Simon of the Desert (1965)
Simon, a deeply religious man living in the 5th century, wishes to be nearer to God, so he lives on top of a column, where he fights a struggle against the temptations offered to him by Satan.
Cast and Information
Directed By: Luis Buñuel
Written By: Luis Buñuel, Julio Alejandro
Starring: Glauber Rocha, Claudio Brook, Silvia Pinal, Antonio Bravo, Luis Aceves Castañeda, Eduardo MacGregor, Hortensia Santoveña, Enrique García Álvarez, Francisco Reiguera, Jesús Fernández, Enrique Álvarez Félix, Enrique del Castillo
Genre: Drama
AKA: Simón del desierto
Country: Mexico
Where to Stream
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Simon of the Desert belongs to 43 collections
1. Criterion Collection (collaborative: moderated by caffe - 167 stars)
2. boobs (collaborative: moderated by Pickpocket - 51 stars)
3. Surreal (collaborative - 47 stars)
4. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2008 revision) (collaborative: moderated by Scottathon - 39 stars)
5. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2010 revision) (collaborative: moderated by MMAlpha - 32 stars)
6. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2014 revision) (collaborative: moderated by Jehan - 27 stars)
7. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2017 revision) (collaborative: moderated by iconogassed - 22 stars)
8. They Shoot Pictures' Recommended Viewing (collaborative: moderated by Cinephile - 19 stars)
9. Edgar Wright 1000 Favorite Movies (Aug 2016) (collaborative: moderated by Aron Ericson - 17 stars)
10. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2013 revision) (collaborative: moderated by rant1229 - 16 stars)
11. FIPRESCI Prize (collaborative: moderated by paulofilmo - 14 stars)
12. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2020 revision) (public: djross - 14 stars)
13. Fantastic and surreal (public: juandr - 9 stars)
14. Satire / Parody (collaborative: moderated by td888 - 8 stars)
15. Religion (collaborative: moderated by Pickpocket - 8 stars)
16. Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive Art (collaborative: moderated by edsu - 8 stars)
17. Absurd (collaborative: moderated by dardan - 8 stars)
18. Shorts Rated Over 8.0 on IMDb (public: astrakhan - 8 stars)
19. Satanic (collaborative: moderated by djross - 6 stars)
20. Best by different standards (public: sesito71 - 6 stars)
21. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2007 revision) (collaborative: moderated by Scottathon - 4 stars)
22. Capsules, guest reviews, list candidates... (366weirdmovies) (collaborative: moderated by sesito71 - 4 stars)
23. Djross great movies (public: djross - 4 stars)
24. Little People (collaborative: moderated by iconogassed - 3 stars)
25. Brief Encounters (collaborative - 3 stars)
26. Coheed's Films I Need To See Or Try To Track Down (public: Coheed - 3 stars)
27. Djross film as art (public: djross - 3 stars)
28. Desert (collaborative: moderated by kangadoodoo - 2 stars)
29. Best of criticker: Short (collaborative: moderated by avgcrtckr - 2 stars)
30. weird (public: ptkw - 2 stars)
31. Doubling the Canon (2011 update) (collaborative: moderated by MMAlpha - 1 star)
32. Doubling the Canon (2012 update) (collaborative: moderated by Cinephile - 1 star)
33. Metacosmic and sexorganological cinema (public: djross - 1 star)
34. DVD Collection (collaborative)
35. Djross 1965 top ten (public: djross)
36. Djross best short films (public: djross)
37. Djross short movie of the year (public: djross)
38. IcanRemOs (public: cajerio)
39. 1965: Year in Review (public: polanski28)
40. Filmspotting Ratings Project: Week 30 (public: PeaceAnarchy)
41. List: Filmspotting Ratings Project - Communal Watchlist (public: KasperL)
42. D:Movies (public: ptkw)
43. Forrest Watch List (public: ForrestQ)
Browse the full list of collections
| Stars | User | Rating | |
| 8 |  |
Mentaculus | 98 98th |
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SOTD is truncated, incomplete, and barely known - but it is the one Bunuel film I continually return to. This has something genuine to say about the falseness of altruism, the relationship between Man and God, and the death of the Enchanted Age. Or I'm reading too much into it. God bless Bunuel.
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| 7 |  |
Danilolopes | 99 97th |
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One of Buñuel's best movies. Everything about bunuel's Cinema, you can find in those bright 43 minutes!
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| 6 |  |
Magb | 90 85th |
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I liked this one a lot. It's brief, captivating, heavily allegorical without feeling like it's allegory first and story second, and also quite funny. The ending comes out of nowhere but fits perfectly. Another thing I like about it is that while it clearly satirizes Christianity to some extent, it's also something of a blank slate for you to write your own religious interpretation onto. You could distill the film down to an interpretation that both Christians and non-Christians can agree on.
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| 4 |  |
KasperL | 50 30th |
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PSI: 93, Average Kumpel Tier: 9.61 ... Bad Kumpels! Bad! Go stand in the corner!
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| 3 |  |
djross | 86 96th |
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This may be a very unusual case where severe budgetary problems encountered in the course of production actually resulted in a better movie. Superb ending, of course. To me, it seems that Denis's BEAU TRAVAIL is in fact, in an abstracted and uncanny way, a remake of this movie.
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| 3 |  |
KMcNeil | 9 94th |
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One of Bunuel's best - and greatly underappreciated. Simultaneously attacking and displaying a strange sense of affection for religion, piousness and (overly extreme) selfsacrifice. Oh yeah. And the final dance-off (!) is one of cinema's finest.
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| 2 |  |
MartinTeller | 89 92nd |
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A hilarious and effective work of religious satire. Also a pleasure to look at, it's loaded with fabulous imagery. One wonders what Bunuel would have done with it if he'd had the money to film the whole thing, but it works perfectly well as a short.
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| 2 |  |
Moribunny | 38 23rd |
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I don't get it.
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| 2 |  |
Castroph | 8 85th |
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It's a flip flop of a film by Buñuel, this piece can be taken as a satire on religion or as a pro-religious film. Silvia Pinal plays a morbid yet seductive version of Satan.
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| 2 |  |
Tds4a | 3 80th |
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Deliciously subversive work. I can't decide whether it's a shame we didn't get the feature-length version, or whether it's perfect as it is.
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| 1 |  |
Nathan S | 4 74th |
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An imaginative and funny satire, brief but packed with deft visuals, metaphors, and gags. I especially love the use of anachronism. Silvia Pinal is the film's greatest charm, a charismatic embodiment of Satan as a beautiful temptress.
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| 1 |  |
Suture Self | 10 96th |
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The devil is much more in tune with the future than a bearded ascetic ever could be. Get over yourself, Simon. HAIL SATAN.
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| 1 | theyshoot07 | 56 29th |
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# 872
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| 1 |  |
JakeAesthete | 31 28th |
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Bunuel at his silliest, which is saying something. It somehow managed to put me to sleep despite being only 45 minutes long.
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| 1 | pompousass | 80 94th |
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A bedtime story for nonbelievers. With the flat, desolate setting and the up-tilted views of the aloof holy man, the movie is composed of about three-fourths sky; and against this luminous backdrop Buñuel's mixed-nuts characters stand out like the over-defined figures in a Sunday School play -- priests, pilgrims, the poor, the infirm, the malformed, and, in various disguises, the ubiquitous Devil.
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| 1 |  |
billkerwin | 94 93rd |
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A slight film, but a memorable one.
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| 1 |  |
SlantMag | 40 97th |
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"Simon of the Desert's little Bible stories are twisted evocations of the dumbing down of faith by postmodern Christian anxieties and hang-ups." - Ed Gonzalez
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| 1 |  |
Darren | 55 25th |
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Lame
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| 1 |  |
karamazov. | 25 28th |
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Buñuel is always very hit-or-miss for me, so my surprise was not to've seen yet another Buñuel film that didn't work for me, but rather that "Simón" was that film.
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| 1 | doyler29 | 90 86th |
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Buñuel is not so much critical of Brook's dedication as skeptical that it has any role in the real world. Only Buñuel and Satan seem to appreciate him.
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| Average Percentile 70.76% from 738 Ratings |  |