Death in the Garden [La mort en ce jardin] **** (1956, Simone Signoret, Georges Marchal, Charles Vanel, Michel Piccoli) – Classic Movie Review 8835

This Luis Buñuel rarity is a colourful adventure thriller set in Mexico, where a motley group of French people – a bad boy adventurer [Shark], a priest [Father Lizardi], a prostitute [Djin], an old diamond miner [Castin] and his deaf-mute daughter [María Castin] – have to try to escape via the jungle to reach Brazil after a revolution in a South American mining outpost.

Evil Eden [La Mort en ce Jardin] [La Muerte en esta Jardin] [Death in the Garden] stars Georges Marchal as Shark, Simone Signoret as Djin, Charles Vanel as Castin, Michel Piccoli as Father Lizardi, and Michèle Girardon as María Castin. Based on the novel by José-André Lacour, it is an unusual film for Buñuel, though there are shots at his usual targets of hypocrisy and greed, and some Surrealist ideas and symbolism.

It is a straightforward, tough and suspenseful adventure yarn, perhaps inspired by the 1953 The Wages of Fear, which also starred Charles Vanel and Simone Signoret’s husband Yves Montand.

Surrealist fireworks leaven the adventure clichés, and the fine, star-studded cast is worth anyone’s time, and the movie looks good in Jorge Stahl Jr’s vibrant Eastmancolor cinematography, filmed on various Mexican locations.

The 105 minute international version is cut from the original much longer Mexican version.

Michel Piccoli as Father Lizardi.

Also in the cast are Tito Junco, Raul Ramirez, Luis Aceves-Castañeda, Jorge Martînez de Hoyos, Alberto Pedret, Marc Lambert.

Evil Eden [La Mort en ce Jardin] [La Muerte en esta Jardin] [Death in the Garden] is directed by Luis Buñuel, runs 105 minutes, is made by Films Dismage, Producciones Tepeyac, is released by Cinédis (1956) (France), is written by Luis Alcoriza (adaptation), Luis Buñuel (adaptation), Raymond Queneau ( adaptation and additional dialogue), Gabriel Arout (dialogue), based on the novel by José-André Lacour, is shot by Jorge Stahl Jr, is produced by Léon Carré (executive producer), Antonio de Salazar, David Mage (producer: France) and Oscar Dancigers (delegate producer ), is scored by Paul Misraki and is designed by Edward Fitzgerald

Michel Piccoli’s breakthrough came with Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963). He won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for Marco Bellocchio’s A Leap in the Dark in 1980 and the Silver Bear in Berlin for Pierre Granier-Deferre’s Strange Affair in 1982.

Supposedly, Signoret missed Montand so much that she put some Communist documents into her passport on her way to Mexico, hoping to be turned back by American Immigration.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8835

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