El Gran Calavera (The Great madcap) - 1949

The title refers to a Mexican millionaire who begins drowning his sorrow after his wife's death and, as the film opens, has just spent a night in the cooler, cheek by jowl with a bunch of friendly bums. He fits in quite nicely, which is convenient, because the millionaire's good-for-nothing family is hatching a plot that will leave him in rags for real.

It seems that the family—a socialite daughter, playboy son, snooty brother and hypochondriac sister-in-law—has decided that the only way to keep everybody's favorite moneybags sober is to convince him that he has already squandered his fortune. The relatives forsake their hacienda to rent a shabby apartment and don very neat work clothes, in an effort to convince him that times are rough. Their ruse doesn't work—and why should it? They still sneak cream puffs when the old man isn't looking.

But the millionaire comes up with a scheme of his own, and it's a wonderful success: He convinces the others that they really are poor and, as if by magic, these freeloaders learn to support themselves. Pretty soon everyone is back home in the mansion, where the snooty brother mends gilt furniture and the sister-in-law bakes bread. The lazy son decides to go back to college, and the daughter breaks off with a gigolo to marry a diligent poor boy she met in the slums. Through it all, the millionaire beams wisely. Everybody lives more than happily ever after.

This story, based on a comedy by Adolfo Torrado, would have amounted only to the airiest of fluff had not Buñuel taken merry advantage of the plot's several layers of deceit. The film, which has an exaggerated visual elegance to match its characters' fine manners, contains several delightful episodes in which the family's cordiality, never worth much in the first place, is worn even thinner than usual by everyone's complete uncertainty about just what everyone else is up to. But, Buñuel being Buñuel, politesse easily prevails at the expense of reason.


Root of All Good
THE GREAT MADCAP (EL GRAN CALAVERA), directed by Luis Bunuel; screenplay (Spanish with English subtitles) by Raquel Rojas and Luis Alcoriza, from a comedy by Adolfo Torrado; photography, Ezequiel Carrascu; music, Manuel Esperon; editing by Carlos Savage: produced by Ultramar Films S.A. (Oscar Dancigers). At the Jean Renoir Cinema, 100 Seventh Avenue. Running time: 90 minutes. This film has not been rated.
WITH: Fernando Soler, Andres Soler, Luis Alcoriza, Rosario Granados, Maruja Grifell, Antonio Bravo, Ruben Rojo, Gustavo Rojo and Francisco Jambrina.


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English srt subtitles.