"Las Hurdes" may be the Surrealist documentary par excellence, a tendentious film discourse about poverty shot in Las Hurdes Altas, a human settlement out of a nightmare, among steep precipices, in an almost deserted landscape. Even based on Maurice Legendre's 1927 anthropological text "Las Jurdes: A Study of Human Geography", Buñuel forced into the harsh situations his own obsessions with insects and donkeys that would appall today any society for the protection of animals. Done at a time when Spain was among the nine countries with the highest level of economic development, by contrast this work shows the state of misery of a community marginalized by landowners, forgotten by authorities, and living in the cruelest of conditions. The cynic commentary makes the facts more striking, but the music score by Darius Milhaud is an obtrusive element. Although banned by the authorities, it was re-released with a Spanish narration read by actor Francisco Rabal.
Review of Las Hurdes
