year old Paco Martinez) also resides; the elderly man's shtick – his uniquely doddering walk on the way to procure himself some candy behind his son's back, his constant muttering of the would-be swear word "Pugnales" and even licking tequila off of his daughter-in-law's little finger – is a source of much amusement throughout the film. Bruto's defection to the Soler household liberates him from the oppression in his own home which he shares with his live-in girlfriend and her family of 'leeches': a bed-ridden, perennially expiring but chain-smoking would-be-mother-in-law; her own lame brother who badmouths her at every turn; her ingrate and unemployed son who only visits to fleece the relief money, etc.! Before long, Jurado turns her attentions to Bruto – who is unable to resist her; in fact, the sexual tension the film displays in their clandestine encounters must have been an eye-opener for its time (certainly when compared with the Hollywoodian standard).Further plot complications arise when the residents try to teach Armendariz a lesson and, injured by a nail driven through his shoulder(!), he stumbles into the hovel where the daughter (called Meche, just like the milk-bathing girl in Bunuel's LOS OLVIDADOS [1950]) of his own earlier victim has been living; she unselfishly looks after him, and he finds himself falling for the girl (a young Rosita Arenas, later star of such classic Mexi-Horror titles as THE WITCH'S CURSE [1960] and THE CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN [1961]). This turn-of-events – which anticipates Marlon Brando's fate in Elia Kazan's Oscar-laden classic ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) – obviously jeopardizes Bruto's relationship with Jurado and, after she confronts the younger woman and Armendariz gives the boss' wife a piece of his mind in the only way he knows how, the rejected mistress informs her clueless husband that Bruto had raped her!All of which leads first to a tete-a'-tete between the landlord and his thug, which leaves the former with a broken back and his face smashed in (again, it was unusual to depict violence in such an unflinching manner back then) and, eventually, Bruto's own demise in a hail of bullets when he is cornered by the Police (led to him by Jurado herself); curiously enough, there are some who hold the view that THE BRUTE is Bunuel's retelling of the Frankenstein tale in a modernized socio-political key but, frankly, it did not strike me that way – after all, the creator did not intend his creature to do his evil bidding! Anyhow, Arenas had grown fond of Armendariz in spite of herself and she lies by his side as he expires but, tellingly, the film's last shot sticks with his other jilted lover – Jurado now left all alone and probably gone off her rocker Tennessee Williams-style as she glares defiantly at a rooster believing it is making fun of her!

The film starts off with a rich landlord's attempt to evict a lot of poor people from a low-income apartment building that he owns, and they rebel against him, threatening him with violence should he go through with the eviction. There is a great scene where we see the landlord's wife showing him that in order to calm down all those people, all that he has to do is get rid of the strong ones that keep starting the trouble. There's a great bit of symbolism here as she cuts the heads off the tallest of the flowers in her flowerpot, leaving only the crowd of smaller, weaker ones. Take out the strong ones, and the rest will subordinate. Thus the movie does not set out dealing very directly with the unenviable role in relationships that women played in the 1950s, not under Franco in Spain, but in the Mexican society in which Bunuel lived at this point in his career. Instead, the movie makes a more specific comment on the state of the union as a whole, as is suggested in the line to Don Andres (the rich landlord who is throwing all of his poor tenants into the street), `Thank you, Don Andres. You're the pride of a country without people.' At this point in the movie, one begins to try to make ties between Don Andres and Franco, Spain's oppressive dictator at the time the film was made (and also the reason that the movie could not have been made in Spain in 1952). Franco is something of a rich and oppressive landlord himself, although the movie does not spend much time on the idea of an all-powerful and enormously wealthy landowner. As was the case in A Woman Without Love, the Brute very soon goes into the story of a woman who is constantly brought suffering by the men in her life, even if only indirectly. The movie starts off making a strong comment about the suffering of many at the hands of a small elite, and then it quickly explores an individual situation within the population. These are a typical group of poor people, and their efforts to prevent themselves from being thrown on the street and, more importantly, the efforts of their landlord to evict them, provide the conflict focused on in the rest of the film. Don Andres hires a huge man from the slaughterhouse, a man who adores him since he has been a mentor for his entire life, and the man he hires is determined to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who would dare to stand against this wonderful man. There is a lot going on here that deals with superficial impressions, since Pedro, the Brute (played by Pedro Armendáriz, who, as an unfortunate side note, committed suicide in 1963), is completely determined to help Don Andres but then changes his mind entirely once he gets close to the people that he is sent out to scare into submission.Pedro is a brute of a man, hence the title of the movie, but he faces the reality of what he is doing when he becomes close to the daughter of the man that he accidentally killed under his assignment from Don Andres. This bit of irony is the confliction of the martial law enforced by the powerful elite as it conflicts with the larger population, the humanity of which is too often overlooked. He was determined at the beginning to set the troublemakers straight, but it is not until he is forced to take shelter among them that he realizes who the real troublemakers are (`I may have done something wrong but I didn't know you then.').It would seem that this portion of the film presents the harshness of an authoritarian regime as misdirected and even naïve rather than inherently evil, although it is equally likely (and, indeed, probably more so) that it is a message to those very regimes (specifically that of Franco) of the reality of their form of government. Brute is a strongman for the rich elite and then ends up getting help from them and even falling in love with one of them, at which point he changes his mind, no longer wanting Don Andres to have his way and for all of these people to be evicted. He has, in effect, been separated from his brutish side by his intermingling with the very people that he was sent out to oppress.There is a great scene during the chase, by the way, that I just have to mention. At one point, when Pedro is running through the alleyways, there is a shot of him running in one direction, and his shadow, through trick lighting, clearly runs in a completely different direction, going down a different alleyway. At this point in the movie, Pedro separates from his darker side, turning toward helping the poor people that are being evicted. Just a little bit of trick lighting (a VERY common technique in black and white filmmaking) that really stood out to me.