Illusion Travels by Streetcar - Luis Bunuel (1953)

When Luis Bunuel assembled his top ten favorite films he included De Sica's The Bicycle Theif. His justification didn't have anything to do with the film's neo-realist qualities, he admired the film as a piece of surrealism with a machine as its protagonist. Bunuel puts his own spin on that gesture in his little seen Illusion Travels by Streetcar. The film revolves around two streetcar conductors who take their now out of service car one last ride. After the drunken night they find they had forgot to return the car and must spend the day getting it back to the station without their superiors catching on. Interestingly its one of Bunuel's most conventionally plotted films yet still holds true to his sporadic sensibilities. The streetcar and its drivers find themselves intercepting, conflict after conflict in Mexico city. This along with Ascent to Heaven are Bunuel's two most humanist films but unfortunately they are two of his least seen. The description for this one almost sounds like a contemporary comedy, but Bunuel's humanism takes the comedy to a very odd place. Bunuel's career is maybe the most all encompassing in its observation of humanity, few filmmakers works are populated with characters with as many conflicting philosophies, religions, desires etc. And in this film each time the streetcar stops new conflicts emerge, whether it be a school of juvenile delinquents, pious nuns (who's statue of Christ shares space on the car with butchered pigs fresh from the slaughter house) citizens who can't accept charity out of suspicions of communism. There's also a class struggle going on in Mexico city with larger corporations exploiting the price's its customers pay, this provides our heroes with run in with corn smugglers who end up inciting a riot.

Like Bunuel's camera the streetcar glides through these conflicts without judgment in a state of transcendence. Bunuel might have been atheist but his world view shaped by Catholicism was something he could never shake, he found god in people more than anything. This is most evident in what I think is one of his greatest scenes, where the main characters put on a play depicting stories from the Bible. The play has all the production values of an elementary school play, but its something Bunuel revels in. Bunuel claimed if he was given 5 million dollars for a film he would only use $500,000, the little play is just the kind that Bunuel might have put on. But Bunuel deconstructs the idea of characters putting on a religious play, instead of the play illuminating metaphysical ideas, it becomes about the Bible stories revealing the beauty of the meek. Bunuel takes the most interest in a small fake bird on a string, there's an intimacy in this entire sequence that's unlike anything in his other films. The camera remains on stage for the whole play and when the audience applauds and the film cuts to a much longer shot showcasing the audience, its almost shocking how it puts in perspective how close we were with characters who might seem goofy and uninteresting in another film. Its Bunuel's most optimistic film because its not just that he's finding god in the every citizens but he is using a modern man made piece of technology to do so, like Tati's masterpiece Playtime technology does not provide alienation but possibilities for new relationships with each other.