By Florin -Alexandru Iordache [610167]

Film Research
By Florin -Alexandru Iordache
I. Introduction

For my homework research I choose three documentaries directed by ones of the greatest but
also influential fiction feature film dire ctors in the world: Luis Bunuel with Land Without Bread ,
Serghei Eisenstein with Que Viva Mexico! and Orson Welles with It’s all True: 4 Men in a Raft . The
main reason for my decision it‘s the fact that I‘m very interested in how three directors of fiction movies,
well known all over the world can direct a documentary feature film. Besides this, I don‘t want to hide the
fact that seeing the three movies I discovered, and moreover I was astonished by some powerful
similarities that I‘ve discovered considerin g not only the movies, but also other artworks of the Directors
and also considering the style, the vision expressed, the experiences of Directors during the shooting and
after, the aesthetic conventions, visual aspects meaning the composition and camera a ngles, music and
narrative options, also the philosophical perspectives and the worldview expressed through the movies,
and their interests in social issues .
First of all, must be said that all this thee 3 movies are a kind of travelogue which in terms of
time are placed in close periods of time .
Luis Buñuel ‘s documentary Land Without Bread was shot in the remote mountainous region
of Las Hurdes —a small area just north of Extremadura, less than 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of the
glories of the univers ity city of Salamanca —in 1932 .
Serghei Eisenstein went to Mexico in 1931 with assistant director Eduard Tisse and producer
Grigory Alexandrov to shoot a film about the country‘s mythic landscape with the financial help of
writer Upton Sinclair.
Orson Welle s left for Brazil on February 4 and began filming in Rio February 8, 1942.
Four Men on a Raft directed by Orson Welles was part of the documentary about Brazilian culture
and politics , It‟s All True.
So the first two movies were shooted before the war and the third right after USA get involved in
the second world war.
Moreover, what is interesting, that all the 3 Directors were at that time when they‘re involved in
their film projects in a very good shape of their career. They all came after directing fi ction feature
masterpieces, in different countries: Rusia, Spain, USA and after winning and achieving international
success and recognition.
What was then the historical context but also the moment of their career?
After directing Battleship Potemkin (1925), Oktober (1929) and The General Line(1929),
because of his tussles with authorities and rejection by home audiences, Eisenstein started to visit
countries where he was feted as a hero. He travelled in Europe, where he spent time on the set of Fritz
Lang‘ s Metropolis and then moved on to America seemingly to investigate the new innovation of sounds
but actually to win a Hollywood contract. Like Luis Buñuel after him, Eisenstein was too anarchistic
for the Hollywood studio system to tame. Shortly after maki ng the bourgeois short comedy Romance
Sentimentale (which would play nicely on a surrealist double bill with Buñuel‘s L‟Age d‟Or ), he
received a few tentative offers from United Artist and MGM, but after finally signing with Paramount
found his tenure unsatisfying and frustrating.His dream project was given to Josef von Sternberg and
departed the studio in October 1930, after they buy him a one-way ticket home and announcing his
departure date. But Eisenstein didn‘t return home. Having been inspired by a meeting with
documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty he rekindled a dream about working in Mexico . But the
venture proved even more frustrating than his Hollywood experience. After being placed under arrest
on arrival he roamed the countryside making his poetic travelogue, Que Viva Mexico.

In 1941 , Orson Welles conceived It's All True as an omnibus film mixing documentary and
docufiction . It was to have been his third film for RKO, following Citizen Kane (1941) and The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942). He astounds America with his first movie – the most audacious and
controversial debut in motion picture history. After Pearl Harbor, when America entered the war, RKO
and Nelson Rockefeller who was a m ajor stockholder in RKO joined in trying to persuade Welles that his
future picture should be shot in South America as a gesture of hemispheric solidarity. Washington feared
Nazi influence in South America which was critical to the Allied cause and because Brazil‘s dictator,
Getulio Vargas, had Nazi sympathizers in his government.
In 1932 Luis Buñuel left Paris for Spain . After making his two first masterpieces , he waited
three years to direct the documentary short Las Hurdes (1933) about a remote area of his native Spain
that has somehow gone almost untouched by civilization . The fact that he chose to make a small and
difficult documentary after making his name in features isn‘t surprising from Buñuel. I believe that the
best thing to expect with him, oth er than his cruelty , is the unexpected . But I think this is also true for
the others two directors.
So, all 3 movies were shooted in Latino(Spain, Mexico, Brazil) but also exotic countries or
territory(Las Huertas in Spain).
Another reason for choosing th ese specific movies it is also because in some way they were
unfinished artwork(Que Viva Mexico, It‟s all True: Four Men in a Raft) they had unsatisfactory or
unexpected result( all three documentaries ) and they strongly influenced the career path and furth er
evolutions of the directors. And because these films represented a moment of turning point in their
career path , something unusual , unexpected , who left traces and strong fingerprints in their lives .
They‘ve started either with almost nothing( no script developed or general ideas ) either with a few
promises and financial support from authorities in Welles case or from Upton Sinclair in Eisenstein
case, but we must take in account that both Eisenstein and Bunuel didn‘t have the authorities support –
the au thorities were sort of antagonist forces even in Orson case when they finally refused to support
him anymore and fi nally they‘ve finished with nothing – I mean they didn't have the possibility to edit
their footage or in Bunuel case, being banned in his c ountry.
For instance, Eisenstein was shooting without a script , and the relationship between him and his
American backer, leftist novelist Upton Sinclair, grew strained when Sinclair had seen no footage after
11 months of filming. In 1932 Sinclair pulled t he plug on the project, leaving Eisenstein stranded,
insolvent and with no acces to his footage – which Sinclair later sold to be used in a low -graded thriller,
Thunder Over Mexico. After returning home, Eisenstein was inconsolable.While he continued to tr y to
get his Thunder Over Mexico footage back he was constantly attacked in the Soviet press for his long
absence and his deviation from the dominant mode of socialist realism . He was out of favour and
only offered projects that he would obviously turn dow n; all his own projects, such as a history of
Moscow and a version of Karl Marx‘s Das Capital, were rejected . However, he defied his detractors, and
in 1935 started work on his first sound feature, Behzin Meadow. But illness delayed the shoot and
productio n was halted in March 1937.A special conference was set up to condemn the movie, and
Eisenstein was forced to make a public confession and apology for his filmmaking transgressions: ‗It was
one of the most bitterly painful experience in my creative life‘, he later admitted.
Just like Que Viva Mexico , Orson Welles It‟s All True was also a film that never was finished.
He visualized it as a series of three vignettes about Latin America. One of the three, entitled Four Men
on a Raft , had been inspired by an article Welles read in the December 8, 1941, issue of Time Magazine .
It told the story of four fishermen who set out from Fortaleza , the capital of the northern state of Ceará, to
file a grievance with the President of Brazil. The distance by sea was 1, 650 miles. Jangadas , still
widely used today, are little more than rafts with sails, tiny vessels with virtually no freeboard. They are
made for the calm seas of Brazil‘s northeast and are totally unsuitable for the rougher waters further
south.After 61 da ys at sea, navigating without instruments, without a motor, without even running lights,
the San Pedro‘s captain, Manoel Olímpio Meira, nicknamed Jacaré (alligator) brought them safely to

Rio de Janeiro. By the time he sailed into the harbor, he was alread y a national hero . Gitúlio Vargas, the
president (and virtual dictator) of Brazil, was so impressed that he granted the fishermen‘s petitions. They
and their colleagues were awarded the same benefits enjoyed by unionized industrial workers – retirement
funds, pensions for widows and children, housing, education and medical care. Welles decided to re –
enact their epic voyage and make it the centerpiece of It’s All True .
He hired the four fishermen to play themselves and leased their jangada . Then, on a bluster y day
in the (southern hemisphere) fall of 1942, he bade them set sail for the open sea. The conditions that day
suited his purposes admirably. He wanted to show how difficult the voyage would have been, how the
decks of a jangada would run awash in heavy weather. Jacaré demurred, told him it was too dangerous.
Welles offered him more money. Again, Jacaré refused. So Welles offered him still more. The man was a
poor fisherman. The amount he could earn would have fed his family for a year. He decided to take the
risk. They‘d hardly cleared the embracing arms of the harbor when they were struck by a towering wave.
Jacaré was swept overboard and disappeared in the heavy seas. His decomposing head was later found in
a huge shark caught a few miles down the coast off the Barra da Tijuca.
The Brazilian newspapers made much of the disaster. Welles was blamed . The studio
management didn‟t like the bad publicity , and they particularly disliked the fact that Welles was
spending too much of their money . The project was re-evaluated .Welles was ordered to complete
Four Men on a Raft with a minimal budget, and a minimum crew, and return to Hollywood. But h e
threw a hissy fit.What furniture he didn‘t cast out of his windows at the Copacabana Palace, he smashed.
More bad publ icity. RKO cancelled his contract. The project was abandoned. As for Welles, his career,
from then on, was all downhill.He tried to get other studios to back him, but by then word of the enfant
terrible’s comportment had gotten around. No one wanted to gam ble. He then decided he‟d finish the
film on his own , and eventually , he managed to purchase some of the footage he‟d shot . But the
project ended in failure when he was forced to give up ownership because he could no longer pay
storage costs for the negati ve.A few years went by. RKO, having need of space in their vaults,
dumped the vast majority of Welles‟ footage into the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, not all. In 1985, 43
years after shooting ended , some 300 cans turned up in a corner of the old RKO vault. Th ey became the
seminal material for a documentary released by Canal Plus in 1993.
In 1979 , producer Alexandrov was allowed to assemble the picture using Eisenstein‟s
storyboards and outlines to create an approximation of the director‟s original vision . No v ersion
of the film can ever capture exactly how Eisenstein would have assembled the footage he shot in
Mexico from 1931 to 1932 , and as such Alexandrov‘s interpretation of the director‘s Que viva
México! (―as Eisenstein conceived it and as we planned it‖) becomes rather slippery when analyzed
using an auteurist model. But if the film as it exists now can‘t tell us for sure how Eisenstein would
have shaped the footage, make no mistake: these delirious images that map out a Mexican
mythology and social unrest are unquestionably his own creations.
André Bazin referred to Luis Buñuel‟s work as ―the cinema of cruelty .‖ Watching a Buñuel
film you can just feel it. He was cruel to religion, the middle class, and idealists .Land without bread is
a powerful and horri fying documentary about peasant poverty in northern Spain that keeps the
shocking imagery of his surrealist films – such as the human grotesque cause by inbreeding – but adds
searing social realism . It was banned in his homeland and was the last film Buñue l made for 13
years.
With Que viva México! , Eisenstein intended to document the mythic struggle of a Mexican
people in a perpetual state of unrest , dividing their history into six parts: Prologue, Sandunga,
Conquest, Fiesta, Magey, Soldadera (the only epis ode that wasn‘t completed) and Epilogue.

II. Film composition , funeral and marriage ceremonies

Despite the devastating, elegiac tone of its images , Que viva México! is still every bit as
unnerving and aesthetically confrontational as October . And just as t he film would inform later
works by Orson Welles ( It‟s All True ), many of its images anticipate later works by Eisenstein.
One of the film‟s more startling images is that of a Mexican woman looking down at an
ancient pyramid , a shot which brings to mind the more famous image of Nikolai Cherkasov‟s Czar
Ivan IV from the director‘s Ivan the Terrible films staring down from his palace window at a line of
advancing worshipers – see Appendix 1 , Fig 1,2,3,4 . I found something about influences of Eisenstein
framin g composition in his Immoral Memories , where he complained about the problem that he had
in filming the pyramids and ruined temples in San Juan Teotihuacan , but it was inspired by
Caravaggio amazing angles and placing of figures not in the field of the fra me, Degas‟s canvases
for the foreground composition , in addition to Dobuzhinsky‟s White Nights – see Appendix 1 , Fig
6 and Benois‟s Versailles – see Appendix 1 , Fig 5 (for examples of the composition of vast
horizontal „ parterres ‟) as painters but also by Kent‟s drawing for the Moby Dick movie with John
Barrymore in the role of the onelegged captain.
In terms of imagery and composition , the fishing ritual of jangadeiros from Orson Welles
docufiction movie it‘s constructed in a very similar way with fiction movie Alexander Nevsky of
Serghei Eisenstein . The opening scenes in these two movies are quite similar . Moreover, the scene
when the four jangadeiros cross the desert landscape has similar imagery with opening scene in
Nevsky – see Appendix 1 , Fig 7,8,9. Also, the scenes when Brazilian people gather to bury their
leader are similar with those in which the russian people are advancing to worship their leader in Ivan
the Terrible First Part – see Appendix 1 , Fig 9,10,11
But the funeral ceremonies are prese nt in all three movies , because the Death has a certain
place in these documentaries , just like Life itself. Of course, they are also full of religious symbols –
Christian symbols .
In Bunuel film , a baby dies and we see preparations for a funeral ensue . As the camera pans
across some graves marked with crosses, we hear that, " despite the great misery of the Hurdanos, their
moral and religious ideas are the same as in other parts of the world ‘‘. If we see all three movies, we
realize this. In Welles‟s movie , we face an elegiac and doleful perspective of Brazilian poor people
who burry their national hero . The same is in Que Viva Mexico of Eisenstein , even if we see a real and
in the same time but a symbolic funeral – see Appendix 1 , Fig. 12,13,14,15,16,17,18 ,19,20 close in the
imagery with the scene in which the four jangadeiros worship in the Catolic Church. Though the
Hurdanos also live close to death, Buñuel refuses to grant them a comparable noble savagery as in
the other two movies Brazilians and Mexica ns have . What it is really interesting and strange in
Welles‟s movie it is the fact that the scene which include the Death of Jangadeiros Leader has the
same meaning, same purpose in the evolution of movie conflict and it is shrouded in the same
atmosphere as the scene „A Dead Man Calls for Justice‟ from Eisenstein best fiction movie,
Battleship Potemkin . We know that filming the reenactment of the epic voyage of the four
jangadeiros cost the life of their leader . Welles resolved to finish the episode as a tribute to Jacaré.
For continuity, Jacaré's brother stood in as Jacaré, and the narrative was modified to focus on a young
fisherman who dies at sea shortly after his marriage to a beautiful young girl . His death becomes
the catalyst for the four jangadei ros' voyage of protest . But also the central narrative in Que Viva
Mexico! concerns a young girl named Concepcion and her attempts to raise a dowry for her future
husband Abundio . Even the names of the film‟s first couple is largely metaphoric , and though the
episode ends in bliss (two parrots engage in love play on a tree branch above the couple‘s heads) it
hardly anticipates the fall of Eden evoked by the film‘s central Magey episode, just like in Welles‟s
movie .

III. Portrayal of The Catolic Church and Chri stianity, presence of monasteries and p agan
temples , monks and religious symbols, pagan and christian rituals

It is well known that both Bunuel and Eisenstein were fierce critics of Christianity religion
in his double forms – Orthodox and Catholic but th is is mainly du e to the fact that they were
educated as christian s in their childhood and youth . Bunuel grew up attending Catholic schools ,
Catholic worship servies , and Catholic religious festivals in a Spanish village that was so traditional
and free fro m 20th Century technological trappings that he called it " medieval " a fact of which he was
grateful . During most of his adulthood and career he identified himself as an atheist , although he
continued to use Catholic images and themes in his films . Surreali sm and Communism were also
driving influences for Bunuel during much of his life; both movements functioned essentially as his
religion at various times. Bunuel said that ‗ Religious education and surrealism have marked me for
life‘. Despite coursing with t he seeming anarchy of surrealism , Bunuel‟s filmmaking style was both
economical and structured . His films were shot in a few weeks on low budget and rarely strayed
from the script, shooting in continuity to minimize the editing time . With Eisenstein the sa me thing
happened. We read from his ‗Immoral Memories‘: ‗When I was not too young I fell prey to the
Voltarian germ of disrespect for the Supreme Being . This occurred before the Revolution and took a
rather aggressive form , since it came after almost hyste rical religiosity in my childhood and the cult
of mystical feats in my youth ‘. Eisenstein was a communist too. But even so he delivered to the world
some of best religious movies , full of religious symbolism , like Alexander Nevsky , Ivan the Terrible
and e ven Que Viva Mexico! Throughout the Conquest and Fiesta episodes, Eisenstein evokes the
painful legacy of Cortes‘s invasion of Mexico in the 16th century with an elaborate juxtaposition of
codes and symbolic struggles . The celebration depicted here is larg ely in service of the Holy Virgin
of Guadalupe and though Eisenstein is obviously critical of the Catholic Church , the incredible
marriage of sparring symbols throughout the episode recognizes a Mexican collective in spiritual
limbo. The monks who came to the region destroyed ancient temples in order to build their
churches, converting the so -called heathens of the region to Catholicism.
On the other side , in Bunuel ‟s work , some "Christian pendants" shown in close -up, the
voice -over says, "we cannot help bu t compare them to those of barbaric tribes in Africa and
Oceania." Then, having said that, the film fails to offer any comparison . Yet the purpose of this scene
is to denigrate the hegemonic claims of Christianity by association with supposedly less vaunte d
beliefs – just like Sergei Eisenstein did through an intellectual montage of religious icons in October
(1928) . The expedition moves on to an ancient monastery of Carmelite Monks . The voice -over notes
that the convent lies in ruins and is only inhabited by animals that crawl along the ground. The narrator
describes a once -sacred trinity found in prehistoric cave paintings of the region – "men, gods, and
bees" – only to replace it with the profane threesome of "toads, adders, and lizards." After learning
of the wealth of the order, we are told, "The convent is surrounded by eight kilometers of wall . . . which
precludes the assault of wolves and of wild boars." The pause in the narrator's voice introduces
doubt as to the purpose of the fortification, insinuating that the wall also protects the convent from
the nearby Hurdanos.
But a ll three movies includes religious Christian symbols and imagery of Catholic Church but in
different ways : both Eisenstein and Bunuel use the Monks and Christian symbols toget her with
human skulls to personify both the critical attitude and the Image of Death for local people
(Mexicans and Hurdans) – see Appendix 1 , Fig. 21, 22, 23 while Orson Welles depict a favorable
image of Christianity , which is normal because the craft of jangadeiros was a jangada they‘d named
after Saint Peter , the fisherman. Even so, Eisenstein as Welles also use idyllic imagery of Church at the
marriage ceremony of the young pair – see Appendix 1 , Fig. 24, 25. Death hangs over every frame
of Land Witho ut Bread , just as the skulls over the church door "preside over the destiny" of the
Albercans in the opening sequence . For example, the film asks us to believe that shortly before the
expedition arrived in Las Hurdes, "three men and eleven mules" were kill ed by honey bees. (The weight
of convention remains so powerful that many viewers accept this ludicrous statement as fact.) Having
seen an itinerary of how death visits the Hurdanos – whether by accident, starvation, or infection – we
begin to wonder how there is anyone left for the film to record . Nevertheless, in flagrant

contradiction, the narrator matter of factly informs us, after the death of a baby , that " A death is a
rare event which can be recorded in this miserable village. " The rush of village women "in crowds
to the dead's house" similarly contradicts the earlier, outrageous, neglect of the child lying in the
"lonely street."
Regarding the pagan rituals , in Bunuel ‟s work the ritual sacrifice of a rooster in the opening
sequence moves the spec tator into the cathartic state necessary to accept t he subsequent events of
the film, and this is similar to the toreador scene in Que Viva Mexico .
Eisenstein seems to understand why the film‟s Mexicans are so hung -up on ironic , ritualized
celebrations of their own devastation . Mexico has been unduly influenced by Spain (the Fiesta
bullfighting sequence symbolically pits both countries and their respective cultures against each
other) which means paganism versus Christianity , but Eisenstein‟s strange puppe t show continues
to contemplate the lingering threat of the people‟s ultimately irrepressible past . Eisenstein's vision
and critical attitude towards Christianity in Mexico is also evident from his preproduction sketches
that I‟ve discovered in his autobio graphical book : „Immoral Memories‟ see Appendix 2, Fig.
1,2,3,4.

IV. Soundtrack, music and voice -over

The Unreliable Narrator in Luis Bunuel documentary – The combination of pictures and words
carries rhetorical weight and it remains a paradigmatic feature of our notion of documentary. In Land
Without Bread , the sounds and images seemingly reinforce each other, especially through the timing
of the words with the pictures, as, for example, when the voice -over redundantly states , "We see the
village women comb ing themselves," or, "We can see the inhabitants at their daily rounds." Close -ups
and cutaways, such as that of the diagrammed mosquitoes in the encyclopedia, ostensibly provide proof
of the film's argument. The voice -over commentary is deliberately ethno centric, willfully
contradictory, and deceptively humorous .The soundtrack of Land Without Bread – music and voice –
over commentary – works in opposition to the images . Of Buñuel's The Golden Age , one of the first
sound films produced in France, a critic wr ote, " The audio portion is used in a most unusual way: to
destroy rather than reinforce the illusion of reality in the work ". Much the same must be said of the
audio track of Land Without Bread ; clearly, Buñuel was one of the first, though still unacknowle dged,
masters of sound cinema.
In Eisenstein film, Mexico learned about Mexican history and its people through artists like
Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Orozco , and it‟s obvious from the start that Eisenstein
was enamored with the country . The voice-over and narration of film is made by producer
Alexandrov following Eisenstein preproduction notes. Throughout the film‟s Sandunga episode,
Eisenstein‟s images bring to mind an Eden uncontaminated by Spanish culture that‟s why the
soundtrack consist of traditional and romantic Mexican songs . Eisenstein‘s text describes life in the
province of Tehuantepec as ― a slow, semi -vegetative existence ,‖ pointing to a certain pure, symbiotic
relationship between man and nature by situating the people of the region before tranquil
landscapes inundated with trees and lush vegetation .
Orson Welles film is silent (given the equipment that RKO provided, it could not have been
otherwise), although sound effects and music were later added . But the soundtrack consist of
beautiful, romantic and specific Brazilian music. This punctuation only deepens the dreamy effect of
the silence . Just like in Que Viva Mexico, the synergy between music and silence add a poetic note
to the film.

V. Social issues and Imagery of Aristocrac y: Porfirio Diaz, The Aristocratic Women and The
Brasilian President

In the Magey episode – docufiction acted in Que Viva Mexico , the peasant Sebastian wages a
battle against a colonial landlord ( a doppelganger perhaps for Mexican dictator Porfirio Dias ) who
ravages his wife Maria. This cruel, lyrical battle begins on a rich hacienda and culminates in a
delirious confrontation in a barren desert that is home to the phallic Maguey cactus.
In Buñuel's documentary , at school, young boys and girls learn not o nly useless facts but also
the social values that prevent them from rebelling , "We find a book of morality on a table and open
it at random. One of the best pupils can write from memory on request one of its maxims: respect
the property of others ." Here th e film's implicit cry of revolt reaches its apogee . As the camera tilts up
to a print of an aristocratic woman in full costume, the narrator states, " We discover an unexpected
and shocking picture on the classroom wall. Why is this absurd picture here?" This is, of course, the
same question that viewers must now ask of Buñuel's documentary: Why is this absurd picture here? The
power of the film as a political tract lies precisely in its pseudo -objectivity , its derisive refusal to
render judgment.
In the Ors on Welles film, in the “feudal system” in place , owners of the rafts —jagandas —
appropriated from such fishermen half of their catch, imposing poverty on the latter no matter how
hard they worked , while at the same time, by law, these workers were denied the social service
benefits available to other poor, union workers. Vargas, though invisible in the movie, initially
renegged on his promise to remedy the situation but, perhaps pressured by Welles‟s filming,
extended by law all normal benefits to jangadeiros , including housing, and medical and retirement
benefits.

VI. Conclusions

Que viva México! plays out as a collection of images that repeatedly pit classic paired rivals
against each other : paganism versus Christianity , nature versus culture , virginity versus sexual
perversion , night versus day , poor versus rich , and so on. And with the film‘s ghoulish Prologue ,
Eisenstein encodes these various battles in the Day of the Dead sugar masks worn and consumed
by Mexican children. He marvels at “man‟s triumph over d eath through mockery of it” but the
film‟s melancholic tone suggests that Spain may have forever sent Mexico spiraling into a
spiritual and cultural limbo from which it has yet to recover.
To appreciate Land Without Bread as a parody , it is not even necess ary to place it along the
auteurist trajectory . A close analysis of the documentary suffices . On the most superficial level , the
film describes some aspects of life in a mountainous region of Spain. On a second level , it stages a
violent attack against sev eral hegemonic institutions of Western civilization , in particular the
Catholic Church , but also the educational system and private property . Most significantly, however,
Buñuel's work subverts dominant systems of representation by gradually undermining it s own truth
claims . It destroys the illusionist basis of the documentary , laying bare its ideological underpinnings
and its timid complicity . Most importantly, Buñuel has made a film about the viewer , his or her
preconceptions, expectations, and naive trus t. He demonstrates that the conventions of the form
blind us, that we have lost the ability to think critically about what we hear and see. We respond
like Pavlov's dogs, through reflex, to the stimuli of sounds and images and the familiarity of
particular genres. If an ethnographic surrealist practice explores culture as "a contested reality ", then
Land Without Bread is the crowning work of ethnographic surrealism.

In Four Men on a Raft , the four men‟s voyage is epic ; they stop at various points along the
way, mostly to interact with others (although in one scene they pray by themselves ).The film, of
course, is just as mysterious on water ; a man will suddenly appear as a shade behind the sail.
Although the films belong to different directors, expressing different views, they present
many aspects that can be correlated with each other, as we have presented abov e.

VII. Bibliography

Eisenstein Serghei Immoral Memories [Book]. – [s.l.] : Peter Owen Publisher, 1983.
Freer Ian 50 Iconic Directors [Book]. – London : Quercus Publishing, 2009.

Internet:

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/que -viva-mexico

http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.ro/2010/03/why -brazilians -hate-orson -welles.html

http://thelast200movies.blogspot.ro/2011/07/133 -las-hurdes -aka-land-without -bread.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_All_True_(film)

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~jruoff/Articles/EthnographicSurrealist.htm

Appendix 1

Fig. 1 Fig.2

Fig. 3 Fig.4

Fig. 5 Fig. 6

Fig. 7 Eisenstein‘s Nevsky Fig. 8 Welles‘s Movie

Fig. 9 Eisenstein‘s Nevsky Fig. 9 Welles‘s Movie

Fig. 10 Eisenstein‘s Ivan the Terrible Fig. 11 Welles‘s Movie

Fig. 12 Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico Fig. 13 Welles‘s M ovie

Fig. 14 Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico Fig. 15 Bunuel‘s Land Without Bread

Fig. 16 Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico Fig. 17 Welles‘s Movie

Fig. 18 Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico Fig. 19 Bunuel‘s Land Without Bread

Fig. 20 Welles‘s Movie Fig. 21 Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico

Fig. 22 Bunuel‘s Land Without Bread Fig. 23 Bunuel‘s Land Without Bread

Fig. 24 Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico Fig. 25 Welles‘s Mov ie

Appendix 2 – Eisenstein Preproduction Sketch

Fig.1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4