Three wanderers take shelter in a monastery, leading them to a surprisingly intimate adventure in 1934's El fantasma del convento (The Phantom of the Monastery. This extraordinarily effective Mexican horror film was restored a few years ago by George Lucas and it's easy to see how the film may have influenced Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
You could say the protagonist trio is not unlike Han, Luke, and Leia. Alfonso (Entique del Campo), Eduardo (Carlos Villatoro), and Cristina (Marta Roel) have a very different relationship, though. Eduardo and Cristina are married and Eduardo and Alfonso are old friends. But Cristina has been trying to seduce Alfonso, who is attracted to her.
For all that, Alfonso is very much an Indiana Jones/Hans Solo character. From his high crowned, albeit straw, fedora to his insistence that he doesn't buy any of the supernatural hooey while also being intent on exploring the mysterious monastery, all make him a kind of Lucasian rogue/hero and an interesting character in his own right.
Eduardo remains earnest and afraid throughout while Cristina's lust seems to have overridden all her other impulses while on the monastery grounds. There seems to be a very Catholic moral afoot which, very much to the screenplay's credit, the characters actually pick up on. When the Prior tells them a story about a monk who was damned for trying to seduce his friend's wife, Cristina contemptuously points out what seems to her an obvious piece of sermonising.
And yet . . . The room inhabited by Brother Rodrigo is boarded up and blocked with a gigantic cross. It seems Rodrigo's sin was even greater, for he delved into the secrets of a forbidden book, seeking the aid of Satan in capturing the object of his affection. The scene where Alfonso finally dares to enter the cell is astonishingly effective.
El fantasma del convento is available on The Criterion Channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment