Bunuel's last mexican film (the 22nd of that period in total) is hardly a feature-length: 45 mins long, its production was inexplicably cut short after just 18 days of photography. The film's plot is based on the 5th c. syrian ascetic Saint Simeon Stylites the Elder, and Bunuel naturally focuses (just as Flaubert had with his Saint Anthony of the Desert) on the salacious and more titillating features of the lives of ascetics: the provocations made by the Devil. Bunuel's famed 'atheism' (or rather his aggressive agnosticism, considering the fervor of his obsession with christian values), finds fertile ground in this stylization of the phallic tendency in Saint Simeon, perched on his pillar, who finds himself confronted by a devil fleshed out in Silvia Pinal's body. Bunuel, in life and work, was an unregenerate prankster, and the material of having a saint as the buttend of the auteur's merciless jokes provides him the occasion for innumerable caprices independent of any larger themes. One can only imagine where else the blonde buxom Devil would have taken the Stylite, but the film ends before we see how Simeon conquers his fame, abruptly. Though the film ends at 3 quarters of an hour, the resolution comes across as ingenious in spite of its (apparently premature) termination: if the old-fashioned temptations of sexuality & gluttony don't disrupt the perseverance of the ascetic, then the lure of modernity will.
(Coincidentally, one of the arch, but implicit, investigations Flaubert undertook in Temptation of St. Anthony was to experiment with what ruinous effects epistemological chaos would have on an old-school unlettered mind; or more succinctly, what would total access to the internet - the heart of relativism - whence a plethora of 'truths' compete with equal vigor & aesthetic seduction, cause in the mind of a saint whose steadfast volition, given over heart & soul to God, abides by a nearly nihilistic refusal of all information that does not traffic in the direct will?)
While Bunuel is hardly a 'cerebral' director, his stock of sensual intuition is enough to warrant assaults on the philosophic aspects of his themes: he is a great author because he allows his image pranks to speak for themselves, suggesting all sorts of intellectual infidelities. The final scenes linger with a fascination of modern pop culture, quite aware of how strange the gesticulations of youthful bodies dancing to jazz rock must seem to an ascetic from the 4th century: the mere sensation of watching fresh-faced young people wildly dance & bop away to grooves, brings to mind how little we understand the 20th century context, even as we (Bunuel's contemporaries at least) were in it. The bored uninterested face of the Stylite as he ponders what the world in the future has come to demonstrates that the last temptation of man is ennui (even in the midst of pandemonium). But for Bunuel none of these extrapolations matter: it is the prank in the end that matters: just seeing the expression on the face of a venerable person as he endures an exposure to licentiousness, or seeing how a priest reacts when you throw a cake in his face, is worth the minor sacrilege.
...
Simon of the Desert was also Silvia Pinal's 3rd and last film working with Bunuel, a project which at one time was designed to be a feature in an aborted omnibus that would have boasted the contributions of Fellini and Jules Dassin (this goes to explain why Simon turned out so short). The story goes that Pinal, at the peak of her beauty and confidence, cooked up the idea of her starring in an omnibus to be directed by the best directors living; in Pinal's mind, all of the features would star her, of course, and would be produced by her doting producer/husband, Gustavo Alatriste (who produced the previous 2 Bunuel films starring his wife.) Bunuel first suggested that the pair contact Fellini about the omnibus project. But Fellini, who liked the idea of directing a feature alongside Bunuel, insisted that he use his wife, Guilietta Masina, instead of Pinal. (Fellini's next film would indeed be an omnibus, this time focused on 3 stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and featuring contributions by Roger Vadim & Louis Malle.) Pinal, no doubt ruffled, took her project elsewhere, to Jules Dassin, another Bunuel contact. Dassin at the time was also infatuated with his greek actress/wife, Melina Mercouri, and declared he would only join in if he directed Mercouri as the lead. To each artist his own wife it seemed, and Gustavo Alatriste and Pinal stuck to their own matrimonial symbiosis, and went back to Bunuel in Mexico. Bunuel ultimately suggested that Alatriste direct part of the omnibus, with help & support from the master, but Pinal, at this point already fed up with her rejection by the other name directors, would not permit that her husband direct her. Shortly after wrapping up Simon, Bunuel left to France to direct Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, which formally initiated his french period (le maître had already returned to France in 1964 to direct Diary of a Chambermaid, with Jeanne Moreau, in between the productions of The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert, indicating that he had probably re-established his contacts & formulated a working platform in France, as a kind of escape route from the soon-to-be-extinct mexican film industry: its golden age would end as a result of a strengthened american monopoly of film that took hold by the end of the 50s.) And with that, the film was cut short, probably instigated by Alatriste's distaste for his own wife, who no longer appeared to value his artistry: and the film omnibus of Fellini, Dassin, and Bunuel never came to actuality. What we do have, at least, is the hilarious Simon of the Desert, which among its fruits of temptation, proffers us the delectable glimpse of Silvia Pinal's quite perfectly rounded breasts.
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