Two Monks

For a long time, Dos monjes (Two Monks, Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934) has been categorised as one of Mexico’s first two horror movies, along with Fernando de Fuentes’ El fantasma del convento (Phantom of the Monastery, 1934). Two Monks, however, is far closer to being a melodrama – it’s a tragic story that pioneers the unique multi-perspective narrative later used famously by Kurosawa Akira in Rashomon (1950). It is also completely uncharacteristic of the prevailing style of films from Mexico’s Golden Age (approximately 1936 to 1956). It bears the heavy marks of Expressionism, a style the film’s director, Juan Bustillo Oro, derived from his extensive viewing of German film from the silent era.

In Elisa Lozano’s masterful essay “Dos monjes: Expressionism a la Mexicana,”¹ she notes Oro’s affection for such films as Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) as well as those of Stellan Rye (Der Student von Prag [The Student of Prague, 1913]), Robert Wiene (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920]), Fritz Lang (Der müde Tod: ein deutsches Volkslied in sechs Versen [Destiny, 1921]), F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens [Nosferatu, 1922]), and Paul Leni (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett [Waxworks, 1924]). She quotes Oro, who wrote in his memoirs that Two Monks was “situated in a surreal setting that would place [it] in an Expressionist context…And I would yield to the influence that those old Germans had sealed in my imagination.”²

Two Monks opens in a dark and stylised monastery composed of black walls, hooded sconces, and pools of non-diegetic light as the monks chant, “Banish the Devil from the House of God.” A monk there, Brother Javier (Carlos Villatoro), is ranting and violent, supposedly possessed by Satan; the prior sends a new monk, Brother Servando (“serving”), to rehabilitate him.

In his cell, disturbed Brother Javier identifies Servando as a man named Juan (Victor Urruchua). He then pursues and assaults him with a crucifix plucked from the wall, producing a vision of the wounded Juan that looks right out of Jean Cocteau’s Le sang d’un poète (Blood of a Poet, 1932). What follows is a unique tale-telling: first, from the perspective of the disturbed Javier, and then a counter-narrative related by Juan. 

We learn that Javier was a composer suffering from tuberculosis. He gazes yearningly across his courtyard into the house opposite at Ana (Magda Haller), a young and beautiful girl whose parents scheme to wed her to an affluent older man. She rejects this, and as a result is thrown out by her family. Javier and his mother take her in, and Javier and Ana soon fall in love and plan to marry. “My love will be your eternal spring,” she tells him.

Then Juan, Javier’s bosom friend, comes home after a long absence. (Javier experiences a foreboding dream of him.) Javier proudly shows off his intended to Juan. All seems well, until Juan sends Javier to his lawyer’s to go through some papers for him. Javier returns home, only to find Ana and Juan in an illicit embrace. He strikes Juan, who pulls a pistol and fires. Ana leaps between the two and is shot dead.

The monastery’s prior then visits Servando/Juan, who tells the story again from his perspective. It seems that he and Ana had long loved each other, before she met Javier. She feels indebted to Javier, however, and can’t break up with him. “We must punish ourselves,” she tells Juan of their cursed romance, opting for a life of suffering rather than clarifying the situation. It is Juan’s attempt to see and kiss her one last time that precipitates the tragedy.

Throughout, the film is marked by a strong Expressionist feel that can be attributed to Oro and his first-time cinematographer, Augustin Jimenez. Originally a still photographer (he admired the work of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti), Jimenez became enamored of film work and would eventually be credited on nearly 200 films over the course of his career – famously, he gained the attention of Sergei Eisenstein, who let Jimenez observe his work in filming his unfinished ¡Que viva México! (1932). 

The film is crowded with Dutch angles, extreme closeups à la Griffith, and unbalanced frame compositions – all of which reinforce the feeling that one is watching a nightmare unfold. Oro’s proclivity for creating a brooding, depressive atmosphere underlines Javier’s “crazy” perspective and drives the mystery of what, presented more conventionally, might have come off as an unremarkable tale of love and betrayal.

The repressed passions of the trio come off as operatic. This is reinforced by a well-conceived soundtrack that incorporates Javier’s musical compositions as themes that are reiterated by the offscreen orchestra. In the film’s climax, Javier plays his love song for Ana on the monastery’s organ, bringing the monks out of their cells and devolving into a maddened dirge.

Two Monks is a religious film – one that elevates suffering to grand heights, that postulates that forbidden love leads to death and insanity. Javier’s closing vision of garishly masked monks advancing on him, seen through a warped lens, is Catholic guilt come home to roost. Whose story is more tragic – Javier’s or Juan’s? In the end, both seem to be damned souls.

Dos monjes/Two Monks (1934 Mexico 85 mins)

Prod Co: Proa Films Prod: Jose San Vincente, Miguel San Vincente Dir: Juan Bustillo Oro Scr: Juan Bustillo Oro, Jose Manuel Cordero Phot: Augustin Jimenez Ed: Juan Bustillo Oro Art Dir: Carlos Toussaint Mus: Raul Lavista, Max Urban

Cast: Victor Urruchua, Carlos Villatoro, Magda Haller, Beltran de Heredia, Emma Roldan

Endnotes