| Las Hurdes | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| French | Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan |
| Directed by | Luis Buñuel |
| Written by | Luis Buñuel Rafael Sánchez Ventura [es] Pierre Unik |
| Produced by | Ramón Acín Luis Buñuel |
| Starring | Abel Jacquin Alexandre O'Neill |
| Cinematography | Eli Lotar |
| Edited by | Luis Buñuel |
| Music by | Johannes Brahms |
Release date |
|
Running time | 27 minutes |
| Country | Spain |
| Languages | French Spanish |
Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (English:Land Without Bread orUnpromised Land) is a 1933 French-language Spanishpseudo-documentary (ethnofiction) directed byLuis Buñuel and co-produced by Buñuel andRamón Acin. The narration was written by Buñuel,Rafael Sánchez Ventura [es], andPierre Unik, with cinematography byEli Lotar.
The film focuses on theLas Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town ofLa Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants, who were so backwards and isolated that bread was unknown. A main source of income for them was taking in orphan children, for whom they received a government subsidy. Buñuel, who made the film after reading theethnographic studyLas Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine (1927) byMaurice Legendre [fr;es], took aSurrealist approach to the notion of theanthropological expedition. The result was atravelogue in which the narrator’s extreme (indeed, exaggerated) descriptions of human misery of Las Hurdes contrasts with his flat and uninterested manner.[citation needed]
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Buñuel claimed:"I was able to film Las Hurdes thanks toRamón Acín, ananarchist fromHuesca,...who one day at a cafe inZaragoza told me, 'Luis, if I ever won the lottery, I would put up the money for you to make a film.' He won a hundred thousandpesetas...and gave me twenty thousand to make the film. With four thousand I bought aFiat; Pierre Unik came, under contract fromVogue to write an article; and Eli Lotar arrived with a camera loaned byMarc Allégret."[1]
The movie is a pseudo-documentary, parodying the exaggerated documentaries of travelers across the Sahara being filmed at the same time.[2] One of Buñuel's points is that there are plenty of terrible subjects for a documentary right in Spain.[citation needed]
The film was originallysilent, though Buñuel himself narrated when it was first shown.[3] A French narration by actorAbel Jacquin was added in Paris in 1935.[citation needed] Buñuel used extracts ofJohannes Brahms'Symphony No. 4 for the music.[4]
Buñuel slaughtered at least two animals to makeLas Hurdes. One Hurdano claimed that he arranged for an ailing donkey to be covered with honey so he could film it being stung to death bybees. Similarly, his crew shot a mountain goat that subsequently fell from a cliff for another sequence.[5]
The premiere took place in December 1932 at Madrid'sPalacio de la Prensa.[6] The entire intellectual cream of the Spanish capital was invited to a semi-private show.[6] The screening of the film in its first, still silent version was accompanied by music played from the turntable and the narrator's commentary personally read by Buñuel himself.[6] During the premiere show there was a schism between the director andGregorio Marañón,[6] a former assistant to KingAlfonso XIII of Spain during his trip to the Las Hurdes region in 1922 and the former director of the Royal Patronage (SpanishPatronato Real), an organization formed shortly after the trip to improving the situation of the inhabitants of the region.[7]
Land Without Bread provoked such an uproar in Spain that conservative forces banned the distribution of the image throughout the country.[8][6][9] The official reason for the censorship record was "defamation of the good name of the Spanish people."[7] It was banned[5] from 1933 to 1936.
Writing forNight and Day in 1937,Graham Greene gave the film a neutral review, describing it as "[a]n honest and hideous picture, [...] free from propaganda". Greene claimed that it had a powerful effect and that it was "enough to shake anyone's complacency or self-pity".[10]
In modern times, critical reception forLand Without Bread has been mostly positive. In 2002Slant Magazine awarded the film 4 out of 4 stars, writing, "Las Hurdes becomes a frightening call to arms, a fabulous open text that resists simple readings and questions humanity's notion of progress."[11] Jeffrey Ruoff called it a "revolutionary film."[2]
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles is a 2018 Spanish-Dutch animated film based on the graphic novelBuñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas byFermín Solís. It covers how Buñuel and his crew filmed at Las Hurdes.