When Franco won the Spanish Civil War in 1939, thousands of left-wing intellectuals and artists fled the country, among them Luis Bunuel. Bunuel, who at that point had only made his surrealist shorts and a superb documentary on Spanish peasants called Land Without Bread, went into exile in Mexico. There after a decade of inactivity he made a series of low budget films combing social criticism with surrealist techniques, the best of which is Los Olvidados, dealing with street gangs and the culture of poverty in the slums of Mexico City. So, when in 1963 Bunuel announced that he was returning to Spain to make Virdiana, the Fascist government claimed a major propaganda triumph and leftists every where deplored Bunuel's sell-out. But Bunuel had the last laugh: although the government censors didn't realize it when they saw the film, Viridiana is a sardonic and ruthless attack on the role of the church, sexual morality, property, and social class in Spanish society, as became apparent to the world when it was shown at the Cannes film festival. Beggars take over a rich man's house and stage a ghastly version of the Last Supper. The best tough in the film is Bunuel's use of music: Handel's Messiah during the beggars' feast and then Chuck Berry when all hell breaks loose at the end. One of his very best films, much more original than his senile and commercial successes of recent years, such as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
Frank Capra is best known for his political films embodying the consciousness of the left wing of the New Deal in the 30s and 40s, films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and State of the Union. But Capra also made comedies and while It Happened One Night Colbert is the spoiled daughter of an over-protective tycoon and Clark Gable is the down on-his-luck newpaperman who undertakes to smuggle her from Florida to New York so that she can rejoin her husband, but ends up falling in love with her. Gable shocked a lot of people when this film came out, by appearing bare-chested and by showing he could act. Capra's sympathy for the "common man" comes through strongly in his portrait of the depression driven migrants Gable and Colbert encounter on their trek north.
I suppose we should be thankful that the Central Square Cinema has finally decided to can its perennial offering, The King of Hearts. This sappy DeBroca film is not bad in its own sphere, but about as far from being a cinematic masterpiece as is The Way We Were. True to form, however, the theater has replaced King of Hearts with that other sentimental favorite, Harold and Maude. But hopefully, we won't have to endure a five year run of that.
