A Woman Without Love
Brief Synopsis
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After indulging in an affair with a man (a friend of the family) she truly loves, a woman returns to her young son and husband for good, and loses contact with the man. Her husband is unaware of the affair. Twenty years later, there is news that the friend has died and left all of his money to the younger son in the family, which leads us to question this younger son's biological origin...
Cast & Crew
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Luis Buñuel
Director
Miguel Manzano
Tito Junco
Joaquin Cordero
Eva Calvo
Rosario Granados
Film Details
Also Known As
Cuando los Hijos nos Juzgan, Una Mujer Sin Amor, Woman Without Love, A
Genre
Drama
Release Date
1951
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 25m
Color
Black and White
Synopsis
After indulging in an affair with a man (a friend of the family) she truly loves, a woman returns to her young son and husband for good, and loses contact with the man. Her husband is unaware of the affair. Twenty years later, there is news that the friend has died and left all of his money to the younger son in the family, which leads us to question this younger son's biological origin...
Director
Luis Buñuel
Director
Cast
Miguel Manzano
Tito Junco
Joaquin Cordero
Eva Calvo
Rosario Granados
Jaime Colpe Jr
Elda Peralta
Javier Loya
Julio Villareal
Crew
Rudolpho Benitez
Sound
Jorge Bustos
Editor
Oscar Dancigers
Producer
Guy De Maupassant
Story By
Guy De Maupassant
From Story
Gunther Gerszo
Art Director
Sergio Kogan
Producer
Raul Lavista
Music
Mario Llorca
Assistant Director
Jaime Salvador
Screenplay
Raul Martinez Solares
Dp/Cinematographer
Raul Martinez Solares
Cinematographer
Film Details
Also Known As
Cuando los Hijos nos Juzgan, Una Mujer Sin Amor, Woman Without Love, A
Genre
Drama
Release Date
1951
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 25m
Color
Black and White
Articles
A Woman Without Love - Luis Bunuel's A WOMAN WITHOUT LOVE (Una Mujer Sin Amor) on DVD
Synopsis: Forced to marry to help her family, Rosario (Rosario Granados) is psychologically abused by her husband Don Carlos Montero (Julio Villareal), a wealthy antiques dealer. Don Carlos mistreats their son Carlos (Jaime Calpe), Rosario's only joy, until the boy runs away. Out in the wild, forestry engineer Julio Mistral (Tito Junco) rescues the boy, befriends him and returns him to his grateful parents. Don Carlos insists on striking up a family friendship with the handsome gentleman, and soon Julio and Rosario fall into an unavoidable affair. Rosario cannot divorce without losing her son, so she lets Julio talk her into running away to Brazil. But on the day they are to leave Don Carlos suffers a heart attack, and she decides she cannot abandon him. When her husband recovers Rosario still will not leave, and Julio breaks off the relationship. Twenty years later little Carlos is a grown man (Joaquín Cordero) and a dedicated but financially unsuccessful doctor. His younger brother Miguel (Javier Loyá) is just graduating from medical school. News comes of an inheritance from 'an old family friend' who has died in Brazil -- Julio Mistral. Julio has left his millions to young Miguel, a fact that goes unquestioned ... at first.
If the heroine of A Woman without Love really thought about her predicament, she might re-title her tale "The Stifled Cry of the Bourgeois Housewife." Luis Buñuel's critique of society is just as strong here as it is in his more overtly fantastic films. The dictatorial Don Carlos shuts his wife out of man-to-man conversations and locks his presumed-guilty son in a room with the admonition, "Incarceration and hunger would be good for revolutionaries, too." In the very first scene Buñuel shows Don Carlos banishing a customer from his exclusive store for trying to barter down a price. That low-class behavior is for flea markets and peasants.
Rosario is in a prison of imposed obligations. Her parents were poor so she married the wealthy Don Carlos, a man who doesn't respect her. The only love she feels is for her son. The strongest family ties In Latin America are said to be between mothers and sons; daughters leave and husbands lose interest, but a son's love is forever. Rosario hasn't experienced romantic love until her affair with Julio. Don Carlos' sickness brings her back to reality, and her chance for fulfillment goes away.
Twenty years later, it looks as though Rosario will be martyred yet again. Her two sons are feuding over their desire for the same woman (a beautiful female doctor, so presumably not a fortune hunter). The more serious Carlos resents his father for refusing to bankroll his idea for a clinic until young Miguel has graduated. Then Don Carlos lets the plan fall through because it prevents him from a maximum killing in a real estate deal. When Miguel suddenly inherits millions from a family friend he never met, Carlos is furious. The younger, less dedicated brother has the girl, the money and the luck, and Carlos is expected to be quietly grateful for a secondary position in the new clinic. Carlos shares his father's harsh attitude toward women, romancing his head nurse (Eva Calvo) and then snubbing her to her face. Because Miguel follows his heart and has a positive attitude, Carlos thinks him a frivolous playboy.
[Spoiler] When the truth comes out about Julio and Rosario, the conflict becomes a matter between mother and sons. Rosario makes a strong verbal defense of her choices in life and asks her sons to consider who besides her has suffered: her love was not shameful, only impossible. The relatively subdued ending is chillingly appropriate.
At this point in his career Luis Buñuel was committed to establishing a commercial career. His assignment in A Woman without Love was to remake an earlier French version, shot for shot if possible. Viewers expecting weird dream sequences and surrealistic visuals are bound to be disappointed, but the show is a solid entry in his filmography. Buñuel sublimates his themes in a way comparable to the melodramas churned out by Douglas Sirk later in the 1950s. Sirk's overheated symbolism and forced dramatics now seem more flamboyant than radical, while Buñuel's little drama simply sets the dilemma of an upper-class Mexican housewife in relief. Is she living her own life, or living in self-denial? If quiet obedience to family obligations is its own reward, why is she resentful?
Rosario Granados (repeating from Luis Buñuel's La gran calavera) does well pretending to be 25, and then 45. In some scenes she looks a bit like a sad Donna Reed, or Jean Brooks of The Seventh Victim. Handsome Tito Junco would return in Buñuel's later The Exterminating Angel. Julio Villareal appeared in many golden-age Mexican movies as well as Buñuel's Gran Casino and Pedro Armendariz's The Torch. Joaquín Cordero was in the director's later El rio y la muerte as well as various Mexican horror classics, such as Orlak, el infierno de Frankenstein.
Facets and Cinemateca's disc of A Woman without Lovepresents this elusive Luis Buñuel film in a good transfer with clear Spanish audio and English subtitles. It was reviewed from a check disc, making any quality assessment inconclusive. No extras are included. Subtitled versions of the film were once so scarce that critic Raymond Durgnat had to finish his career book on Luis Buñuel without seeing this title. Facets is also releasing Buñuel's El Bruto and the relatively unknown, wickedly subversive Susana. An imprisoned young woman prays to be allowed to avenge herself on the male sex, and is answered by a lightning bolt that blows down the wall of her cell, setting her free.
For more information about A Woman Without Love, visit Facets Multi-Media.
by Glenn Erickson
A Woman Without Love - Luis Bunuel's A WOMAN WITHOUT LOVE (Una Mujer Sin Amor) on DVD
Luis Buñuel has been quoted as calling his 1951 A Woman
without Love (Una mujer sin amor) his worst film, which can be taken
as a warning never to trust film directors when they assess their own work.
Following Buñuel's celebrated Los Olvidados, the resolutely
non-surrealistic soap opera was surely a conceptual step backward for the
Spanish director working in exile in Mexico. The story adapts a novel by
Guy de Maupassant to serve as a vehicle for a female star. In
Buñuel's more celebrated fantasies, we're accustomed to seeing his
subversive subtext leap to the forefront. The disturbing undercurrent in
A Woman without Love is the whole concept. Not quite a straight
soap opera, the film is a stealthy examination of the institutions of marriage
and motherhood, and social compact that requires women to sacrifice
themselves to the demands of others.
Synopsis: Forced to marry to help her family, Rosario (Rosario Granados)
is psychologically abused by her husband Don Carlos Montero (Julio
Villareal), a wealthy antiques dealer. Don Carlos mistreats their son Carlos
(Jaime Calpe), Rosario's only joy, until the boy runs away. Out in the wild,
forestry engineer Julio Mistral (Tito Junco) rescues the boy, befriends him
and returns him to his grateful parents. Don Carlos insists on striking up a
family friendship with the handsome gentleman, and soon Julio and Rosario
fall into an unavoidable affair. Rosario cannot divorce without losing her son,
so she lets Julio talk her into running away to Brazil. But on the day they
are to leave Don Carlos suffers a heart attack, and she decides she cannot
abandon him. When her husband recovers Rosario still will not leave, and
Julio breaks off the relationship. Twenty years later little Carlos is a grown
man (Joaquín Cordero) and a dedicated but financially unsuccessful
doctor. His younger brother Miguel (Javier Loyá) is just graduating
from medical school. News comes of an inheritance from 'an old family
friend' who has died in Brazil -- Julio Mistral. Julio has left his millions to
young Miguel, a fact that goes unquestioned ... at first.
If the heroine of A Woman without Love really thought about her
predicament, she might re-title her tale "The Stifled Cry of the Bourgeois
Housewife." Luis Buñuel's critique of society is just as strong here as
it is in his more overtly fantastic films. The dictatorial Don Carlos shuts his
wife out of man-to-man conversations and locks his presumed-guilty son in
a room with the admonition, "Incarceration and hunger would be good for
revolutionaries, too." In the very first scene Buñuel shows Don Carlos
banishing a customer from his exclusive store for trying to barter down a
price. That low-class behavior is for flea markets and peasants.
Rosario is in a prison of imposed obligations. Her parents were poor so she
married the wealthy Don Carlos, a man who doesn't respect her. The only
love she feels is for her son. The strongest family ties In Latin America are
said to be between mothers and sons; daughters leave and husbands lose
interest, but a son's love is forever. Rosario hasn't experienced romantic
love until her affair with Julio. Don Carlos' sickness brings her back to
reality, and her chance for fulfillment goes away.
Twenty years later, it looks as though Rosario will be martyred yet again.
Her two sons are feuding over their desire for the same woman (a beautiful
female doctor, so presumably not a fortune hunter). The more serious
Carlos resents his father for refusing to bankroll his idea for a clinic until
young Miguel has graduated. Then Don Carlos lets the plan fall through
because it prevents him from a maximum killing in a real estate deal. When
Miguel suddenly inherits millions from a family friend he never met, Carlos
is furious. The younger, less dedicated brother has the girl, the money and
the luck, and Carlos is expected to be quietly grateful for a secondary
position in the new clinic. Carlos shares his father's harsh attitude toward
women, romancing his head nurse (Eva Calvo) and then snubbing her to her
face. Because Miguel follows his heart and has a positive attitude, Carlos
thinks him a frivolous playboy.
[Spoiler] When the truth comes out about Julio and Rosario, the conflict
becomes a matter between mother and sons. Rosario makes a strong
verbal defense of her choices in life and asks her sons to consider who
besides her has suffered: her love was not shameful, only impossible. The
relatively subdued ending is chillingly appropriate.
At this point in his career Luis Buñuel was committed to establishing
a commercial career. His assignment in A Woman without Love
was to remake an earlier French version, shot for shot if possible. Viewers
expecting weird dream sequences and surrealistic visuals are bound to be
disappointed, but the show is a solid entry in his filmography. Buñuel
sublimates his themes in a way comparable to the melodramas churned
out by Douglas Sirk later in the 1950s. Sirk's overheated symbolism and
forced dramatics now seem more flamboyant than radical, while
Buñuel's little drama simply sets the dilemma of an upper-class
Mexican housewife in relief. Is she living her own life, or living in self-denial?
If quiet obedience to family obligations is its own reward, why is she
resentful?
Rosario Granados (repeating from Luis Buñuel's La gran
calavera) does well pretending to be 25, and then 45. In some scenes
she looks a bit like a sad Donna Reed, or Jean Brooks of The Seventh
Victim. Handsome Tito Junco would return in Buñuel's later
The Exterminating Angel. Julio Villareal appeared in many
golden-age Mexican movies as well as Buñuel's Gran Casino
and Pedro Armendariz's The Torch. Joaquín Cordero was in
the director's later El rio y la muerte as well as various Mexican
horror classics, such as Orlak, el infierno de Frankenstein.
Facets and Cinemateca's disc of A Woman without Lovepresents
this elusive Luis Buñuel film in a good transfer with clear Spanish
audio and English subtitles. It was reviewed from a check disc, making any
quality assessment inconclusive. No extras are included. Subtitled versions
of the film were once so scarce that critic Raymond Durgnat had to finish
his career book on Luis Buñuel without seeing this title. Facets is
also releasing Buñuel's El Bruto and the relatively unknown,
wickedly subversive Susana. An imprisoned young woman prays to
be allowed to avenge herself on the male sex, and is answered by a
lightning bolt that blows down the wall of her cell, setting her free.
For more information about A Woman Without Love, visit Facets Multi-Media.
by Glenn Erickson