Death in the Garden

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

If you’re familiar with the early to middle period of Spanish director Luis Buñuel, you may not be surprised at what he does with the dark adventure/melodrama from 1956, Death In The Garden. I would guess that this was work-for-hire for the director who began his career with the classics Un chien andalou and L'âge d'or, and then went on the do everything from anti-Franco propaganda films during the Spanish Civil War to late, semi-great works like Tristana and That Obscure object of Desire.

I am also guessing that what attracted Buñuel to this material was its dark elements: how religion, responsibility, money and sexual attraction are used for survival, and can lead to betrayal. With three other writers, Buñuel co-adapted the novel by José-André Lacour and managed to create an unflaggingly interesting tale of what happens when a South American military dictatorship decides to take over, without warning (and of course without just cause), the diamond prospecting of a number of locals and foreigners located near a military outpost surrounded by jungle (the “garden” of the title). The first major surprise of the film, given all but one of the director’s movies (Robinson Crusoe) that had come before, is that this one’s in color.

The movie’s cast should be enough to entice film buffs and older viewers: Simone Signoret, as empathetic and real as it gets, taking us through one change of heart, not to mention plan, after another as the town’s favorite prostitute; Michel Piccoli (who was in quite a few Bunuel films and appeared in some 222 film and TV appearances), is handsome and riveting as the concerned priest, one of his earlier roles; the fine French actor Charles Vanel (Wages of Fear), smart and stoic as the wise old man; and an angelically beautiful young Michèle Girardon, graceful and sweet in her film debut as Vanel’s mute daughter. Second-tier French hunk Georges Marchal as the scoundrel/hero, is properly blond, strong and muscular as the leader of the troupe (he also brings a believable and quite necessary dark side to his strength: notice his treatment of the Signoret character, post-betrayal).

Buñuel knows how to keep the action moving, not by flashy editing but rather via smart plot turns and the slow delineation of character. We don’t fully understand these people until the film is nearly over; then, what has happened makes its own dark sense.

Along the way, the writer/director has some fun with religion – particularly in a conversation between Marchal and Picoli's priest about how god and exploitation seem to go hand-in-hand, and in a memorably functional use of the Bible. There are also some nice visual moments involving a snake and a colony of ants, the appearance of Paris in the middle of the jungle, and one of the most ironic, funny, yet quite believable uses of evening dress I can recall.

While the DVD comes with a few extras, basically it’s the discovery of the film itself that will make your watch worthwhile.