One of Bunuel’s best films, Tristana stars Catherine Deneuve in one of her most understated but powerful performances.
Set in the late 1920s to early 1930s in Toledo, tale centers on a young woman who, following her mother’s death, becomes a ward of notorious nobleman don Lope Garrido.
Despite his advancing age, Don Lope refuses to change his playboy lifestyle, while maintaining strong attitudes about honor, chivalry, and women. C
Pretending to defend the weak from corrupt institutions, Don Lope nonetheless preys on his new ward, entranced by her beauty and innocence. He treats her as wife as well as daughter from the age of 19, all unbeknownst to the outside world.
While Tristana initially accepts the arrangement, by age 21 she starts finding her voice, demanding to study music and art, wishing to become independent, not an easy task considering that Don Lope thinks women are inferior to men and untrustworthy and should be kept at home.
Sneaking out of the house against Lope’s wishes, she meets Horacio, a young Catalonian artist (Franco Nero). The two fall in love and Horacio asks her to come live with him, but she remains apprehensive because of Don’s inescapable presence.
When Horacio confronts Don Lope, the latter slaps him and challenges him to duel. Hoarcio punches him and leave with Tristana.
Five years later, Tristana returns, having suddenly fallen ill, wishing to die there. Tristana survives but loses a leg in the process, which changes her prospects.
She breaks up with Horacio and reinstates the relationship with Don Lope as a more independent and defiant woman. Don Lope, whose health problems have worsened, suddenly inherits money from his sister, which Tristana covets. She agrees to have marriage if convenience and takes up the housemaid’s deaf son Saturno as lover.
When the older Lope suffers heart attack, Tristana pretends to get help until he’s fallen unconscious. She then finishes him off by opening the window to the winter cold.
The film ends with a powerful montage of images playing back in reverse, ending at the moment Don Lope first seduced Tristana.
The film’s bears many similarities to Buñuel’s earlier, equally impressive film Viridiana.
Personal Film
The character of Don Lope is partially based on Buñuel’s father, who was also a “señorito (an adult who never worked but lives comfortably due to inheritance). Buñuel based much of Tristana’s schoolgirl innocence on memories of his younger sister Conchita.
Buñuel was critical of Pérez Galdós’ novel, finding it predictable, and among the author’s worst works. Nonetheless, he believed that it would make an excellent film–with some notable changes.
In the novel, Tristana resignedly marries don Lope in order for him to receive his inheritance.
Also different from the novel is Saturno’s increased role—barely mentioned in the novel, he is Tristana’s third love interest.
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Spanish theatrical release poster
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Tristana received its American premiere at the New York Film Festival, and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Catherine Deneuve gives an astonishing performance in her role as the naïve waif turned hardened cynic–with her beauty seeming more precise and enigmatic.
The film also stars Fernando Rey as the nobleman, and Italian heartthrob Franco Nero as the artist.
At the time, much in the way of gossip was written about Nero’s lateness on the set, apparently a result of the presence of Vanessa Redgrave, with whom he had an affair.
Filmed in Toledo, Spain, it was released in 1970 after protracted skirmishes with censors in Generalissimo Franco’s government. “The film portrays a shifting power struggle in a destructive game of sexual sadism, in which she has the last word, but at the cost of losing all innocence,” observes Timothy Lanza, archivist for the Cohen Film Collection.
The remaining known negative of Tristana had experienced staining and color shifting over the years, giving the film a pinkish cast, not an uncommon problem with film stock used in the 1960s and 1970s,” according to Lanza.
The archivist says the original integrity of Tristana has been restored by combining the negative with segments from a quality positive in a high-res digital format, with the aid of DeLuxe Laboratories in New York and Filmoteca Española in Madrid.
Tristana is distributed by Cohen Media Group, a leading distributor of foreign-language and independent films in the U.S.
Credits:
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Screenplay by Buñuel, Julio Alejandro, based on Tristana
by Benito Pérez Galdós
Produced by Buñuel, Robert Dorfmann
Cinematography José F. Aguayo
Edited by Pedro del Rey
Running time: 100 minutes
Box office: $3.3 million
About Bunuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés, born in Spain in 1900, became a leader of the surrealist film movement as early as the silent film era in the 1920s.
In his six-decade career, he worked in Mexico, Hollywood, France and Spain during various periods, making films known especially for their criticism of bourgeois morals and what he regarded as the hypocrisy of religion.
With the release of his most widely acclaimed film, Viridiana, in 1961, he became a dominant international figure in the movie industry.
Among Buñuel’s best known films are Belle de Jour, which also starred Catherine Deneuve, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and his last movie, That Obscure Object of Desire.
The director died in 1983.
