From Her to He: faces and masks in Mercedes Pinto’s novel (1926) and Luis Buñuel’s film (1952)

Abstract

Mercedes Pinto’s itinerary took her from the Canary Islands, where she was born, to Mexico, after a passage through Uruguay. She first met success through her writings and cultural activities, and was then forgotten. However, her book –published in Montevideo in 1926– was adapted for the cinema by Luis Buñuel in 1952, and the film gave new life to this autobiographical “novel” He. If self-fiction prevails in the literary work, with the clear commitment of a feminist who takes a stand in favour of freedom –the freedom to divorce in that case–, in Buñuel’s Mexican film the study of the clinical case of paranoia acquires a new form of complexity. The attack on a parasitic bourgeoisie is united to the subversion of the melodramatic genre, with a false happy end which distorts established codes and lets the principle of doubt impose itself. In the same way the exploration of sexual roles, heir to the surrealistic trend, is devoid of any manichean simplification and stands out as a fascinating object for any hermeneutic approach.