José, Paco and Luis are three friends and war veterans who one day decide to go hunting in the company of Enrique, a 20-year-old on his first outing. They will practice their favorite sport on Paco’s land, where not too long ago an important Civil War battle took place. An edgy thriller as well as a heavily symbolic study of hatred and rivalry, the hunt becomes an allegory of war.





In "The Hunt," a desperate want to survive draws two middle-aged men to go on a supposedly relaxing rabbit hunt with a third friend, a savage business tycoon, who is an old companion from the Spanish Civil War. It is their hopes that they can get this fellow to save them separately from financial, ruin. The fourth member of the party is a young man, nephew of the tycoon.
The gist of the ruthless demonstration of cruelty and slaughter that this younger man observes in the course of a one-day outing on a barren hunting range is that the older generation—the veterans—represented by the three men is totally corrupted by the practice of killing and forgetting, learned in their youth.
The vivid manifestations of wholesale shooting of frightened rabbits as they scoot across the hills of an area that was a famous section of battlefield in the Civil War are unmistakable allusions to that conflict of friend-against-friend and brother-against-brother that so thoroughly affected the politics and society of Spain.
Mr. Saura has made his picture in a hard-grained black-and-white tone that gives tremendous definition to the harsh, brutal story he has to tell. This is Spain of the militarists he is showing us—of scurrying jeeps and blue-steel guns and telescopic sights and raw encampments pitched in the hot, dusty hills. And his characters, played superbly by Alfredo Mayo as the steely tycoon, Emilio Gutierrez Caba as his young nephew, Ismael Merlo as one friend who goes mad and José" Maria Prada as the other who gives up, are ghatteringly real. Violetta Garcia as the innocent daughter of a dour gamekeeper is a poignant hint of the naiveté of youth, and Fernando Sanchez Polack is flinty as her old man.
"The Hunt" is the toughest Spanish picture I have ever seen, and the most amazingly revealing. (Bosley Crowther, NYT)







José (Ismael Merlo), Luis (José María Prada) y Paco (Alfredo Mayo), éste último acompañado de su cuñado Enrique (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba), se reúnen un caluroso día para disfrutar de una jornada de caza. Las conversaciones entre ellos servirán para recordar viejos tiempos, amistades truncadas y amores fallidos. Pero también se aprovecharán para solicitar favores que desencadenarán en situaciones de tensión.

Es, ciertamente, atinado, para dar la sensación de hipocresía y falsedad imperante, el hecho de extrapolar al espectador los pensamientos que cruzan por las cabezas de los cuatro cazadores, pero que éstos se reservan muy mucho la posibilidad de exteriorizarlos.

Si el guión es sólido, su materialización por cuatro pesos pesados de la escena española como Mayo, Merlo, Prada y Gutiérrez Caba (sin menospreciar las recreaciones de Violeta García y Fernando Sánchez Polack), hacen de "La caza" una película clásica e imprescindible dentro de la cinematografía española. Una fábula sobre la amistad en donde la afluencia de rencor, egoísmo e ira, traen como consecuencia el óbito de las relaciones humanas. (Alberto Alcázar)





La Chasse
Trois hommes d'âge mûr qui ont combattu pendant la guerre civile se retrouvent après huit ans de séparation à l'occasion d'une partie de chasse. Accompagnés par un homme plus jeune qui n'a pas connu la guerre, ils vont passer la journée dans une propriété quasi désertique sous un soleil de plomb. Ce paysage aride, qui porte encore la marque des combats, va faire ressurgir, à la faveur d'une chaleur accablante, les blessures, les obsessions et les rancoeurs des aînés. La tension, tout d'abord latente, aboutira inexorablement à une explosion de violence effrénée, sous le regard incrédule du plus jeune. (Cinebel)







uehgd