Susana

Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) settled in Mexico in 1946, after several years in exile in the United States. That was when his long and fruitful "Mexican period", during which he directed about 20 films, kicked off.

He shot Susana, Carne y Demonio (The Devil and the Flesh), his fourth feature film, in 20 days in 1950. This commissioned film is about a young woman who runs away from a reformatory and is taken in by the owners of a prosperous hacienda. Susana feigns virtue but soon upsets the balance in that micro-cosmos, successively seducing Jesús (the foreman), Alberto (the owner's son) and even Don Guadalupe (the owner, who lords over the estate). Susana's deception is exposed, she is evicted, and moral and social order return to the hacienda after a family tragedy narrowly missed it.

When it was released in France, critics were puzzled and vexed. Luis Buñuel had embraced conventional melodrama codes to direct a commercial movie using traditional Mexican cinema ingredients. Watching it from an ironic angle, however, shows his witty, subversive slant: he actually wanted the seductress to get her way.

The main character's "robotised" sexiness (1) – "somewhat simple-minded," Buñuel added (2) – is what drives this film: her body language rouses men. As the film poster shows, her hair and the gestures it implies, connote seduction and provocation.