Sightlines · reception
How Simon of the Desert was received
1965 · Luis Buñuel · Simon of the Desert on Sightlines
The arc
It took a Special Jury Prize at Venice in 1965 but was long treated as a truncated oddity — the abandoned last gasp of Buñuel's Mexican period. Now its 45 minutes are treasured as a perfect miniature, routinely called one of the greatest 'short' features ever made.
What’s debated
The eternal debate: is the famously abrupt ending a genius punchline or just what happens when the money runs out — and would a 'finished' version have been better or worse?
Its footprint
Silvia Pinal's shape-shifting Devil taunting a bearded ascetic on his pillar is one of the indelible images of religious satire on film, endlessly screenshotted and referenced whenever cinema mocks piety.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd darling and cinephile rite of passage — the capstone of Buñuel's Mexican period and of his Silvia Pinal trilogy after Viridiana and The Exterminating Angel, with the unbeatable pitch of 'a masterpiece in 45 minutes.'
Did you know? The film runs only 45 minutes because producer Gustavo Alatriste ran out of money mid-production, forcing Buñuel to cut the story short and improvise a new ending on the fly.
Named by the director
- Federico García Lorca — Buñuel recalled in My Last Sigh that it was Lorca, back in their student days, who first told him about Saint Simeon Stylites and got him fascinated by the pillar-saint who became this film.