DAUGHTER OF DECEIT

Mexico, 1951, 78 minutes, Black and white.
Fernando Soler, Alicia Caro, Fernando Soto, Ruben Rojo, Nacho Contla.
Directed by Luis Bunuel.

Daughter of Deceit comes from Bunuel’s Mexican period, the decades away from Spain where he made a lot of films in Mexico, sharpening his technique which he used then on his return to Spain in the 1960s. That was the period of The Exterminating Angel and Viridiana and led to his making very successful films in Spain and France in those decades.

However, after his surrealist beginnings in Spain, with Salvador Dali, he made many films in Mexico, some melodramas, some comedies – and adaptations of popular novels like Wuthering Heights and Robinson Crusoe.

This film is the portrait of a salesman, his clashes with his wife, his disowning her daughter which she claims was not his. There is a sudden transition, a closing of a door, and twenty years have passed and the film takes up the story of the daughter.

There are many surrealist touches in the Bunuel vein, a musical number at a nightclub called L'Infierno, some slapstick comedy as well as humorous dialogue in the farcical vein.

1. The work of Luis Bunuel, in Spain, surrealist? His work in Mexico? The tone? Light touch?

2. The black and white photography, the small budget, the city settings, homes, businesses, the nightclub? The musical score? The song?

3. The title, Quintin and his type? Money, lights, his nagging wife, his being away from home, his work, the trains? Discovery of the affair? The gun? Ousting his wife? Giving the baby up?

4. Quintin and his anger, bitterness? His relationships with women? The home run and the bounce? Angel and ideas? Fawned on? Whims? The nightclub, its title, Hell? The years passing? Tough, the priest, his wife, seeking his child? The brutal stepfather? His continued search, clearing the bar? The olive seed and the revenge? Jovita? His anger and almost destroying her?

5. The portrait of the wife, her husband’s absence, the visits, the affair, death? Her deceiving Quintin about the baby?

6. Maria, the father, Jovita, Paco? Leaving – the olive?

7. Jovita, her background, her father?

8. Paco, the accident, his niceness, the olive?

9. The interconnections, the song, dangers, the truth, the accident?

10. And the happy ending?