Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Mexico (1946-1064 215with Yves Montand. She had to go through New York on her wayto join us in Mexico, so she slipped some Communist documentsinto her passport, hoping to be turned away by American Immigration,but they let her through without a murmur. Once here and onthe set, her behavior was at best unruly, at worst very destructive tothe rest of the cast. In the end, I had to ask a stagehand to take hismeasuring tape, measure a distance of one hundred meters from thecamera, and there set up chairs for the "French contingent." -On the other hand, it was thanks to this anomalous film that Imet Michel Piccoli, with whom I've since made several films andwho has become one of my closest friends. I love and admire himfor his unfailing sense of humor, his generosity, his whimsy, andthe respect he never shows me.Nazarin, adapted from a novel by Galdos, was made in 1958 inMexico City and in some lovely villages in the region of Cuautla. Iremember Gabriel Figueroa setting up an aesthetically perfect framewith Popocatepetl in the background, crowned with its habitualwhite cloud, but instead of proceeding I turned the camera aroundto focus on a thoroughly banal scene that seemed far more appropriateto me. I confess that I have no patience with prefabricated cinematographicbeauty, since all it really does is distract the spectator fromwhat the film is trying to say. The essence of Nazarin, as a character,remains true to the novel, but I did modify some of Gald6s's antiquatedideas so that they would at least appear to be more timely.At the end of the book, for example, Nazarin dreams that he'scelebrating a Mass, but in the film the dream is replaced by the almsscene. I also slipped in a few new elements-the strike, for instance,and the dying woman in the plague scene, which was inspired by deSade's Dialogue entre un @tre et un mwibond, where a dying womancries out for her lover and refuses God.Of all the films I made in Mexico, Nawn is one of my favorites.Despite the misunderstandings about its real subject, it was reasonablysuccessful. At the Cannes Festival, however, where it won theGrand Prix International, it almost received the Prix de 1'Office