Death in the Garden (1956), by Luis Buñuel, is not too color, not too adventursome, nor too surreal in tone ... to be a guest on Classic Film Noir.
Death in the Garden is certainly of the film noir period, and appearing in 1956 it includes and adds to a few of film noir favourite themes, including politics, paranoia, the femme fatale, the innocent charged with crimes they didn't commit, and murder, deceit and a bag of greed.
Never could such color be called film noir, and Death in the Garden is a riot of such raucous Eastmancolor, that you'll be seeing bright green jungles in your dreams, after watching it.
Properly titled Le Mort en ce Jardin, and concerning itself with some rugged intrigue, Death in the Garden is a film of two parts, both of which have much to recommend them.
There are often political kicks to be made in film noir, and it's the same here. In fact Death in the Garden, it is said, sets out in part to play as a mirror-image of Franco’s Spain from
which Buñuel exiled himself.
The theme of rebellion is to the fore and the state oppressors seem keen not only to snatch each worker's share of the natural world - in this case the men are diamond prospectors - and repress any dissent with force.
