Genre Comedy

Simon of the Desert (1965)

Item: Simon of the Desert
Rating: 2.5
Author: Ross McLaren

★★½ — Simon of the Desert (1965)

Luis Buñuel's Simon of the Desert arrived in 1965 as something of an anomaly, even within the Spanish-born director's own body of work. Running to just 45 minutes, it occupies an awkward but interesting space between short film and feature, a length that was not entirely by design. Production ran out of funding before a full feature could be completed, and what remained was shaped into the compact, self-contained piece released by the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica. The film went on to screen at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize, and it stands today as one of Buñuel's later Mexican productions, made during the extended and extraordinarily productive period he spent working in the country from the late 1940s onwards. For anyone who has followed Buñuel's career from his earliest provocations, including Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge d'or, this film represents a director who had lost none of his appetite for skewering organised religion and bourgeois convention, but who was working here with a noticeably lighter, more sardonic touch.

The film draws loosely on the historical figure of Simeon Stylites, a fifth-century Syrian ascetic who famously spent decades living on a succession of increasingly tall pillars as an act of extreme Christian devotion. Buñuel transposes this into his own deadpan register, setting the story in a sun-bleached, vaguely timeless desert landscape and framing the whole enterprise as a quietly farcical examination of religious sincerity and its limits. Claudio Brook, a reliable presence in Buñuel's Mexican work, plays Simón with a kind of gaunt, earnest solemnity that makes the comedy land without ever tipping into caricature. Opposite him, Silvia Pinal, who had already appeared in Buñuel's Viridiana and The Exterminating Angel, takes on the role of the Devil in a series of shifting, mischievous incarnations. Pinal brings a real playful energy to the part, and the chemistry between her theatrical provocations and Brook's rigid piety gives the film much of its momentum. Hortensia Santoveña, Enrique Álvarez Félix, and Francisco Reiguera fill out the supporting cast in roles that mostly serve to populate Simón's world with a chorus of the credulous, the cynical, and the indifferent. It is, in short, a polished but unremarkable production on a technical level, with Buñuel and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa keeping things clean and unshowy, letting the ideas do the work rather than the camera.

By the mid-1960s, Buñuel was approaching the late phase of his career that would produce films like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and Simon of the Desert can be read as something of a dry run for the more assured satirical comedies that followed. The religious subject matter, meanwhile, connects the film to a thread running through much of his output, from the documentary provocations of Land Without Bread to the blasphemous set pieces of his surrealist period. Whether that through-line makes Simon of the Desert a satisfying standalone experience, or whether it rewards the converted more than the uninitiated, is exactly the kind of question worth putting to the film itself.

Simon of the Desert (1965) might be the most accessible entry point into Luis Buñuel's surrealist canon. A lean, 45-minute satire that trades the opaque absurdity of L'Âge d'Or for sharper, more grounded wit. The film follows the pious ascetic Simón (Claudio Brook), who stands atop a pillar in the desert seeking spiritual purity, only to be relentlessly tempted by the devil, played with mischievous glee by Silvia Pinal in a series of increasingly provocative guises. Buñuel skewers religious hypocrisy and performative piety with a light touch: the humor is dry, the imagery striking, and the critique of self-righteousness feels both timeless and refreshingly unsentimental. What works here is Buñuel's restraint. The film moves briskly, the symbolism lands with clarity, and there's a genuine playfulness to the way Simón's devotion is tested, not with fire and brimstone, but with schoolgirl taunts and bureaucratic absurdity. For once, the surrealism serves the satire rather than obscuring it. But then… the ending. Without warning, the film cuts to a 1960s nightclub and a jarringly anachronistic rock number. It's deliberately provocative, yes, but also frustratingly arbitrary, undermining the careful buildup with a punchline that feels more smug than insightful. It's the kind of Buñuelian provocation that reminds you why his work often alienates as much as it fascinates. Witty, visually inventive, and surprisingly engaging for a film about a man standing on a pillar. Just wish it had stuck the landing. A rare Buñuel that almost wins you over, right up until it decides not to.

That said, I keep coming back to what the film gets right in its middle stretch, because it genuinely does get quite a lot right. The pacing, the wit, the way Brook carries scene after scene with almost no dialogue support, it all suggests a Buñuel working closer to his audience than he usually allows himself to be. The ending remains a frustration I cannot quite shake, the sense of a filmmaker pulling the rug out not because it illuminates anything new but because he can. Still, for a 45-minute film about a man on a pillar, it stays with you longer than it has any right to. Make of that what you will.

Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1965 | Watched: 2026-03-15

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Trailer

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