The Great Madcap

Ramiro, a wealthy businessman, has drunk himself into a state since losing his wife and is burning through his fortune. To save the inheritance his family stages a deception: once he sobers up they tell him they are ruined and move the whole household into a poor neighbourhood. Everyone has to pretend to be destitute. Ramiro works out what is happening and makes his own calculation. Luis Buñuel directed. It was his second film in Mexico after Gran Casino in 1947. Fernando Soler plays Ramiro, with Rosario Granados and Andrés Soler in the cast. Ultramar Films produced. It runs 92 minutes in black and white. Buñuel called work like this his bread-and-butter films, and after a long gap in exile following the Spanish Civil War he rebuilt his career on them. What matters about it is the consequence. Its large commercial success persuaded the producer Óscar Dancigers to take on something far more ambitious and to give Buñuel complete freedom on both script and direction. The film that came a year later was Los Olvidados. Who it is for: anyone curious about Buñuel's Mexican period and comedies built on class. Who it is not for: viewers waiting for his surrealism. This is a straight commercial comedy and his signature shows only in the jabs at bourgeois hypocrisy.