Susana (film)
Susana (Susana, demonio y carne or The Devil and the Flesh) is a 1951 film directed by Luis Buñuel. It is the story of a girl of questionable mental stability who escapes from incarceration and ends up at a plantation where she disrupts a working family's daily routines and chemistry.
| Susana | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Luis Buñuel |
| Produced by | Sergio Kogan Manuel Reachi |
| Written by | Luis Buñuel Jaime Salvador Rodolfo Usigli based on the novel by Manuel Reachi |
| Starring | Rosita Quintana Fernando Soler |
| Music by | Raúl Lavista |
| Cinematography | José Ortiz Ramos |
| Edited by | Jorge Bustos |
Release date | 1951 |
Running time | 82 minutes |
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | Spanish |
Plot
Susana is full of the unique touches of Buñuel's surrealism. The heroine, Susana (Rosita Quintana), is a beautiful inmate of a reformatory. When first seen, Susana is thrown into a solitary cell with bats and rats for misbehaving and the correction officer says Imagine, she's been here two years and is worse than ever!. In her cell, she asks for God's help, facing a shadow of the cross formed by the window bars from where a spider crawls away. She manages to pull the bars across the window away from the rotting walls and escapes into the rainy night.
She ends up at a ranch who gives her shelter after she gives an invented history. She soon entices the men, who become obsessed with possessing her and end up fighting over her: Jesús, the ranch foreman; Alberto, the family's teenage son; and Guadalupe, Alberto's father, "a God-fearing man and the faithful husband of the beautiful, patient Dona Carmen".
Analysis
Gilles Deleuze in his work Cinema 1: The Movement Image talks about the impulse-image in Susana "that achieves the complete exhaustion of a milieu: mother, servant, son and father. The impulse must be exhaustive. It is not even sufficient to say that the impulse contents itself with what a milieu gives it or leaves to it. This contentment is not resignation, but a great joy in which the impulse rediscovers its power of choice, since it is, at the deepest level, the desire to change milieu, to seek a new milieu to explore, to dislocate, enjoying all the more what this milieu offers, however low, repulsive or disgusting it may be. The joys of the impulse cannot be measured against the affect, that is, against the intrinsic qualities of the possible object."
Cast
- Fernando Soler Don Guadalupe
- Rosita Quintana Susana
- Víctor Manuel Mendoza Jesús
- María Gentil Arcos Felisa
- Luis López Somoza Alberto
- Matilde Palou Doña Carmen
- Rafael Icardo Don Severiano, veterinary
- Enrique del Castillo Reformatory official