Susana (Rosita Quintana) finds her desperate prayers answered when she escapes from Mexico’s State Reformatory and lands up at a country ranch. Offered a second chance, she’s accepted as a maid by the Guadalupe family; her beauty making her an inescapable object of desire to the men of the house. All of them - the uncouth ranch foreman Jesús (Luis Lopez Somoza), the Guadalupe patriarch (Fernando Soler) and his bookish son Alberto (Victor Manuel Mendoza) – are ensnared by her mere presence in their stifling middle-class home. Thrilled by the power she wields over the men, Susana manipulates her admirers against each other in the hope that the fittest survivor would provide her with the best comforts.

Made in Mexico in 1951, Susana is filled with the characteristic touches and familiar motifs of Luis Buñuel’s body of work. Class tension and sexual repression is revealed beneath the rational façade of the conventional nuclear family. The film’s subversion of religious iconography and its uses of animal metaphors for basic human drives reveal the bold style of L’Âge d’Or and Diary of a Chambermaid.

"A stinging assault on Mexico's rich and religious, in particular their indolence and hypocrisy" Radio Times

"Made by the master in Mexico...'Susana'' is full of the sort of Bunuelian touches that forever separate all of Bunuel's films from those of everyone else" New York Times

Cast & Credits: Fernando Soler / Rosita Qunitana / Victor Manuel Mendoza / Maltide Palou / Maria Gentil Arcos / Luis Lopez Somoza / Directed by Luis Bunuel

Awards: Ariel Awards Mexico, 1952, Nominated, Best Young Actress, Luis Lopez Somoza

Technical: 1950 / 82 minutes / Spanish with English subtitles / Mono audio / 1.33 : 1 Black & White / DVD PAL Multi Region / Rating 12 / MRBDVD030

Licensed from Films Sans Frontieres.