‘The Hunt’ and Carlos Saura’s legend

Legends, as stories we keep alive, can have different beginnings and endings depending on who and when they are told. Something similar can be told about Carlos Saura, a historical filmmaker who, due to his longevity and viewpoints has had different beginnings, endings, and rebirths for over 60 years. A mythical and mythologised career that FlixOlé brought together in a must-see complete works put together for its 2023 Goya of Honour.

One of his debuts for history books and a major milestone is The Hunt – La caza (1966), the film that earned him his first great recognition as a film director. A success at home and especially abroad, thanks to a Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival that put him on the map of European cinema. A level of prestige only previously achieved by Berlanga, Bardem and, primarily, Buñuel, which would later be maintained for decades by the Aragonese man.

More than 50 years after Carla Simón won the German contest with Alcarràs (2022) – another film with rabbit hunts and old caves dating back to the Spanish Civil War shed more light on the historical question of a Spain that turned its back on its past and came to terms with barbarism. The Hunt marked a before and an after in Saura’s cinema which touched with brilliance and rawness the generational change taking place in Spanish cinema at the time.

A concision that is ready to burst 

Written together with Angelino Fons, who made his directorial debut in the same year as The Search – La busca (1966). The Hunt’s opening scene are caged ferrets mixed with Luis de Pablo’s persistent and disturbing musical leitmotiv as we anticipate the inevitable fate we are about to witness. The animals are quickly replaced by four men in a car who have gathered on a summers day to hunt rabbits.

The film only lasts a little over 1 hour, 20 minutes, making it difficult to touch on a lot in such a short amount of time. In less than half an hour, Saura and Fons present and define the personalities, problems, and rivalries of the three old friends (Ismael Merlo, José María Prada, Alfredo Mayo) and a young brother-in-law (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba). As the hot day and hunt progress, conversations and off-screen thoughts set the countdown to a time bomb we know is soon going to go off.

Concise and as mystifying as suddenly direct, The Hunt reveals the silent past between old friends who fought in the Spanish Civil War, set up a business together and live haunted by individual and shared darkness – that of a fourth friend who died. Most importantly, through the discoveries of the ignorant Enrique (Gutiérrez Caba), inheritances and misery smother and come to light just like the sticky sweat that follows them.

Saura summarises this pressure cooker in a calculated way using different resources, playing with close shots, and abruptly making them wider. Pablo G. del Amo’s sharp and rhythmic montage establishes and dismisses conflicts. Whether through the preparation ritual, close-ups looking at the camera, details or open shots of the setting, the filmmaker builds a desert microcosm in which calm, and abstraction can be broken in a thousandth of a second by an inappropriate shot.

Luis Cuadrado’s photo, in one of the most brilliant black and whites of the 1960s Spanish cinema, emphasises the radiant and breathable presence of the bodies. A game he plays with the incessant sunlight that also reveals the inhospitable and dehumanising nature of an environment where rabbits run but does not cover up the sensation of an evil, almost ghostly presence.

Everything ends in an unexpected, yet excepted, bloodbath that Saura announces in various ways (the mannequin, the fire, the dead ferret…). The pettiness between the characters falsely resolved at different times, ends up exploding in a violence that starts with the animals and ends between the men. In the end, only Enrique remains from whom we can only hear his breathing, frozen in this microcosm.

The Hunt’s historical aspect

To better understand the importance of The Hunt, it’s useful to situate it both in the evolution of Carlos Saura’s cinema and in the space, it occupies within our industry. On the one hand, the film is the last example of Saura’s first era, marked by the incessant search for what can be captured of “reality” in its purest form. Here for example, it’s evident with the presence of the Castilian peasants. The other famous example of this approach is The Delinquients – Los golgos (1960), which can also be found in all his early films, from the short documentary El pequeño río Manzanares (1956) to Weeping for a Bandit – Llanto por un bandido (1964).

It’s true that his following films are also predictable. It would start with Peppermint frappé (1967) and continue through to the 70s (the Civil War provided great period trauma, sexuality…) but it’s not the same. If in his following films metaphorical references rule, even more can be found in The Hunt, as Santos Zunzunegui explains, “metonymic”, the characters do not refer to others by sharing “semantic or figurative traits” (metaphors), but rather by “contiguity” or exploiting the “cause-effect relationship” between shots (like the prologue that associates the ferrets with the protagonists).

The film’s screening and rapid prestige was used as a tool almost from its release which helped its historical narrative. It was the Franco regime, which quickly jumped on the bandwagon of the film’s international success. Using it to publicise the regime’s supposed opening and coined that of the “new Spanish cinema”, but was also used as a clear reference for that generation of filmmakers (Mario Camus, Basilio Martín Patino, Fons himself, Francisco Regueiro, Jorge Grau…). Following that, they started making films at that time and were excited about being able to make other types of films past censorship.  

Of course, the unavoidable historical and social dimension surrounding The Hunt is also found in the film itself. He touches on the unspoken and unhealed wound of the Spanish Civil War. A conflict to let go of and of which, as the character of José María Prada says, “only the cracks are left”. The three men, veterans of the Franco party, insist on not wanting to bring up the past and prefer not to leave a trace in people’s memory. This is also shown by Enrique’s reluctancy of not wanting to be photographed, giving a small hope of “improving” the future by learning through its past. 

It’s the film’s most apparent interpretation and the strongest voice, although it lacks the allegorical dimension that Saura delves into later. The filmmaker indirectly mentions the intertwined issues of classism, emigration, or the emerging business culture with those who succeed and disappear, a fast money culture which is represented in flesh and to the extreme by the absent fourth friend. 

All these elements make The Hunt’s inner strength, which, as with other great classics, quickly became more than just a film. The end of an era, and symbol of another, “the good place to kill” remains forever, and as for any good legend, reappropriated in its own way so that it lives on.