Synopsis
The film focuses on the Las Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town of La 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 the ethnography, ethnographic study ''Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine'' (1927) by , took a Surrealist approach to the notion of the anthropology, anthropological expedition. The result was a travel documentary, travelogue in which the narrator’s extreme (indeed, exaggerated) descriptions of human misery of Las Hurdes contrasts with his flat and uninterested manner.Cast
* Abel Jacquin (voice) * Alexandre O'Neill (voice, dubbed version)Production
Buñuel claimed: "I was able to film Las Hurdes thanks to Ramon Acin, an anarchist from Huesca,...who one day at a cafe in Zaragoza 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 thousand Spanish peseta, pesetas...and gave me twenty thousand to make the film. With four thousand I bought a Fiat; Pierre Unik came, under contract from ''Vogue (magazine), Vogue'' to write an article; and Eli Lotar arrived with a camera loaned by Marc Allégret." The movie is a pseudo-documentary, parodying the exaggerated documentaries of travelers across the Sahara being filmed at the same time.Ruoff, JeffreyPremiere and censorship
The premiere took place in December 1932 at Madrid's Palacio de la Prensa. The entire intellectual cream of the Spanish capital was invited to a semi-private show. 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. During the premiere show there was a schism between the director and Gregorio Marañón, a former assistant to King Alfonso XIII of Spain during his trip to the Las Hurdes region in 1922 and the former director of the Royal Patronage (Spanish ''Patronato Real''), an organization formed shortly after the trip to improving the situation of the inhabitants of the region. ''Land Without Bread'' provoked such an uproar in Spain that conservative forces banned the distribution of the image throughout the country. The official reason for the censorship record was "defamation of the good name of the Spanish people." It was banned from 1933 to 1936.Reception
Writing for ''Night and Day (magazine), Night 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". (reprinted in: ) In modern times, critical reception for ''Land Without Bread'' has been mostly positive. Ed Gonzalez from ''Slant Magazine'', for example, 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." Jeffrey Ruoff called it a "revolutionary film." ''Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles'' is a 2018 Spanish-Dutch animated film based on the graphic novel ''Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas'' by Fermín Solís. It covers how Buñuel and his crew filmed at Las Hurdes.References
External links
* * * * {{Darius Milhaud 1933 documentary films 1933 films Filmed deaths of animals Films directed by Luis Buñuel Films scored by Darius Milhaud 1930s French-language films Las Hurdes Media bias controversies Animal cruelty incidents in film Social realism in film Spanish black-and-white films Spanish documentary films Spanish short films Spanish silent films Extremadura in fiction