La fórmula secreta (Die Geheimnisformel) / Simón del desierto (Simon in der Wüste)

With La fórmula secreta, director Rubén Gámez rides to the poetry of Juan Rulfo in an attack on conditions in the country: "Strange and semi-surrealistic nightmares - somehow related to a Mexican reality" is what Amos Vogel sees as the basic pattern of this delirious storm of images, which not only settles accounts with national myths and economic colonialism, but also with the conventions of the Mexican film industry. The pioneering advertising filmmaker and activist Gámez won almost all the prizes in the "First Competition of Experimental Film" organised by the Mexican Cinema Union. At the same time, Luis Buñuel was shooting Simón del desierto for the last time in Mexico. St Simon is said to have spent decades of his life on a pillar in the Syrian desert in the 5th century. Buñuel's satirical film version of the legend confronts the ascetic (Claudio Brooks) on his pillar with a seductive devil in the guise of a woman (Silvia Pinal), whom he steadfastly resists. In the end, however, he finds himself in a "contemporary hell", according to Vogel: "today's America in the final stage of its decay". (C.H.)

Introduction by Christoph Huber

Photo: Austrian Film Museum