Word: nazarin
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...films shown only at the New York Film Festival; it also excludes films that arrived in Boston in 1968 but opened elsewhere in 1967 (Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers). To make things simpler, I eliminate European films made over two years ago but released during 1968 (Bunuel's Nazarin and, regrettably, Godard's masterpiece Pierrot...
...Nazarin...
Creative artists-not to mention many theologians-have long been intrigued by the thought that Jesus, if he returned to earth, might be scorned or rejected by modern Christianity. Implicitly, this is the theme of Nazarin, a Mexican film made ten years ago by Luis Buňuel;, a onetime cinema surrealist and lifelong enemy of church and state. The film is now shown in the U.S. for the first time, in the wake of his successful Belle de Jour...
...purity and simplicity. Therein lies his undoing. When a local whore is pursued by the police, he hides her and is defrocked by the church for his act of charity. He gives away his raiment and walks barefoot, only to be mocked by villagers. Wherever he goes, "Nazarin"-as the villagers call him- becomes synonymous with trouble. Finally, he shuffles off to oblivion in the custody of police...
Like Don Quixote, Nazarin is the traditional Spanish visionary-fool, who perceives what others cannot and becomes a mirror in which evil men see only themselves. But Buňuel, who has lived and worked in Mexico for more than 20 years, is no Cervantes, his portrait of the tyrannized, superstition-racked land is as primitive as the peasants themselves. The film's best moments are miniatures: the grotesque love story of a dwarf and a whore; the sudden hysterics of women keening over a dying child; a love-haunted, plague-struck woman who is offered dirisxian...