One strange film indeed that can only be understood as a metaphor in 1962 of the already programmed end of Franco the dictator and the fascist. Spain was locked up within its borders and could not get out of them. Spain had to die like an animal lost in some desert without any water, without any food. Bunuel describes the slow decay of these supposedly human beings of the upper cultured classes that had been abandoned by their servants, the workers who had gone abroad. These top people finally find their way out of the trap when the servants come back. Note they have survived by eating some stray lamb that appeared one night in their diabolical circle. And it all end up this time with the whole population, lambs, sheep and priests (three of course) alike, bears and monsters, workers and bosses, all trapped this time in their beautiful but totally isolated and abandoned catholic church, and all around this wreck only silence and total indifference with no one attending. Bunuel the cultivator of slow death for the Spanish society unable to get out of its fascist fate.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines