![]() As the newly elected governor, Ramón must reconcile his liberal agenda with regard to an oppressive dictatorship that scoffs at worker’s rights. The island’s unseen president governs from atop a hill while thousands of prisoners work day and night constructing the mayor’s plantation. The opening narration describes El Pao as an island so isolated from the rest of the world that leaving the island is next to impossible. However powerful many of the vignettes may be, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The plot is a feverish gumbo of political intrigue, red tape, loose sex and double-crossings: Governor Mariano Vargas (Miguel Ángel Ferriz) is assassinated by Lieutenant García (Raúl Dantés), who blames the liberal-minded governor’s aide, Ramón Vászquez (Gérard Philipe), of conspiring to murder when the aide’s relationship to the assassinated governor’s wife, Inés Rojas (sex kitten María Félix), becomes known. ![]() ![]() Though the film would become Buñuel’s least favorite of all his French productions, it’s difficult to dismiss the film if only because it’s the great director’s most overtly political creation. Luis Buñuel’s El fièvre monte à El Pao ( Fever Mounts at El Pao) is the story of a South American dictatorship on the brink of liberalization.
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