Telenovela Watch - December 14

This week's Telenovela Watch, only a scant sampling of 9 episodes, but so far LA MARIPOSA is the best show MundoFox has aired in the network's brief existance; and LOS REY premieres on Azteca America.

A Matter of Faith - on BURN, WITCH, BURN

BURN, WITCH, BURN (1962) is a thriller about faith.  The first line of the film, spoken by its protagonist, a smug professor named Norman (Peter Wyngarde), writing on a chalk board: I do not believe.  He discovers his wife, Tansy (Janet Blair), has been using witchcraft to protect him from a dangerous rival at the college where he teaches.  Demanding she destroy the protective charms which are an affront to his core credo in rationality, his luck immediately takes a turn for the disastrous.

The film’s silly title – its original British title, NIGHT OF THE EAGLE, isn’t much better - belies a relatively subtle and intelligent horror film, a throwback to the suggestive frissons of the series of psychological horror films produced by Val Lewton at RKO in the forties.  The smart script is credited to Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, from a fine novel, CONJURE WIFE, by Fritz Leiber.  The director, Sidney Hayers, made CIRCUS OF HORRORS a couple years earlier, but the bulk of his career was in television.  There are sequences in BURN, WITCH, BURN which recall some of his better television work, particularly for the 1960s series THE AVENGERS, but better rendered, with a higher budget.  Suggestive, fearful shots of Norman from a pursuing camera are very reminiscent of Hayers’s work on THE AVENGERS episode, “The Hidden Tiger.”

BURN, WITCH, BURN lacks the visual elegance of the best of the Lewton films: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, CAT PEOPLE, THE SEVENTH VICTIM, ISLE OF THE DEAD, and THE LEOPARD MAN, or the late fifties film, NIGHT OF THE DEMON, directed by the best of the Lewton directors, Jacques Tourneur; and a climatic chase at the end involving an eagle, though effective wham-bam filmmaking, is discordant with the more subtle terror of the rest of the film.  In the film’s best scene and true climax, a supposed witch sets fire to a house of cards and asks the professor, “Do you think your house is burning down?”  The central conflict between rationality and the supernatural, between belief and skepticism, cannot be more eloquently or potently illustrated.  Unfortunately, even here, the suspense is undermined by a cut to the professor’s house; the audience should have been allowed to simmer alongside the hero in uncertainty.

Telenovela Watch - December 7

This week’s Telenovela Watch, looking at the first week of Televisa’s CORONA DE LÁGRIMAS starring Victoria Ruffo on Univision, and the Colombian action/suspense novela LA MARIPOSA starring María Adelaida Puerta and Michel Brown on MundoFox.

Marlene Favela & horses - an observation from watching too many telenovelas

With Marlene Favela about to join the proceedings on Telemundo’s EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA, let's hope her character avoids getting anywhere near a horse.  A screen cap gallery featuring Marlene's rough equine history on telenovelas.

In the 2002 Venevision/Fonovideo telenovela GATA SALVAJE, Marlene Favela played Rosaura Ríos, a feisty, noble young woman working tirelessly to support her family.  She has a love/hate relationship with the galán played by Mario Cimarro.  His character is named Luis Mario, the handsome heir to his family fortune, brooding after the loss of his wife.  Their tempestuous relationship has many huffy flounces from her and pursuits by him, including this one on horseback that concludes when he finds her unconscious on the ground after an apparent accident.

In the 2011 Telemundo telenovela LOS HEREDEROS DEL MONTE, Marlene Favela played Paula del Monte, a feisty, imperious, manipulative seductress.  Paula has a love/hate relationship with the galán played by Mario Cimarro.  His character is named Juan del Monte, the handsome oldest of five adopted brothers, a dark and brooding type.  Their tempestuous relationship has many huffy flounces from her and pursuits by him, including this one on horseback, that concludes when he finds her unconscious on the ground after an apparent accident.

And then there are the tumbles resulting from villainous foul play.  Again, from GATA SALVAJE, a villainess spooks Marlene’s horse with a rifle shot.

 

 

And from the 2012 Venevision production CORAZÓN APASIONADO, Marlene is chased while she rides by a bad guy, with a now predictable outcome.

Serial Quackery

A funny thing happens mid-way through the 2012 Televisa telenovela UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR – the loved ones of the principal antagonist, Roselena (Laura Flores), after watching her grow more and more emotionally unstable, take her to be checked out by medical professionals, first to scan her brain for physical ailments, then, force her to see a psychiatrist, which she does for the remainder of the novela.  The not-so-good results are predictable: by the novela’s end, Roselena has completely lost all touch with reality.

It got me thinking: Is there a more thankless profession for a character on a melodrama than psychotherapist?  To drive a story, it is almost a prerequisite for the psychotherapist to be incompetent, the dramatic possibilities far riper in psychosis than restored mental balance.  Sure, there are triumph of the human spirit stories to be explored if the psychotherapist is able to assist a character heal emotionally and psychologically, become a responsible, contributing member of society after some mental or emotional trauma; but far, far more prolific are the patients disintegrating into dangerous psychopaths.

This serial quackery becomes especially tiresome on a soap opera, where the same doctor has to make mistake after mistake regarding patient after patient, year after year.  This was the case with Dr. Rae Cummings, a psychologist who appeared on all four ABC soap operas in the early 2000s, but most prominently on ONE LIFE TO LIVE, where every patient she treated wound up getting worse under her care, ultimately going on some violent rampage through town.  The joke on these shows is the psychologist is still treated with respect around town, a pillar of her profession, even after a handful of horrific gaffes and the loss of many innocent lives.

ONE LIFE TO LIVE would actually repeat the jokes of Llanview’s dreadful mental health care a few years later when Marty Saybrooke (Susan Haskell) became the resident soap psychiatrist.  Eventually, Marty herself also went on a violent psychotic rampage, stabbing one character and shoving another off a roof.  Of course, she was treated by another incompetent psychotherapist – a vicious cycle.

Benign Buñuel - on SIMON OF THE DESERT

SIMON OF THE DESERT, Luis Buñuel’s last Mexican film and his funniest, is a compromised work without seeming like one.  Its mere 43 minutes running time, a result of the producer running out of money, explains the film’s abrupt finale, but Buñuel’s ultimate solution – jetting his hero centuries forward to a 1960s nightclub hell - is befitting the surrealistic touches that precede it.

The plot: Simón (Claudio Brook), an early Christian ascetic perched atop a pillar for six years must resist the temptations of the Devil in the guise of Silvia Pinal, who appears as a water bearer, a not-so-innocent anachronistic school girl, and as Christ, carrying a lamb, which she promptly drops and kicks when Simón denies her.

Buñuel depicts the often absurd proceedings with a serene detachment.  If the actors’ playing was more broadly comedic, several scenes could have passed for a Monty Python sketch.  The men and women who gather around Simón’s pillar aren’t too impressed with Simón, even after he performs a miracle: restoring a man’s chopped off hands.  It’s all pretty mundane to the onlookers.  After all, what else is a saint supposed to do if not perform miracles, as a baker bakes bread.

One scene, where a possessed monk quarrels with his fellow monks, is basically the Duck Season/Rabbit Season gag from the Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny cartoons, as the possessed monk manages to confuse his fellow monks as to what they should be damning and praising in their shouts.

As funny as SIMON IN THE DESERT often is, it is also one of Buñuel’s most benign films.  The old master can’t conceal his fondness for his Simón, in his solitude, nibbling on lettuce and blessing the insects who visit him on his perch in the sky.  The purity of Simón’s devotion is something Buñuel cannot scoff at; he just shakes his head, amused, smiling.