The River and Death

In a small Mexican village two families have been killing each other for generations. The reason has been forgotten; what is left is an obligation called honour that nobody questions. Today one son remains on each side. One went to the city and became a doctor; the other stayed in the village and is waiting for him to come back. The village is waiting too, because the village wants blood. Made during Luis Buñuel's Mexican period, the film is adapted from a novel by Miguel Álvarez Acosta. Buñuel counted it a failure among his own work, and it is indeed not one of his most personal productions. The subject, though, is exactly his: how a tradition leaves people no choice, and how what everyone accepts as right can be stupid. Violence here is never filmed as heroism.