“Mexico’s fascistic,” a Chilean refugee once remarked, “but it’s a country where fascism has been softened by corruption.” There’s a lot of truth in that comment. The country often seems fascistic because the president is omnipotent; the fact that he can’t be reelected prevents him from becoming a tyrant, but during the six years of his term, he can do pretty much what he likes. A few years ago, for example, President Luis Echeverría, an enlightened and benevolent man (who occasionally sent me bottles of French wine), decided to order a series of reprisals the day after Franco executed an anarchist and four Basque separatists in Spain. Without having to consult anyone, Echevarría simply broke off all commercial relations with Spain, stopped the postal service and airline traffic between the two countries, and deported certain “undesirables” of Spanish origin. In fact, the only thing he didn’t do was to send a Mexican squadron to bomb Madrid.
The consequences of this enormous power, or “democratic dictatorship,” are alleviated, however, when we add a certain amount of corruption to the system. The mordida, or bribe, is often the key to Mexican life. It’s carried on at all levels and in all places; everyone knows about it and accepts it, since everyone is either a victim or a beneficiary. Without this corruption, of course, the Mexican constitution, which on paper is one of the most enlightened in the world, would make the country the exemplary democracy in Latin America.
Finally, Mexico has one of the highest rates of population growth in the world. There’s no disputing the fact that poverty is widespread and very visible; since the country’s natural resources are so unevenly distributed, millions have fled the countryside and poured into the cities, creating the sprawling and chaotic ciudades perdidas on the outskirts of all the big urban centers. No one knows how many people live in these teeming “suburbs,” although some say the sprawl outside Mexico City is the most densely populated area in the world. Whatever the case, its growth is vertiginous (close to a thousand peasants arrive every day), and predictions claim that there’ll be thirty million people living in these slums by the year 2000. Given the dramatic pollution problem (a direct consequence of this uncontrolled urban growth), the lack of adequate water, the ever-widening gap in income levels, inflation, and the overwhelming influence of American economic policy, it’s clear that Mexico still has enormous difficulties to overcome.
As a general rule, a Mexican actor would never do on the screen what he wouldn’t do in real life. When I was making El bruto in 1952, Pedro Armendariz, another one of those who used to shoot off his gun from time to time in the studio, refused to wear short-sleeved shirts because tradition had it that this article of clothing was reserved for homosexuals. In addition, there’s a scene in the movie where Pedro is being pursued by butchers in a slaughterhouse, and at one point, a knife already lodged in his back, he runs into a young orphan girl. He claps his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming, and when his pursuers have gone, he tells the girl to pull out the knife. Confused, she hesitates.
“There!” he screams. “There! Behind! Pull it out!”
Suddenly one day in the middle of rehearsal he shouts: “Yo no digo detrás!”—I refuse to use the word “behind.” Such language, he later explained, would be fatal to his reputation.
In 1955 and 1956, besides The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, I made two French-language movies: Cela s’appelle l’aurore, which was shot in Corsica, and La Mort en ce jardin (Gina), which we made in Mexico. The first was adapted from a novel by Emmanuel Robles. I liked the film very much, although I haven’t seen it since it was made. Claude Jaeger, a good friend who played several bit parts in other films of mine, was the production manager; Marcel Camus was my first assistant; and Jacques Deray, a very tall young man who walked very slowly, was his backup. Lucia Bosè, the leading lady, was then the fiancée of the famous toreador Luis-Miguel Dominguín, who used to call constantly just to keep tabs on Georges Marchai, the male lead. I collaborated on the script with Jean Ferry, who was very close to the surrealists. Among our frequent arguments was one in particular about a “magnificent” love scene Jean had written which was in fact three pages of terrible dialogue. I cut it, and substituted a strange scene in which Marchai enters, drops exhausted into a chair, takes off his socks, watches Lucia Bosè serve him his soup, and then gives her a little turtle as a present. Ferry was quite miffed and wrote to the producer complaining about the socks, the soup, the turtle, and the dialogue, which he claimed had more in common with Swiss or Belgian than with French. He even wanted his name deleted from the credits, which the producer refused to do. (I still think the scene was far better with the soup and the turtle.)
At the same time, I incurred the wrath of Paul Claudel’s family because certain of his works are shown in a scene next to a pair of handcuffs on the police commissioner’s desk. Claudel’s daughter wrote the customary scathing letter objecting to my still life, but I was so used to insults that it didn’t bother me.
On the other hand, my basic problem with La Mort en ce jardin was the screenplay, which I somehow just couldn’t get right. I’d wake up at two in the morning and write scenes that I’d give to Gabriel Arout at dawn so that he could correct my French before I shot them that same day. Raymond Queneau showed up at one point and spent two weeks with me trying to help rewrite, but the script remained impossible. Queneau had a lovely sense of humor and infinite tact; he never said he didn’t like something or that something wasn’t good, but always began his criticisms with “I wonder if.…” In fact, it was Queneau who made an ingenious addition to the scene where Simone Signoret, a whore in a small mining town shaken by strikes and labor agitation, is doing her shopping in a grocery store. She’s buying various necessities—sardines, needles, a bar of soap. Suddenly there’s a blare of trumpets and the soldiers arrive to restore order, whereupon Signoret pauses, turns back to the grocer, and asks for four more bars of soap.
Signoret posed her fair share of problems, however, because she was obviously reluctant to do the film, preferring to stay in Rome with Yves Montand. She had to go through New York on her way to join us in Mexico, so she slipped some Communist documents into her passport, hoping to be turned away by American Immigration, but they let her through without a murmur. Once here and on the set, her behavior was at best unruly, at worst very destructive to the rest of the cast. In the end, I had to ask a stagehand to take his measuring tape, measure a distance of one hundred meters from the camera, and there set up chairs for the “French contingent.”
On the other hand, it was thanks to this anomalous film that I met Michel Piccoli, with whom I’ve since made several films and who has become one of my closest friends. I love and admire him for his unfailing sense of humor, his generosity, his whimsy, and the respect he never shows me.
Nazarin, adapted from a novel by Galdós, was made in 1958 in Mexico City and in some lovely villages in the region of Cuautla. I remember Gabriel Figueroa setting up an aesthetically perfect frame with Popocatépetl in the background, crowned with its habitual white cloud, but instead of proceeding I turned the camera around to focus on a thoroughly banal scene that seemed far more appropriate to me. I confess that I have no patience with prefabricated cinematographic beauty, since all it really does is distract the spectator from what the film is trying to say. The essence of Nazarin, as a character, remains true to the novel, but I did modify some of Galdós’s antiquated ideas so that they would at least appear to be more timely. At the end of the book, for example, Nazarin dreams that he’s celebrating a Mass, but in the film the dream is replaced by the alms scene. I also slipped in a few new elements—the strike, for instance, and the dying woman in the plague scene, which was inspired by de Sade’s Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond, where a dying woman cries out for her lover and refuses God.
Of all the films I made in Mexico, Nazarin is one of my favorites. Despite the misunderstandings about its real subject, it was reasonably successful. At the Cannes Festival, however, where it won the Grand
Prix International, it almost received the Prix de l’Office Catholique as well. Three members of the jury argued passionately for it, but, happily, they were in the minority. Also, Jacques Prévert, an adamant anticleric, regretted that I’d given a priest the leading role. “It’s ridiculous to worry about their problems,” he told me, believing as he did that all priests were thoroughly reprehensible.
This misunderstanding, which some people referred to as my “attempt at personal rehabilitation,” went on for quite some time. After the election of Pope John XXIII, I was actually invited to New York, where the abominable Spellman’s successor, Cardinal Somebody-or-Other, wanted to give me an award for the film.
19
Pro and Con
WHEN the surrealist movement was in full flower, we made very clear distinctions between good and evil, justice and discrimination, the beautiful and the ugly. We also had certain unwritten laws—books that had to be read, others that shouldn’t be read; things that needed to be done, others to avoid at all cost. Inspired by these old games, I’ve decided to let my pen wander as it will in this chapter, while I engage in the healthy exercise of listing some of my passions and my bêtes noires.
I loved, for example, Fabre’s Souvenirs entomologiques, which I found infinitely superior to the Bible when it comes to a passion for observation and a boundless love of living things. I used to say that this was the only book I’d take with me if I were exiled to a desert island, although today I’ve changed my mind and wouldn’t take any book at all.
I also loved de Sade. I was about twenty-five when I read The 120 Days of Sodom for the first time, and I must admit I found it far more shocking than Darwin. One day, when I was visiting Roland Tual, I saw a priceless copy in his library that had originally belonged to Marcel Proust. Despite its rarity, Tual lent it to me. It was a revelation. Up until then, I’d known nothing of de Sade, although the professors at the University of Madrid prided themselves on the fact that they never hid anything from their students. We read Dante, Camoëns, Homer, Cervantes, so how was it that I knew nothing about this systematic and magistral exploration of society, this proposal for such a sweeping annihilation of culture? When I could bring myself to admit that the university had lied, I found that next to de Sade, all other masterpieces paled. I tried to reread The Divine Comedy, but now it seemed even less poetic than the Bible. And as for Camöns’s Lusiads and Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, the less said the better. Why hadn’t someone made me read de Sade instead of all these other useless things?
When I tried to get hold of de Sade’s other books, however, I found they had all been rigorously censored and were available only in very rare eighteenth-century editions. Breton and Eluard, both of whom owned copies, took me to a bookstore on the rue Bonaparte where I put my name on a waiting list for Justine (which never arrived). And speaking of Justine, when René Crevel committed suicide, Dali was the first to arrive at his apartment. In the chaos that followed, a woman friend of Crevel’s from London noticed that his copy of Justine had vanished. Someone had obviously swiped it—Dali? Impossible. Breton? Absurd; he already had one. Yet it must have been one of Crevel’s close friends, someone who knew his library well.
I also remember being struck by de Sade’s will, in which he asked that his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hope that humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I’d like to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremonies are not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men. Long live forgetfulness, I’ve always said—the only dignity I see is in oblivion.
If today my interest in de Sade has waned somewhat—after all, passion is an ephemeral thing—I’m still profoundly impressed by his recipe for cultural revolution. His ideas have influenced me in many ways, particularly in L’Age d’or. Maurice Heine once wrote a devastating critique in which he declared that de Sade would roll over in his grave if he knew what I’d done with his ideas; my only response was that my motivation was not to eulogize a dead writer, but to make a movie.
And I adored Wagner, whose music I used in several films, from Un Chien andalou to That Obscure Object of Desire. One of the greatest tragedies in my life is my deafness, for it’s been over twenty years now since I’ve been able to hear notes. When I listen to music, it’s as if the letters in a text were changing places with one another, rendering the words unintelligible and muddying the lines. I’d consider my old age redeemed if my hearing were to come back, for music would be the gentlest opiate, calming my fears as I move toward death. In any case, I suppose the only chance I have for that kind of miracle involves nothing short of a visit to Lourdes.
When I was young, I played the violin, and later, in Paris, the banjo. Beethoven, César Franck, Schumann, and Debussy, to name just a few, were among my favorite composers. But our attitudes toward music have changed drastically since those days. For instance, we usually heard several months in advance when the Madrid Symphony was coming to Saragossa, and we were always beside ourselves with excitement. In fact, the waiting was decidedly voluptuous. We made preparations way in advance, counting the days, looking for scores, humming the melodies; and when the concert arrived at last, it was an incomparable delight. Today, all you have to do is press a button and any kind of music you like will instantly fill your living room. I wonder what’s been gained, however. I can’t help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.
In a different vein altogether, I like eating early, going to sleep early, and waking up early, all of which makes me very un-Spanish.
I also love the north, the cold, and the rain, and in these respects I suppose I’m quite Spanish. Coming as I do from such an arid region of the country, I find nothing so beautiful as vast damp forests wreathed in fog. When I was a child and going to San Sebastián for vacation, I used to marvel at the ferns, and the moss that grew on the tree trunks. Russia and Scandinavia were magical places for me; I remember writing a story when I was seven that took place on the snow-covered steppes of Trans-Siberia. Then, too, no sound is lovelier than that of the rain. There are times when I can hear it, if I wear my hearing aid, but it’s not quite the same, of course.
And I really love the cold. When I was young, I never wore a coat, even in the coldest weather. It’s not that I didn’t feel the cold; it’s just that I enjoyed resisting it. My friends used to call me “el sin-abrigo”—the coatless one. In fact, there’s a picture of me somewhere standing stark naked in the snow. I remember one winter in Paris when it was so cold that the Seine had begun to freeze over. I was waiting for Juan Vicens to arrive from Madrid at the Gare d’Orsay, and it was so cold I had to run back and forth on the platform to keep from freezing. Despite the exercise, however, I came down with a good case of pneumonia, and when I could finally get out of bed, the first thing I did was to go out and buy the first warm clothes I ever owned.
The corollary to all this is that I hate warm climates, and if I live in Mexico, it’s only by accident. I don’t like the desert, the beach, the Arab, the Indian, or the Japanese civilizations, which makes me distinctly unmodern. To be frank, the only civilization I admire is the one in which I was raised, the Greco-Roman Christian.
On the other hand, I love travel books about Spain, particularly the ones written by English and French travelers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And I adore the picaresque novel, especially Lazarillo de Tormes, de Quevedo’s La vida del Buscón, and even Gil Blas, which, although written by the Frenchman Lesage, was elegantly translated by Father Isla in the eighteenth century and has become a Spanish classic. It paints a stunning picture of Spain, and I think I’ve read it at least a dozen times.
Now, like most deaf people, I don’t much like the blind. One day in Mexico City I was struck by the sight of two blind men sitting side by side, one masturbating the other. Even today, I sometimes wonder if it’s true that blind people are happier than the deaf. I tend to think not, yet I once knew an extraordinary blind man n
amed Las Heras who’d lost his vision when he was eighteen and had tried many times to commit suicide. Finally, his parents had to lock him in his room and nail the shutters together. Eventually, he adjusted to his condition, and in the 1920s I used to see him walking the streets of Madrid or at the Café Pombo on the Calle de Carretas, where Gómez de la Serna held court. He wrote things from time to time, and used to come with us in the evenings when we took long walks through the city streets.
One morning, when I was living on the place de la Sorbonne in Paris, Las Heras rang my doorbell. I was very surprised, to say the least, and when I invited him in, he told me that he’d just arrived on business, that he was by himself, and wondered if I could guide him to a bus stop. (His French was appalling.) I put him on the right bus and watched him ride away, all alone in a city he didn’t know and couldn’t see.
Jorge-Luis Borges is another blind man I don’t particularly like. There’s no question about the fact that he’s a very good writer; but then, the world is full of good writers, and in any case, just because someone writes well doesn’t mean you have to like him. Granted, I’ve seen Borges only two or three times, and that was sixty years ago, but he struck me as very pretentious and self-absorbed. There’s something too academic (or as we say in Spanish, sienta cátedra) about everything he says, something exhibitionistic. Like many blind people, he’s an eloquent speaker, albeit the subject of the Nobel Prize tends to crop up obsessively each time he talks to reporters. In this respect, it’s revealing to contrast Borges and Jean-Paul Sartre, insofar as the former is clearly counting on that prize while the latter refused both prize and money.