La fièvre monte à El Pao (1959) Reviews

• Political Melodrama

  claudio_carvalho2014-03-24

  In the fictitious island of Ojeda, people lives a dictatorship and the island is a penal colony of forced labor with ordinary and political prisoners together. When the Governor Mariano Vargas (Miguel Ángel Ferriz) is murdered by a sniper, his idealistic secretary Ramón Vázquez (Gérard Philipe) is assigned director of security and in charge of the prison. Vázquez is in love with the widow Inés Rojas (Maria Felix) and they have a love affair. But when the new governor Alejandro Gual Miguel (Jean Servais) arrives in the island, he wants Inés to be his lover. Further he forces the killer to sign a false confession telling that Vázquez is the responsible for the attempt against the previous governor and blackmails Inés. But Inés is a female fatale that knows the political games and manipulations. "La fièvre monte à El Pao" is a political melodrama by Buñuel based on politics instead of his famous surrealism. The theme politics was adopted by Costa-Gravas years later and Glauber Rocha probably wrote his "Terra em Transe" inspired in this movie. Inés Rojas is a femme fatale but the plot is not a film-noir, only the story of an idealistic man that joins politics in a dictatorship and finds how difficult is keep his ideals. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "Os Ambiciosos" ("The Ambitious")

• politic experiment of Bunuel

  Kirpianuscus2017-12-05

  for me, its basic virtue is to be the last film of Gerard Philipe. and an experiment , with decent result, of Bunuel trip in politic noir genre. it is far to be a good or a bad movie. because the genre was defined by Costa Gavras , it was very popular in "60 decade and it seems have the status of fragile equilibrium between themes, motifs, explanations, pretexts. the meet between Maria Felix and Jean Servais does the presence of Gerard Philipe almost symbolic. sure, at the second view, his Vazques becomes more realistic but more as the honest young man against a corrupt regime, in clothes of David against Goliath. short, a good film for another side of Bunuel art. for a reasonable portrait of dictatorship. and for few references to Soviet Union. or Franz Kafka.

• Crystal Gazing

  EdgarST2015-08-19

  Known as «Los ambiciosos» in México, the co-producing country where director Luis Buñueñ relocated to, lived and died, as well as in most Latin American territories, this was made in 1959, the year Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, so while anyone can believe the plot and location refers to him and his homeland, they do not. Yes, the island of Ojeda is a Caribbean country ruled by a dictator (Andrés Soler at his meanest - he does receive credit in the Mexican version), but its banana-based economy (no sugar, tobacco or rum, as in Cuba) and the absence of a guerrilla movement, makes it "NowhereLand" with Gérard Philipe (in his last role) as a handsome idealist who falls for the wrong woman (María Félix looking very beautiful). In any case we will never know if Buñuel or in that case novelist Henri Castillou were able to see the future. A good political melodrama.

• Mounting fever.

  morrison-dylan-fan2015-03-06

  With Easter coming up,I decided to start searching round for a rare title from auteur film maker Luis Buñuel,that I could give to a friend as a holiday present.As I began searching for a Buñuel title,I decided to finally take a look at an actress which I had seen a fellow IMDber mention in a number of posts,called María Félix.Checking Félix's credits,I was happily caught by surprise,when I discovered that she had made a movie with Buñuel!,which led to me getting ready to climb up the mountains of El Pao. The plot: Celebrating 25 years of ruling the country, Le président Carlos Barreiro is assassinated.Sending the country into turmoil,Barreiro's widow Inés Rojas sets her sights on putting her secret lover Ramón Vázquez in power,so that her grip on power remains.Believing Rojas wants to help him gain power due to agreeing with his plans for the country, (such as freeing all political prisoners) Ramón Vázquez finds his route to the presidency to get blocked by Alejandro Gual,who seizes the opportunity,and puts himself in power.Desperate to take over, Vázquez soon discovers that the political game is far deadlier than he could ever have imagined. View on the film: Filming his adaptation of Henri Castillou's novel in France,co- writer/(along with Luis Alcoriza/ Charles Dorat & Louis Sapin)director Luis Buñuel and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa bake the film in a scorching hot South American heat,with Buñuel using superb long tracking shots to show the tension in the fictional country starting to bubble over.Using the assassination as a starting pistol, Buñuel makes white the main colour for the title,with each of the would-be leaders wearing crisp white suits,which Buñuel subtly darkens/soils,as they get pulled closer to the murky political world of the country. Toning down the famous surreal aspects in Buñuel's work,the writers take an extremely sharp political strike with the film,as the residences hopes of change are shown to be pushed aside,as the people in power are shown to be so self-focused,that they keep allowing their citizens to end up in the same shackles that they were in before.Along with the effect that the killing has on the residence,the writers also brilliantly show a decaying Film Noir world of the country's political leaders,as each of their ideas fade away,to be replaced by a ruthless thrust for holding on to power in any way possible. Giving the title a shot of Film Noir,the alluring María Félix gives a fantastic femme fatale performance as Inés Rojas,with Félix peeling Rojas playfulness layer by layer,to reveal a dame who is determined to walk over any man who gets in the way of Rojas grip on power. Tragically dying from cancer during the making of the title, (which led to parts of the movie having to be re-written,and a body double also being used) Gérard Philipe gives an excellent final performance as Ramón Vázquez,thanks to Philipe showing a wide-eye sense of excitement in Vázquez hopes of changing the political climate in the country,which gradually gets shadowed by feeling of betrayal & fear,as Vázquez finds fever continuing to mount in El Pao.

• Bunuel gets (explicitly) political

  Tryavna2008-08-05

  Based on the difficulty I had tracking this down and the fact that there's only one other review, this must be one of Bunuel's rarest and hardest-to-see movies. It belongs to a group of three French-Mexican co-productions that Bunuel made in the late-1950s just before his return to Europe (with "Viridiana") but after a few earlier Mexican films ("El" and "Rehersal for a Crime") had reached appreciative audiences in France. Like a lot of Bunuel's (almost criminally underavailable and under-appreciated) Mexican-era works, "Fever Rises in El Pao" is basically "realistic" as opposed to "surrealistic." There is a brief sequence around the middle of the film when Maria Felix and Jean Servais engage in a sadomasochistic relationship that is pure Bunuel, but for the most part, this one is pretty low-key and straightforward. "Fever" is actually one of Bunuel's plottier movies. It's set on Ojeda, an island under the control of a fictional French-speaking banana republic. In the opening sequence, a detached narrator (another device typical of Bunuel's Mexican period) informs of Ojeada's "facts": its capitol is El Pao, its major resources are bananas and fish, etc. But the island's real importance is its prison labor camp (modeled on Devil's Island perhaps?), where political prisoners are sent. When the governor of the island is assassinated, the governorship itself becomes a pawn in two different but intertwined games: the struggle for power on the mainland between the president and his brother and the rivalry for the hand of the former governor's widow (Maria Felix) between the new governor (Jean Servais) and the former governor's secretary (Gerard Philipe). The secretary is the film's nominal hero -- an idealist who thinks he can change political conditions from within but who is increasingly corrupted out of sheer necessity for survival. Thus "Fever" also becomes a kind of morality tale. At any rate, it's surely the most politically explicit movie Bunuel ever made (though perhaps it doesn't have the resonance of "Diary of a Chambermaid"). If you like and know what to expect from Bunuel's Mexican period, then you'll more than likely find this a rewarding film. It's not a masterpiece, like "Los Olvidados" or "El" or even "Ascent to Heaven," but it compares favorably with "Susana," "El Bruto," and "Nazarin." (It's certainly stronger and more interesting than "Gran Casino" and "A Woman without Love.") Its greatest strengths are probably Gabriel Figueroa's cinematography and Jean Servais' performance, which has some nice touches (like an affection for a parakeet and a cruel streak made more horrific by its casualness). I also liked the music score, which seems a bit more carefully integrated into the film than was usual for Bunuel. (Like John Ford, Bunuel apparently didn't care much non-diegetic music in his movies.)