Customer Reviews

Death in the Garden [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love most of Bunuel's films but "Death In the Garden" is definitely my absolute favorite, ahead of "Los Olvidados," and even "Viridiana." This film is as close to perfection as you can get, even though some critics like to call it a 'flawed' film. The 'flaws' in this film are further aspects of its pefection, if you ask me. It has its lunatic elements and a few supernatural angles like all Bunuel films, but it also showcases the 'romantic' side of the man too often labeled a pessimist. The totally 'amoral' yet not unadmirable Georges Marchal character "Shark" is the closest thing to an Yves Montand/Wages-of-Fear type 'hero' Bunuel ever got. What can I tell you? SEE THIS FILM, IT'S A MASTERPIECE. On the surface "Death in the GArden" is a "Wages of Fear" like adventure story (Charles Vanel from Clouzot's masterpiece is one of the main characters) where a bunch of people are put under pressure and forced to work together and survive. The people putting the pressure on are the military 'fascists' not the industrialist-fascists of "Wages of Fear." The story happens in a South American state, where a bunch of Diamond miners are being chased out by the corrupt military government. When a small-scale civil war breaks out, the leaders of the rebels become hunted men, and they have to escape by boat, ending up in a rain-soaked amazon jungle trying to get to Brazil. The characters have to cooperate and survive under an increasingly hopeless situation and reveal fascinating aspects of themselves in the process. There are no moral black and whites, of course, no steretypes either, but only a dynamically evolving morality shaded in different grays leaning toward the black here, toward the white there. You come to have a deep level of sympathy with almost every main character in the film, even Simone Signoret's avaricious Madame, but only after examining them as totally flawed human beings capable of many bizzare deeds, some admirable, others despicable, etc. The film has everything that makes greatness, layers and more layers: deep characters, adventure, action, pessimism, romanticism, eroticism, hilariously absurd farcical scenes, identification with religion while remaining anticlerical, a complete lack of sentimentality, fantastic color cinematography (very lush and colorful, almost Renoir-like, and unlike most of Bunuel's other color films), unbelievably great acting by Georeges Marchal, Simone Signoret, Charles Vanel, and a young Michel Piccoli, it even has a beautiful young deaf girl whose long hair gets stuck in a tree! What more could you want? Maltin must be out of his mind to give this film only 3 stars!

Just to correct another reviewer's error, this DVD is not a cheat, it's perfectly good. The film was shot in 1.37, not 1.66, and is presented properly.

A very good movie of Bunuel's mexican period. This movie contains one of the early appereancies of Michel Piccoli in the role of a missionaire in a south american village. The last half hour where the fugitives wander into the jungle is pure surrealism, there are at least three classic scenes.
Two interviews (Michel Piccoli, Victor Fuentes) & audio commentary. Booklet
Audio: French & spanish with optional english subtitles
region 0 NTSC

This is one of those Bunuel films made before he truly became "Bunuel". As in, when he reached his peak in the 1960's with "Viridiana", "Exterminating Angel", "Diary of a Chambermaid" and "Belle de Jour". IE--although I admire "Los Olvidados"--aside from the dream sequence, it's not a surrealist picture. And so my first impression of "Death in the Garden" was that it was one of Bunuel's "made-for-hire" adventure pictures. Granted, it contains a few surrealist moments, as when the shot of Paris turns out to be a postcard that the aging diamond miner (Charles Vanel) is about the throw in the fire. But to call it "alive with surrealist gestures" or filled with "surrealist gestures and symbolism" (these phrases appear on the Amazon page for this DVD, and on the Wikipedia page for the picture itself), is inaccurate; I found this film to be a very "realist" (in spite of the vivid Eastmancolor in which it was filmed).

As Spanish academic Victor Fuentes discusses in the special features portion of this DVD, "Death in the Garden" is a trampoline off which future Bunuel films would bounce. To its credit, "Death in the Garden" features three French stars, who are all more than credible in their roles; the entire cast is excellent. And as Victor Fuentes also observes, it is the second half of the picture that becomes Bunuelian (by virtue of the characters--the European expatriates / fortune hunters exiled in the Latin American jungle--who foreshadow the trapped party guests of "Exterminating Angel"). The first hour resembles a South American / Amazonian western; it's a setup for the last forty minutes that contain the essence of the film, as the characters shed their pretensions as they struggle to survive. Highlights of this DVD include the interview with Victor Fuentes that I have already referred to; the hypnotic background noises of the jungle wildlife; and the wreckage from the plane crash that reminded me of "Lord of the Flies".

Stephen C. Bird, author of "Hideous Exuberance: A Satire"

Disjointed, wondering, and uninspiring. I could not get involved with this one. Great actors in an overly negative screenplay. Fun to watch her walk around on screen as usual.

I have to agree with one one of the reviewers, this is an excellent Bunuel film!
The story is simple enough; how greed and corruption affects all of us, (especially the kind represented by established authority), and how some of us are able to balance out these flaws within ourselves.
The photography is quite good, and an excellent cast: Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Michel Piccoli, Charles Varnel and Tito Junco, give us an excellent character study with plenty of other elements as well.
I can just imagine how much more Luis Bunuel would have shown us in his films, if he wasn't at the mercy of 'the censors' and a hostile and closed minded world!
This was a Franco-Mexican production, and the picture has been restored well for this DVD release.

Just a warning to mind the aspect ratio: the only time you see this movie in the advertised 1:66 ratio is in the brief clips illustrating the Fuentes interview. The feature itself is full-screen 4x3 - which is how it was originally issued, according to IMDB.com.

The 'wide' clips are actually cropped (top & bottom) versions of the 4x3.