Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Robinson Crusoe (1952)
Director: Luis Buñuel
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A deceptively simple adaptation of Defoe's classic desert island novel. Few strikingly surrealist flourishes here: brief dreams of guilt, sexual frustration, and cruel power. Rather, Defoe's caustic analysis of mankind's foibles is translated into a moving account of one man's moral rebirth. The isolation and hardships that befall the bourgeois Crusoe, previously so dependent on servants for survival, leave him faithless, fearful for his sanity, and forced to become his own God, feeding insects and despairing of salvation. But with Friday's arrival, his ideas of religion and civilisation's hierarchy are really put to the test: trust, equality, and mercy replace the master-servant relationship as the necessary conditions of companionship and contentment. As in his other films, irony and a refusal to indulge in sentimentality are the hallmarks of Buñuel's vision; but the overwhelming impression here is one of surprising warmth, proof that, whatever humanity's faults, he remained forever interested in his own species and ultimately sympathetic to them.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Luis Buñuel
Producer: Oscar Dancigers, Henry F Ehrlich
Cast: Dan O'Herlihy, Jaime Fernández, Felipe de Alba full cast
Genre(s): Action/Adventure
Duration: 89 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now