Susana (film)

This article is about a Mexican film. For other uses, see Susana (disambiguation).

Susana
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Luis Buñuel
Written by	Luis Buñuel Jaime Salvador Rodolfo Usigli
Based on	Susana by Manuel Reachi
Produced by	Sergio Kogan Manuel Reachi
Starring	Rosita Quintana Fernando Soler
Cinematography	José Ortiz Ramos
Edited by	Jorge Bustos
Music by	Raúl Lavista
Release date	1951 (1951)
Running time	82 minutes
Country	Mexico
Language	Spanish

Susana (Susana, demonio y carne or The Devil and the Flesh) is a 1951 film directed by Luis Buñuel. It is the story of a girl of questionable mental stability who escapes from incarceration and ends up at a plantation where she disrupts a working family's daily routines and chemistry. Susana is full of the unique touches of Buñuel's surrealism.

Plot

Susana, is a beautiful inmate of a reformatory. When first seen, Susana is thrown into a solitary cell with bats and rats for misbehaving and the correction officer says Imagine, she's been here two years and is worse than ever!. In her cell, she asks for God's help, facing a shadow of the cross formed by the window bars from where a spider crawls away. She manages to pull the bars across the window away from the rotting walls and escapes into the rainy night.

She ends up at a ranch who gives her shelter after she gives an invented history. She soon entices the men, who become obsessed with possessing her and end up fighting over her: Jesús, the ranch foreman; Alberto, the family's teenage son; and Guadalupe, Alberto's father, "a God-fearing man and the faithful husband of the beautiful, patient Dona Carmen".

Cast

• Fernando Soler as Don Guadalupe
• Rosita Quintana as Susana
• Víctor Manuel Mendoza as Jesús
• María Gentil Arcos as Felisa
• Luis López Somoza as Alberto
• Matilde Palou as Doña Carmen
• Rafael Icardo as Don Severiano, veterinary
• Enrique del Castillo as Reformatory official

Analysis

Gilles Deleuze in his work Cinema 1: The Movement Image talks about the impulse-image in Susana "that achieves the complete exhaustion of a milieu: mother, servant, son and father. The impulse must be exhaustive. It is not even sufficient to say that the impulse contents itself with what a milieu gives it or leaves to it. This contentment is not resignation, but a great joy in which the impulse rediscovers its power of choice, since it is, at the deepest level, the desire to change milieu, to seek a new milieu to explore, to dislocate, enjoying all the more what this milieu offers, however low, repulsive or disgusting it may be. The joys of the impulse cannot be measured against the affect, that is, against the intrinsic qualities of the possible object."

Critical response

In his 2015 publication of movie ratings, Leonard Maltin wrote 'Well handled and staged by Brunel till the cop-out finale.

Release

Susana was released on DVD on 27 November 2007.

External links

• Susana at IMDb