Tristana (film)

Tristana is a 1970 film by Mexican-Spanish director Luis Buñuel. It is based on the homonymous novel by Benito Pérez Galdós. She was nominated for a Hollywood Oscar.

Plot

The action takes place in Toledo. When her parents die, Tristana is entrusted to Don Lope, a declining ladyboy whose time has passed, unable to accept his expiration as a seducer, Lope seduces her and Tristana becomes his lover from the age of nineteen to twenty-one but she, Considered by him as his daughter and his wife, he asks him to let her study music and art in order to become independent. Tristana falls in love with Horacio, a painter who also feels the same way about her, and ends up going to live with him in Madrid. Tristana suffers from knee cancer and as a result of her her leg has to be amputated. Horacio loses interest in her and Tristana returns to Toledo and marries Don Lope. He's sick. Victim of a nocturnal crisis, he calls Tristana for help. Tristana pretends to phone the doctor before opening the window, when it is snowing, to hasten his death.

Differences from the novel

In the novel the ending is not tragic. Tristana marries Don Lope out of convenience and she is indifferent to this fact, resigns from her spirit of freedom and even finds a new hobby: baking. Although the author emphasizes that perhaps they were happy, it is a probability. In the film that does not exist, it shows a Tristana consumed by rancor who obtains her freedom by letting Don Lope freeze to death, specifically by opening the window of her room on a blizzard day.

Comments

Tristana, Nazarín and Halma (Viridiana in the film) are the three novels by Benito Pérez Galdós that Buñuel adapted to the cinema. The film became one of those projects long cherished by Buñuel and constantly postponed. There were two other attempts to make it: one in Mexico in 1952, with Ernesto Alonso and Silvia Pinal leading the cast, and another in 1962, which would have starred Rocío Dúrcal or Stefania Sandrelli.

It marked the return to Spain, for the second and last time, of Luis Buñuel, after the Viridiana scandal.

Cinema prizes

1970 Oscars

Fotogramas de Plata Awards

Cinema Writers Circle Medals

Saint George Awards

Others

• National Spectacle Union Award: Best interpretation (Lola Gaos)
• ACE Awards (New York): Best actor (Fernando Rey).