#1048: ORO, Juan Bustillo: Dos Monjes (1934)

ORO, Juan Bustillo (Mexico)

Dos Monjes [1934]

Spine #1048
Blu-ray

This vividly stylized, broodingly intense early Mexican sound melodrama by Juan Bustillo Oro hinges on an audacious flashback structure. When an ailing monk recognizes a new brother at his cloister, he becomes deranged and attacks him. Dos monjes recounts the men's tragic shared past once from the point of view of each, heightening the contrasts between the two accounts with visual flourishes drawn from the language of German expressionism including camera work by avant-garde photographer Agustin Jiménez.

79 minutes
Black & White

Monaural

in Spanish

1:37:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2020

Director/Writers

Screenplay by Juan Bustillo Oro and José Manuel Cordero.

Oro was 30 when he directed Dos Monjes.

The Film

The Mexican film industry dates back as far as the 1890s — the Lumière brothers brought their one-minute films to be seen by a fascinated public, and President Porfirio Díaz immediately realized the importance of the media. After the Revolution (1910), documentaries brought images of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to the public.

Fiction films were made in 10s and 20s, but most are lost. American imports were popular, but with advent of the sound era, the creative forces from the silents burst forth with attempts to make Mexican productions for the Mexican people.

Juan Bustillo Oro was one of those forces — he made a silent in ‘27 (Yo soy tu padre) and was hired on to direct this film, along with Agustín Jiménez, who trailblazed his way through Mexican cinema as one of the great DPs of all time, working with Buñuel, for example.

**

This early piece of cinema has to be judged on its own merits, but must also be seen in the light of all this film history.

German expressionism was obviously a means of telling a cinematic tale with deeper, hidden meanings than the usual bodice-ripper or Frankenstein rip-off — and Oro revised the initial script to reflect these concerns.

There are Dutch angles, freakish axial cuts, and bizarre-looking clocks, etc.

But most of all, there is the manner in which Oro tells his story: sandwiched between scenes at a monastery are two tales told by two different characters, ala Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950 {Spine #138}) … the first, told by Javier (Carlos Villatoro); and the same events retold by Juan (Victor Urruchúa) — with the damsel in the middle, Anita (Magda Haller), being seen from both perspectives. In the first telling, Javier wears white while Juan wears black; reversed in Juan’s recounting.

An old film — but definitely worth watching.

Film Rating (0-60):

56

The Extras

The Booklet

Essay by Elisa Lozano: Expressionism a la mexicana.

“The film was made during a time of expansion for the Mexican film industry that was kicked off by the box-office success of Santa (1932), one of the first Mexican productions to make use of optical sound. Producers and dreamers took notice, thereby increasing the number of features produced in Mexico from a half dozen in 1932 to twenty-three in 1934. Among the latter are gems created in spectacular natural settings, like Carlos Navarro’s Janitzio, based on a Purépecha legend; and Redes (1936 {Spine #686}), a true poem-on-film that involved some of the most prominent cultural figures of the decade … in an ode to collective work that denounces social injustice … the national cinema was in search of its identity, wrenched in opposite directions by the popular — meant in the sense of originating from the popular traditions, folklore, language, and music of the Mexican people — and the modern, which was linked to technological and industrial advances.”

Commentary

None.

Introduction

To the film by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese.

Interview

With film scholar Charles Ramirez Berg on Dos Monjes.

Excellent.

Extras Rating (0-40):

33

56 + 33 =

89

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