Illusion Travels by Streetcar

Luis Buñuel's 1954 Mexican film is among the most affectionate works of his commercial period. Learning that their favourite streetcar, number 133, is to be decommissioned, two municipal transit workers get drunk and take it out for one last run. That last run becomes an all-night and all-day effort to avoid being caught, and they also refuse to take money from the people who board along the way. The joke is exactly there: a public vehicle running for free becomes an anomaly inside the system, and nobody knows what to do about it. Buñuel's criticism of bureaucracy and property proceeds quietly beneath the comedy. Like most films of his Mexican period it was made fast and cheap, but the structure holds. Who it's for: viewers who like Buñuel's Mexican period and social satire. Who it's not for: anyone expecting his surrealist films, or bothered by an episodic, loose structure.