Review

Reviewed Work(s): Macario by Roberto Gavaldon

Review by: R. H. Turner
Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Winter, 1960), p. 50
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1210357
Accessed: 01-04-2024 16:53 +00:00

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50

only as a threat. Once she's out of the way, they only beat against it, crying "I won't allow it!"-
can get on with the things that matter-hem- one of the most poignant curtain lines ever
lines, margarine, examinations, pets. Through heard in a film. For the final scene takes place,
cutting sometimes as abrupt as Bardem's in in time, seconds before the one that opened the
Death of a Cyclist, Weiss makes a complete film. The storeroom is empty, and a wind blows
break between the boy's "normal" life and the through it, ruffling the pages of the girl's book.
time he spends with the girl, and Ivan Mistrik's An anti-climax? Perhaps, but if we saw another
gifted playing makes him, not a different per- person now, with that familiar reminder that
son, but more of a person, in the storeroom. In life, after all, goes on, we could only ask,
one scene, a silly girl chatters at him and sud- "Why?"-JOSEPH KOSTOLEFSKY
denly he sees her but hears only the loud-
speaker and the danger it implies for Hanka
Macario
alone in the storeroom. In another, the trollop
tries to make love to him, and a moment later Director: Roberto Gavaldon. Clasa Films. Sce-
Hanka's bare arm takes a pitcher of water from nario: B. Traven. Camera: Gabriel Figueroa.
him in an image of startling purity. Ignacio Lopez Tarso, Pina Pellicer.
The film is full of accidents, of objects, none
of them standing for something else but all of Macario is based quite faithfully on a stor
them taken for what they are and heightened, B. Traven, who wrote Treasure of the S
sometimes unbearably. For once, a bird is not Madre-though, if you missed the credit t
a symbol of the unfettered spirit; while the girl you would never know it. The story is a so
is being hunted, this one chirps at a level too what insipid one concerning a poor woodcu
shrill to be borne. The script by Weiss and Jan whose discriminating charity is rewarded
Otcenasek is beautifully constructed, taking full Death, with certain powers of healing the
advantage of the mystery story's despised tech- tally sick. Macario (the woodcutter) off
nique of the "plant." The guinea pig left by the the powers of the church, is hounded and
departed family is later attacked by the col- tured by the Inquisition, escapes, pleads w
laborating whore's dog. A seized student's Death for a reprieve and is refused. (In
drafting tools are offered to a farm woman for final scenes Death is presented as presiding
food; refused, they turn up on his empty desk a cavern full of candles, each of which re
following his execution, and, after an awkward sents a human life. Macario's candle is bur
silence, the teacher makes his oration. The low and he snatches it up and runs away;
apartment house itself has an iron gate thatthere's not much you can do with a ca
everyone takes for granted; once the girl has stump, and the woodcutter dies.)
walked through it, it's locked and the boy can Despite Figueroa's camera work, Macar
lusterless, and its images are curiously wit
power; they set up no reverberations. Ind
the film is evocative of Mexico only in th
it would have been if made by MGM, usin
company of imported actors. The flaw is s
in the scenario, which has no pungency w
soever: it is not so much simple as superf
To put it another way, the simplicity reside
in the peasants' view of life, but in the com
cial writer's view of peasants. Along with W
Reindeer this reviewer finds it to be one of
3131 gi
legends we doubt were ever legendary.-
TURNER

Dana Smutna as Hanka in

ROMEO, JULIET, AND DARKNESS.

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