Fever Mounts at El Pao

On an imaginary island in the Caribbean the people kill the tyrant who rules them. The man who takes his place is Ramón Vázquez, the dead man's secretary, who has already been having an affair with his wife Inés. But power does not stay unclaimed: Alejandro Gual, at the head of a military unit, arrives on the island and starts working to turn both the people and Inés against Vázquez. Luis Buñuel adapted the film from Henri Castillou's novel, and it describes how a well-meaning man changes the closer he gets to power. The island's prison and its system of forced labour are not background but the ground the story stands on. It was Gérard Philipe who proposed the novel to Buñuel; it became his last film, and he died four months after shooting at the age of thirty six. María Félix plays Inés.